“You used to call me on my cell phone…”

Shame, for Drake, doesn’t come from being bought, but rather from not being bought. He derives pride from his value, and even more pride from putting a price on himself. On the marketplace of desire he shops not for his equivalent, but rather for an assurance of his own value. In encountering a woman like the one he is singing about, he begins to doubt himself. Has his market value dropped?

“late night when you need my love…”

What Drake calls love is actually a particular fetishism of a commodity: the human commodity.

“I know when that hotline bling / it can only mean one thing.”

In Drake’s world, the technological and the human are conjoined. Drake relates to himself in the same way he relates to his iPhone. Human relations mask market relations which mask human relations.

“Ever since I left the city you…”

Drake’s primary skill: Arranging for his own scarcity. “Text from a centerfold, I don’t reply, Let her know I read it though.” From scarcity, Drake, like gold, derives his value. Through careful deployment of vulnerability in a discography that has become extensive, Drake communicates the illusion of accessibility while maintaining his rarity.

“Know yourself, know your worth.”

Not from this song, but still important. In love, as in the rest of Drake’s world, nobody is expected to ignore his or her own value. Why is this line on a Sprite can? Because Drake is worth it. His satisfaction comes in knowing exactly what he is worth, in cataloguing the worth of others. "I’m just saying you can do better."

What else should we expect from Drake, who himself is the ultimate commodity, a human meme who shoots a video in which he dances like a dad just so you can gif and reblog it? A man who derives his personal satisfaction from his own consumption, as both subject and object of advertising?

June 2015: Lithuanian DJ Ten Walls outs himself as homophobic in a Facebook post. In the space of two days four festivals drop him from their lineups. His booking agency drops him from their list of acts and cancels all his gigs. Big-deal record shops take his music out of their stores. DJs pull out of gigs in which they share a bill with him. Other DJs smash their vinyl copies of his records. Labels that have distributed and profited off of his music donate half of their month’s proceeds to pro-LGBT rights charities. After immense social and financial pressure from all sides of the dance music community, Ten Walls announces on Facebook he will be retiring from music temporarily, if not indefinitely.

June 2015: American singer-songwriter Mark Kozalek outs himself as sexist in his songs a concert performance in which he leads his crowd to chant verbally threatening remarks at a female journalist, as well as a series of condescending email correspondences with said journalist. Despite tremendous online backlash Kozalek remains on tour. He can’t be dropped from his label, Calo Verde, because he owns it. Record labels have not pulled Sun Kil Moon albums from stores. His latest disc, Universal Themes, has received near-universal acclaim from music writers, with an aggregate score of 82 on Metacritic. Kozalek has yet to apologize.

December 2014: DIIV’s bassist outs himself as racist, homophobic, anti-semitic and sexist in a series of 4chan posts. Though his bandmate claims that he is “so disgusted” by DIIV’s behavior, he places the blame for Devin’s words on 4chan, whose very nature as a “poisonous place” and “the bowels of the internet” somehow caused Devin Ruben Perez to say all those awful things. This is akin to a college student half-assing his essay and then blaming the paper he wrote it on when he receives a failing grade. Other musicians say oh Dev is such a sweet kid, he couldn’t have possibly meant it. Though discussions were had about Perez’s future in the band, as of this writing he remains in the lineup of DIIV. The band remains on the lineup of Captured Tracks. They continues to tour without repercussions and receive the same steady press coverage from Pitchfork and their ilk. I couldn’t find any instances of shops pulling DIIV records from their racks or monetary compensation from DIIV and its members towards charities working to improve the lives of the groups he offended. When reminded of behavior that occurred a mere six months ago, it seems as if Perez has not learned much from the situation.

