Anonymous asked: you're a very good blogger/writer as well as a very good musician. do you read any music writing/writers or journalism/journalists?
that is very generous of you to say, anonymous. but at heart i’m just a nerd for sound and that is why I prefer to engage with it as both musician and musicophile.
what do I read? first off, I don’t look for writers to be advocators. Kyle Gann wrote a great article relating to this. I’m not interested in that kind of objectivity (objectivity often comes across anyway, intentionally or not). For example, I won’t treat a review as a thermometer to determine if I should buy a record. But I will read an article to gain insight and context, and if you’ve ever been a tech/design/political junkie, then you know context is where things get interesting. Why this style? What this arrangement? The cycle of PR can get so pat (everything off the one-sheet, keep reviews to a 300-500 word minimum) so I like when the writers do a little digging. What really excites me is seeing a good journalist’s muscles flex, and that means getting below the surface, getting beyond the reviews. That means talking about politics of gender/race/class as it applies to music, getting into the theory and DNA behind the music. On this subject I could go on forever.
I’m a grazer—I have no brand loyalty. Below are some of my favorites, all unique from one another. (full disclosure: two of them have become friends over the years, though i don’t think that sways my decision too much).
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