You Can Just Do Whatever You Want Now

It already fell apart or it's about to fall apart.

In this newsletter:

• A single observation about Pitchfork, lists, Pitchfork lists, and the state of music writing, spread out across multiple paragraphs.

• A forgotten 2005 instrumental hip-hop album that sounds like a lurid apocalypse.

• A Mach-Hommy track that ranks among his greatest work to date.

• An addictive, dusky art-pop album that is the best thing you’ll listen to all year.

GETTING RILED UP ON THE INTERNET

Last week, Pitchfork released their best albums and songs of the decade (so far) list. It’s a mid-decade-point tradition that riles up people on the internet because the internet is a place where everyone is already sort of riled up and just needs a place to project all that ambient riled up energy.

The big difference between these lists and previous Pitchfork best songs and albums of the decade (so far) lists is that these are the first ones that have been published since Pitchfork was subsumed (abstract) into GQ. Whatever you think about that choice aside, it happened. We’re here. In the twenty years (jesus christ) I’ve been a “professional” “writer” I’ve watched music writing go from sort of nerdy, sort of weirdly cool job to a hobby that pays next to nothing but still limps along, infiltrating and influencing culture on the margins, while its practitioners—at times, myself included—take themselves too seriously, and then serious themselves right out of enjoying doing the thing that, at this point, can only be done out of genuine enjoyment.

The criticisms of the list have largely been familiar: “how can X be above Q!?” “How/why did you overlook Y?” But the main criticism I saw amongst insiders was about the internal logic of the list: it didn’t reflect the actual reviews of the albums, it tried too hard to be “different,” it was all over the place because it tried to make room for both Taylor Swift and Nettspend… You could basically boil all these criticisms down to a general bristling at a list that seems messy and tries to be too many things to too many people, and is therefore wrong from every angle. I loved it.

It felt like the first time in a long time that a list from a major arbiter of culture wasn’t adhering to some invisible, boring rules. Music writing is in a DIRE place. There are less ways to make a living off of it than ever before, so its status as a hobby directly conflicts with the perceived seriousness of the list itself. None of this matters. It never mattered, but it really doesn’t matter now. If you’re gonna write about music in public places, you should be making your own status quo every chance you get.

CRAWLING AMONGST THE WRECKAGE

RZA could have told us: one of the byproducts of creating a stark sonic imprint is that a lot of producers are going to imitate your sound. Instead of viewing them as competitors or biters, it’s sometimes better to bring them under your wing, teach them the tricks of the trade, see where their take on a sound you now share diverges.

In 2005, El-P’s underground rap label Def Jux had already released a number of classic albums, that shared El-P’s signature production style, which sounded like rusty machines dying on the neon-lit last day of the existence of planet earth. As he’s transitioned from cerebral battle rapper to stadium rap guy, you can hear how he molds his beats into less intricate, but still brutal forces of nature. Back then, his style was a lot more divisive, but he still attracted plenty of producers inspired by his Bomb Squad-by-way-of Vangelis production style. The Brooklyn producer Arcsin was one guy who took the basic tenets of El-P’s sound and modeled it into something even darker, sharper edged.

I may be remembering this wrong—it’s virtually impossible to find proof of this on what’s left of the internet—but Arcsin’s 2005 album Resonant Murk Tactics was Def Jux’s first “digital” release. Discogs tells me that it later got a CD pressing, but when it was first released the idea was that it would spearhead a series of records that Def Jux could put out without spending costly dollars on manufacturing. Sharp eared listeners may recognize the instrumental “Hysteria Hall” because the rapper-turned-downtown New York impresario Despot rapped over it on “Homesickness” from Definitive Jux Presents Vol. 3. Maybe you’d checked out of the underground by then, or maybe you, like me, were still holding tight. I remember hearing “Homesickness” for the first time, wishing Despot would release a solo album (he never did), and then thinking that El-P had really gone in a much darker direction, sound-wise, before discovering that it was produced by a different guy entirely.

Resonant Murk Tactics is a little long and doesn’t vary as much as you’d hope, but there’s a lot to love there still: it’s a portrait of paranoid post-9/11 New York that relies on layers of synthetic sounds to communicate its mood, yet it often still sounds analog, like Arcsin was banging out these beats on an MPC rather than hunched over FruityLoops or whatever. His compositions have space and grit. They sound like they were made in the real world, and as a result, they’re tactile, less the product of a mind intertwined with an overheated CPU, and a more full-bodied approach to production. On “50 Caliber Shrine” he even incorporates a RZA-circa The W production style, layering whiney synths over a stuttered drum loop that sounds like being extremely stressed out on a cold street corner at four in the morning. It’s a fascinating relic of a big sound with a small impact.

KETTLE WHISTLE RAP

Speaking of RZA, I keep coming back to the Mach-Hommy and Tha God Fahim track “PADON” from this year’s #RICHAXXHATIAN, which was not produced by RZA, but by SadhuGold doing his best impression of RZA’s teakettle whistle synth. Mach-Hommy continues to be a fascinating rapper, able to straddle multiple sonic strains of hip-hop across decade and region without sounding self-consciously like he’s making empty nostalgic throwback rap, of which there is always plenty already.

ONE OF THOSE ALBUMS

Milan W.’s Leave Another Day is one of those perfect records that feels at once deep-rooted in my subconscious, like its been with me for decades, and also totally unlike anything else I’ve listened to recently, which is sort of the M.O. of Stroom, the label that released it. Occasionally baroque, always slow and contemplative, Leave Another Day unfurls as a soundtrack for quiet evenings and solitary mornings and while its particular strain of art-pop feels a bit without reference, I can also confidently say that if you’re into Pablo’s Eye, Talk Talk, Arthur Russell, or literally any other record Stroom has ever put out, you’ll be into this. If you’re not into any of those things or don’t know those names, you’ll probably still be into this. Boomkat, one of the sites selling the record, ends their writeup on a note worth replicating here:

“Trust, it’s just one of those albums.”

I like that line because it’s exactly right. This is “one of those albums” that joins the rarified pantheon of albums that are also vaguely defined as “one of those albums.” You know it when you hear it. Here’s a few more “one of those albums” that sit comfortably beside Leave Another Day, while sounding not much like Leave Another Day.