After inspecting these incidents with a critical eye, it has become overwhelmingly clear that ravers and those who benefit financially from dance music culture/“the rave industry” hold their musicians to a higher standard than punk rock kids and the corporate indie machine. Perhaps this is because the music Ten Walls performs (and the music he sampled as his nu-disco alias Mario Basonov) has strong roots in black and queer culture, whereas emo/sadcore/indie rock’s lineage is pretty much straight white dudes all the way down. Perhaps since house and techno has for so long been an ideology-free zone (with some notable exceptions) ravers and the dance music press/industry are more inclined to turn up their noses to ANY ideology being espoused, especially negative ideology. Meanwhile, though punk rock kids are admirable in their promotion of “safe space” venues and are less afraid to tackle problematic behavior within their lyrics, the press and industry that serves them remains complicit in supporting acts that they know to be human garbage piles, publishing positive reviews of their works in one moment, hopping onto the public-shame train the next, any stance for or against these artists and their behavior rendered ultimately nil and meaningless by the spinelessness of the indiesphere’s participants. By allowing Devin Ruben Perez to remain in their band, DIIV reveal themselves to be complicit in his behavior. By giving Mark Kozalek more opportunities to use the stage as a bully pulpit, promoters everywhere are profiting off of his reputation for surly stage antics and sexism.

“Come on, Nathan,” you could tell me, “The positive Sun Kil Moon review and the negative take on his sexist comments were written by different people. They have different opinions. Besides, websites gotta get page views/venues gotta make money/record stores are DYING!” Yes, yes, and yes, but somehow, this doesn’t appear to be a problem for dance music publications/festivals/record stores, who practice the principles of tolerance that they preach. 

* * * * *

I’m gonna pre-empt this piece by saying I have a fair bit of respect for Rob Harvilla. He’s one of the only pro music critics who really pays attention to country music, writing critically on both radio-ready and more traditional versions of the second most popular genre of music in the United State at a time when a lot of writers are loathe to pay attention to anything not happening in their backyards. Dude’s been kicking around the industry for at least a decade writing for every site you can think of, mostly good pieces too. He’s OG. So there is absolutely no excuse for him to be churning out writing like this hit job for Deadspin on the indie rock musician Dan Bejar, a piece that is pretty much useless to anyone except himself from the opening paragraph onwards:

 “Dan Bejar is the sort of fussy, opaque, perpetually dissatisfied art-rocker type who’d delight in the fact that it’ll probably take me two paragraphs to explain him to you to anyone’s satisfaction. He hails from Vancouver and looks like the insouciant, chain-smoking, Sartre-quoting philosopher genius/doofus your beloved college girlfriend dumped you for; since the mid-’90s, he’s put out nine records under the (very cool, and somehow available) name Destroyer, a ridiculously random and combative and self-annihilating body of work that encourages you to have a Favorite and, more importantly, a Least Favorite. I’m partial to 2006’s knotty, elegiac Destroyer’s Rubies, which is like reading Ulysses while lazily floating down a river on a blowup toy alligator; I am least partial to 2004’s Your Blues, which sounds like a drunk merry-go-round committing suicide and is super helpful if you need to clear a crowded room in 15 seconds. There, I did it in one paragraph.” 

The sense of smug self-satisfaction emanating from this graph is so rank you could vacuum-seal it and it would still stink up your house. First off: it’s absolutely not OK for writers to talk smack about Taylor Swift or any female artist’s looks. So why is it OK to do that with Dan Bejar’s? Making fun of guys who look like insouciant, Sartre-quoting philosopher genius/doofuses…homie have you checked a mirror lately? You look like THIS: 

Then there’s the bit about a body of work that encourages you to have a Favorite and Least Favorite…as if the very act of forming opinions on an artist’s discography is somehow worthy of derision. Like cataloging your thoughts is something only nerds that like Destroyer could possibly do. Whatever, Harvilla tells you his favorites anyway, and then he congratulates himself for being able to do so. Are we supposed to be impressed that Harvilla is doing his job? Give yourself a gold star why don’t you. What really motivated me to write this post, however, is his thoughts regarding Bejar’s criticisms of Taylor Swift, which come from this Pitchfork interview and which I’m just gonna quote for your convenience: 

 Pitchfork: So you’re not listening to Taylor Swift in your downtime. 

