Re: [microsound] Are all electronic music related writers bad writers?

[graham miller <grahammiller@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

okay. i agree. great post. the review however - and i think you're getting
at this - should have something of the reviewer in it, i.e. subjectivity.
all to often reviews are masked in the guise of objectivity, and as we all
know, even in journalism - especially in journalism - this is impossible. so
instead of feigning objectivity, like so many music writers do, writers
should embrace the inherent subjectivity of the whole bullshit process and
make the review just as much a reflection of their own aesthetic
proclivities as the artist being reviewed. this is why i like the wavelength
link, i posted earlier, so much.

that said, i hate reviews. i don't read them. if anyone ever reviewed
anything i did, good or bad, i'd kill them:) for the most part it's
preaching to the converted anyway...

g.

Rónai András wrote:

> On Mon, 26 Sep 2005 03:39:08 +0200, graham miller
> <grahammiller@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > the writing should mirror the aesthetic
> > of the artist.
>
> Your approach is interesting and well thought out, but I think it's based
> on a misconception that is condensed in the above sentence.
>
> If you take the task of a review to be a mirror, only the piece of art in
> question can be a perfect review (of itself). But the task is describing
> and evaluating.
>
> Describing and evaluating is not mirroring; they're two totally different
> things. If I say about Jim that he's a man with a big moustache, that
> sentence is of course not a "mirror" of him (the one beint a human, the
> other a linguistic unit), and even not a full description (as this latter
> thing does not exist), but it can be an appropriate description of him in
> some context (say, when you see a lot of men, want to pick Jim, and he's
> the only one with moustache). For other contexts, other descriptions that
> pick other (and more) attributes of him will be appropriate.
> [Sorry for my silly example, perhaps I read too much "ordinary language
> philosophy".]
>
> The "art" of reviewing is not the impossible art of mirroring, but the
> possible art of finding the appropriate (for the context) description and
> basing sound evaluations on it. Of course it can be more or less poetic,
> but when it becomes poetry, it ceases to be a review (though maybe the
> border between the two is blurred).
>
> r.a
> --
> http://ra.underground.hu/


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: microsound-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: microsound-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
website: http://www.microsound.org