Pitchfork Media is celebrating its 15th birthday this week. Love it or loathe it, there's no denying the site has had an almost unparalleled influence on the indie/alternative music scene over that time. It's also hard to deny that since its inception in 1996, the standard of writing has improved substantially.
For me, one of the greatest travesties that P4k ever inflicted on music journalism was its 0.0 score of Zaireeka!, the Flaming Lips' mind-boggling 4CD album from 1997. One of the worst things about that review was the fact that it failed to provide any critique of the album's music whatsoever, but instead laid into the album's concept (for the uninitiated, the four CDs which make up Zaireeka are all meant for simultaneous play, meaning you need 4 CD players, or else three other friends with CD players, to get the full listening experience).
First of all, let me say that the concept to Zaireeka! is brilliant on so many levels. You never get the same listening experience twice. To keep 4 CD players perfectly in sync over 8 songs and 45 minutes is simply an impossible task, but that ends up being half the fun, especially when you start hearing echoes of a vocal before the original vocal has even been uttered. And then you're able to play around with the whole album dynamics. Which CD should I play in this player? How loud should I have it? Where should this CD player go in the room? And whilst 4 CDs is undoubtedly the recommended set-up, Zaireeka! can be enjoyed with 3 or even just 2 CDs, giving all manner of permutations (just make sure you have CD1 included in there somewhere).
And then there's the intended communal experience of Zaireeka!, the idea of friends coming along, bringing their CD players, having some drinks, and sitting back and soaking up the madness. I've experienced the album once in this manner, and it has really stuck in my mind in a way that I've never had from simply sticking on a CD, either before or since.
But all of this would be moot if the music itself was a load of old cobblers. It's here where Zaireeka! transcends mere gimmickry, offering a wonderful, and surprisingly focussed set of songs which actually runs the gamut between 1995's Clouds Taste Metallic (when they still sounded like a band playing actual instruments) and 1999's polyphonic masterpiece The Soft Bulletin pretty well.
As part of their 15th birthday celebrations, P4k have dug up a number of journalistic pieces from their archive, one of which is a reappraisal of Zaireeka!, originally written in 2002. It goes a long way to addressing the original misdemeanour, by pretty much outlining what I've said here. Hopefully, moments of agenda-driven, attention-seeking drivel such as that original review are a thing of the past on P4k. But should there remain a dearth of level-headed, objective writing on P4k's pages....well you've always got KILAS, haven't you?
No comments:
Post a Comment