DB: Not too much. But, because I have a young daughter who’s in school now, I had this sneaking suspicion that Taylor Swift might be the dominant cultural theme of her generation and that I should listen to a song by her because I had never heard one. This was a couple of months ago. So I checked it out, and it gave me the willies. It wasn’t a reactionary thing. It was more from just hearing these hack nu-country melodies with dumb lyrics and some very advanced Pro-Tools production techniques that could dazzle certain music critics. I’m familiar with the fact that people who I count as intelligent are really into this woman’s records, and I don’t want to make this about Taylor Swift. I just generally have a more elemental take on things and I can’t hold up Taylor Swift as being either a figure of light or a figure of darkness because I feel like it brings down my poem to a level that’s too mundane. [laughs] So instead of being flabbergasted or outraged or dismissive, I really just want to pretend that those things don’t exist. Maybe I’ve always done a little bit of that, but I’m really steering into it now. 

 So what Dan Bejar is doing here is pretty much what a lot of successful musicians and also critics do. They study what’s popular and important, and try to break down why these songs are popular and important. Bejar is also attempting to take an interest in what his daughter is into, which is generally just good dad behavior (Bejarvior?). He draws a conclusion—Taylor Swift is popular because her songs are catchy, have simple melodies in popular chord progressions, and are produced in cooperation with proven industry hitmakers. On her album 1989 she has Max Martin executive producing—he’s written for Britney Spears, N’SYNC, Katy Perry, pretty much everyone big in pop music. That’s a name you might be familiar with. She also worked with people like Imogen Heap (an immensely popular solo artist in her own right), Timbaland protégé Ryan Tedder, who sings and plays Piano in OneRepublic and has written and produced for Beyoncé and Ariana Grande, and Shellback, who produced and wrote “DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love” for Usher and was Billboard’s #1 Producer of 2012. To sum up, she’s got a team of proven hit-makers around her, the biggest hit-maker of them all. 

No wonder 1989 is so popular, then, because it’s written by the same team that’s written at least half of the songs you’ve heard on the radio this decade! Obvie! That sort of music just isn’t Dan Bejar’s cup of tea, but he recognizes that a lot of people he respects truly, sincerely enjoy her music and he has no problem with it existing. So when he says he can’t call Taylor Swift a figure of light or a figure of darkness “because I feel it brings down my poem to a level that’s too mundane” he’s saying that to simply say “Taylor Swift is bad/good for the world” is the type of thinking that belongs in a high school music classroom—because she is neither. With the advent of the internet it has become easier than ever to create your own world, to exclusively pay attention to what you want to pay attention to. YOU choose the people in your Twitter feed! In Dan Bejar’s world, Taylor Swift exists as an artist his daughter enjoys. That’s it, and there’s nothing wrong about that. 

 taylor swift: more popular than apples (the fruit and the technology company)

This brings us back to Rob Harvilla, whose Twitter feed is comprised of mostly professional pop critics who see Taylor Swift as a VERY BIG DEAL and anyone who is dismissive of Taylor’s music as a threat to female songwriters or critical acceptance of pop music or whatever. So it’s his natural reaction to whine about other people disliking things that he likes, because music critics exist in a self-reinforcing feedback loop where any opinion differing from the consensus of your clique (Taylor Swift is good! Jack White is bad! Dan Bejar is crying white male tears!) is a threat that should be dismantled. That is why Harvilla is mad that a single indie rock guy doesn’t really like Taylor Swift: because thoughts like Bejar’s threaten the social pressure he experiences from his feed, a pressure that says you should like pop music or else you are a bore. Harvilla puts food on his table based upon the frequency and quality of the opinions he generates as a professional opinion-haver. It benefits him to run with the pack on these things. 

