From the Quaternions Sent Wed, Oct 7th 1998, 19:42
From the Quaternions Sent Wed, Oct 7th 1998, 19:42
I also have a big problem with most music reviews, but I think well-written reviews are a real artform. Seems to me, people make 2 major mistakes. Either they try to give you a synopsis of the album, often a track by track description of what you hear when, or they go in the opposite direction, describing the music's imagery in flights of purple pose. It's hard to quantify what makes a good review, bu it seems that good ones set the music in various contexts, and analyze it within those contexts. Thus, you might talk about Come to daddy in the context of Aphex's older work, in terms of the current IDM scene, in terms of certain aesthetic qualities like dancability or production values or whatever interests you. You want to paint a picture of the album in a lot of different ways, so the reader can understand what the album does and where both it and the reviewer are coming from. But the key final step, IMO, is to then fit all the details into the larger picture, a sort of ! fina l analysis of the album in the reviwer's eyes, the album's defining traits... This is obviously over simplifed, and plenty of other approaches work just as well. But being too mechanical, or too personal and subjective tends to ruin a review for me... Sam >Well i only read reviews for entertainment purposes. 99% I disagree with and the >other 1% are useless......seems to me people are using it as an excuse to do some >creative writing instead of doing something meaningful..... > >spaul >