But wait, you might say, I thought critics reflexively hated pop music! Well, since the 90s, there has been a rise in what is called Poptimism amongst professional music writers. To quote Maura Johnston writing for Noisey, Poptimism “is about throwing out the artificial distinctions that elevate Serious Mass-Appeal Music (usually made by men, and with guitars) over Frothy Bubbly Stuff (which often appeals to women as much as, if not more than, it does men).” That means being able to recognize that Soulja Boy’s “Crank Dat” is just as difficult a song to write as Nas’s “The World Is Yours”. Soulja Boy can’t write lyrical hip-hop, Nas can’t write chart hits, both, importantly, have tried and failed. That doesn’t diminish the fact that Soulja Boy and Nas are both insane geniuses who deserve their spots in a figurative Hip-Hop Hall of Fame. They just excel in different ways. If you want to see how musicians articulate Poptimism without using the term, I defer to will.i.am.: "[‘Boom Boom Pow’] has one note. It says 'boom' 168 times. The structure has three beats in one song. It's not lyrics — it's audio patterns, structure, architecture. Lots of people say, 'Black Eyed Peas shit is simple,' and I'll be like, 'No, fool, it's the most complex shit you even could fathom, that's the reason it works everywhere around the planet.'” 

So make no mistake, in his spirited defense of Taylor Swift’s complexity, Rob Harvilla is a poptimist, but he would rather pretend that because he knows what poptimism even is (unlike 99% of adults in America) he is somehow Above the Fray and totally immune to the criticism, ‘”oh, you’re just a poptimist.” Deadspin is ostensibly a general-audience sports website, but make no mistake, Harvilla’s piece is not written for Deadspin readers but rather the people in his Twitter feed. THAT is why he nods in the direction of the Poptimism debate without ever engaging it. THAT is why he throws around terms like Poptimism and Rockism without ever bothering to define them for the uninitiated. He just naturally assumes his readership is on the same page as him, which is a SERIOUSLY LAZY and irresponsible behavior for a writer to have. In this Deadspin piece, Rob Harvilla is not trying to prove a point, but rather attempting to assert his own worthiness as a participant in an increasingly nebulous conversation. Critics who write for the purpose of seeking RTs and Favs from other critics are a good argument for why Al-Qaeda should have won. 

Like dude, why are you trying so hard to defend Taylor Swift? She’s the single most popular musician in the world! As in number one, at the top, the only artist still capable of selling 1.3 milli first week. On the 2014 Pazz & Jop list, which is the aggregated list of every professional music critic’s favorite records of the year, she placed NUMBER SEVEN. People who write for Pitchfork and The New York Times and Stereogum—the very outlets that praise Destroyer—thought her album was better than albums released that year by Flying Lotus, Sharon Von Etten, Aphex Twin, Lana Del Rey, Freddie Gibbs & Madlib, fucking Leonard Cohen… The only world in which Dan Bejar dismissing her music is a threat is the one that exists inside your own echo chamber. If you want to be afraid of something, be afraid of your own inevitable mortality. Don’t be afraid of a diversity of opinions, and certainly don’t be afraid that the music of Taylor Swift will never, ever appeal to everyone under the sun.

I have one last thing to say regarding poptimism: disliking things because they are popular is silly from a critical perspective, but for the average person it is a completely legitimate consumer behavior. People refuse to watch Game of Thrones or just accept that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016 for the same reasons they won’t listen to Taylor Swift: Because in America, we hate the idea of a coronation. We hate the idea that someone else can decide what we want for us. In 2015, it has become uncool to dislike what is on the radio, and that is completely. fucking. insane.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I'm on a short hiatus from blogging right now, but obviously I had to throw this one up on the site. New fukkin Oxblood! Give this song your time.

"The tracks for this release were recorded in a strange surrounding far away from home and friends." So says the press release on this one. Try it, you might like it if you dig some of the other more relaxed and heady dance songs I've been showing you. This is wet and untethered like a piece of driftwood.

If you've been following The Brown Noise, it would be safe to say that Brodinski's upcoming BRAVA is a serious Album of the Year contender around these parts. Part of this blog's mission has been to promote and recognize not only less notorious producers that need that extra push into the public consciousness to realize their full potential, but unheralded voices in hip-hop, voices which play with styles that the mainstream has yet to fully embrace. Hip-hop and dance music have been slowly drifting towards each other like two giant musical glaciers over the past decade, brought together by a mutual respect for sound design and loop-based craftsmanship, and exciting music often occurs when artists try and join the two genres together. Rarely, however, have we seen an album-length statement of intent from an artist intending to merge trap house turn-up and dancefloor ecstasy.

After gaining Kanye's cosign and producing on Yeezus, it would be easy for Brodinski to go full Guetta and link up with Usher or Pusha-T for a star-studded tread through familiar territory. Yet instead of consciously attempting to make a big album, the singles he's released so far have indicated that he's trying to remain true to himself and his vision of how hip-hop should sound and the club's atmosphere should be. Brodinski favors dark, brutalist beats full of hissing mechanical ambience and rappers that eschew traditional lyricism in favor of New Atlantan vocal float and syllables stretched like nougat-- all coated in a healthy helping of our favorite Antares-branded virtual software instrument. That's the route he's taken with previous singles, the SD-featuring "can't help myself" and the Young Scooter joint "Francois-Xavier." 

This new one "Us" is different though. It's a supersaw-driven epic and the best rap beat Brodinski has ever produced, subs rattling immaculate and clean, the sort of song meant for soundtracking sunrises as seen from inordinately expensive hotel rooms. Bloody Jay is on this and he absolutely fucking kills it. It might seem like an odd choice to give such a clearly deliberated-over beat to a rapper whose art is primarily improvisational, but Bloody Jay is like the Jackson Pollack of the ATL--  his method of painting his canvas may seem random, but it is actually incredibly organized chaos. Bloody Jay's approach on this record illustrates another advantage of the New Atlanta style-- it makes expressions of profound emotion seem that much dearer. When Jay howls out at the chorus-- "I do this shit for US!" you can hear the tenderness and humanity in his voice, the pure weight of caring deeply about another person in every syllable-- you couldn't get that if dude was just spitting bars at you. There's an amazing moment where Jay breaks down at the third verse and says "I'm sorry for those lonely nights, for those empty tears, for those broken promises", it's like Superman telling you about his aversion to Kryptonite--  Jay peels away the image and shows you the man, flaws and all.  The pathos, the love in this song, it's all real and deeply touching, a testament to the power of one when they have another by their side. Not since "Turn On The Lights" has there been a love song this good and I sincerely hope this gets the promotional push it deserves. If there are more records like these on BRAVA we are in for a culture-altering album, because seriously, this song is everything the game needs and deserves. This isn't a record for corporate suits or H&M ads-- Brodinski truly does this shit for "US".

There's two things you need to know about D.C. Young Fly: 1. He's a rapper from Atlanta 2. He's Vine-famous as hell right now. A comedian in the Chris Tucker mode, He has over 720,000 followers on the website and nearly three times as many on Instagram, thanks to his Bring That Ass Here Boy series of viral takedowns of celebrities and other comedians. It's been said that rappers are always trying to be comedians and comedians are always trying to be rappers-- probably because hip-hop is the one musical genre in which humor is not only celebrated, but encouraged. D.C. Young Fly manages to do both to often good, occasionally amazing results. 

Brrrap!

Louisahhh!!! & Maelstrom return on Bromance for what sounds like a logical successor to her all-time classic alongside Brodinski, "Let The Beat control Your Body". As a Daniel Avery-style acid line writhes underneath, Louisahhh!!! dispells all unnecessary bullshit, self-hate and doubt with that repeated refrain: "It's only friction, baby." "Friction" is all about that chorus, simultaneously a taunt, a refutation, and a mantra for self-preservation-- kind of like Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off", but obviously a whole lot grimier. There's little else to distract from her words-- some sparse ambient vocal FX, a frostbitten snare drum chattering like teeth, a one-note sine pluck accenting that one-note bassline-- but this is as maximal as minimal gets.

We're excited to premiere the new Ratchett Traxxx & Paul Fisher collaboration here on The Brown Noise.

Ratchett Traxxx has made no secret regarding his love of hip-hop-- take a read of his Twitter feed or listen to his debut album for proof. While working with rising San Antonian Paul Fisher, he allows the hip-hop ethos and aesthetic he's absorbed to manifest itself into something concrete and tangible-- "No Subtweets" and "On Top" are undeniable highlights in his discography, but have previously featured Fisher meeting Traxxx on his own territory, lacing sparse hip-house drum-work with Azealia Banks-esque come-ons. 

Here, Traxxx's beat is in trappier territory-- this is more of a Paul Fisher song than something we've come to expect from the blacc_haccer, but you can tell he's just as accomplished in his programming in this realm as when making straightforward techno bangers. Hearing that tip-toeing hi-hat and those off-kilter snare rolls will tell you exactly that. Fisher, as ever, sounds capable, focused, and determined, though you get the sense that he's saving his best bars for his upcoming debut tape. He laces the beat with one of his tightest choruses yet-- I'm not sure we needed it a second time around at the end of the song, but I'm not complaining too hard. A press release might say that despite their different backgrounds-- one from San Antonio, one from Chicago-- the two artists have a natural chemistry together, but there's more to it than that. These are two artists united by a shared passion: to make good for the ones that got left behind. Fisher is near-singlehandedly attempting to revitalize San Antonio's stagnant rap scene, while Traxxx wants to make sure the ResidentAdvisors and XLR8Rs of the world don't erase black artists from the techno and house music they created. carrying their respective flags has brought them onto the precipice of the best phase of their careers-- the come-up. I'm positive the best work from this duo is yet to come.

the feds say if i upload one more drake song to the internet they're gonna take away my tumblr.

doesn't really bother me. if anything it's an excuse to post more music by undiscovered or lesser-known artists, who don't need to be heard in a way that maximizes profit for some soulless corporation. They just need to be heard.

I sounded like the hugest tool asking my friend from Russia if he'd heard of Pinkshinyultrablast. 

"WHAT did you just say?" he asked.

"It's what they call themselves," I said.

"They probably come from St. Petersburg," he offered. "Bands there are in some sort of pissing contest to see who can come up with the goofiest fucking name."

He was right. They ARE from St. Petersburg.Their debut album Everything Else Matters album is out now and the full release sounds fucking gorgeous. The band writes absolutely widescreen dreampop that paints in broad strokes and primary colors, and despite having a ridiculous name (which pays homage to an Astrobrite album) they make entirely respectable music. I posted "Holy Forest" around a month ago, and "Umi" is another stellar track. It's here that you really get a sense of how well the band works as a unit-- the bassline and lead guitar play off each other like two children in a game of Miss Mary Mack, while those gorgeous vocals soar eagle-like over the proceedings. These guys have had plenty of time to hone their sound-- they first released an EP in 2009-- and you can hear it in their lithe, road-tested playing. The addition of a dedicated "synths and electronics" player to the guitar-bass-drums-vocals standard band formula adds a fullness and a boldness to their songwriting-- the washes of pink noise on "Umi" fill up every crack in the mix, giving the song a paradoxical heaviness thats like being crushed under the weight of an ostrich feather. Anyway that's enough talking; this band simply makes gorgeous heavy pop music and I'm happy to be turning y'all onto them.

This song is cozy as hell. It sounds like Youandewan left his synths a bit too close to the furnace while writing "Stak Poly Looms"-- all the ingredients are overheated and Dali-melted in the just the right way. The Berlin-via-Yorkshire producer's progression has been a joy to watch and his latest EP, arriving on the typically reliable Aus label, sees him soaking up more of that Berlin influence and applying it to his music in all the right ways.