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false false false >> The Guardian (UK), December 7, 2009 00s Notes:

The decade musically fragmented

Simon Reynolds

was watching list of 200 best albums of the decade of Pitchork

. And I noticed something strange about the top 10. It is obvious that there is a limit to what can be read in a poll of critics. But Pitchfork is one of the few institutions that can be said that it is influential, in terms of material covered and the judgments it makes. Pitchfork both leads and reflects a substantial audience that is relatively set yet. We could call it "post-

indie", which means that Pitchfork is the closest thing in the modern era, the NME of the years after punk (when its outlook was distinctly rock but with an opening located outside music this scheme, from reggae to disco, through funk, African and jazz). Participants in the survey, the Pitchfork staff-are people who spend much time listening intensely a really wide range of music. So it seems unlikely that its evaluation collective of which are important in the last decade is deprived of significance. And in any case, according to open the debate, I will move forward as a precondition to taking the survey results mean something.

So what was the intriguingly strange

top 10 of the decade ? What immediately struck me was that seven of the records were from 2000 to 2001, with the 2002 record and one 2004. The only album released in the second half of the decade was Person Pitch by Panda Bear. What meaning could be derived from this dense cluster (eight of ten) of the "greatest albums" in the first three years of the decade? Two interpretations are possible: Either the music is deteriorated as the 00s progressed and became more and more difficult for people to establish a consensus on which groups or records were important. The first possibility seems unlikely, so I'll have to choose the latter. Which resonates with the way in which the decade is felt: diaspora, with scenes splintering into sub-scenes, with the formation of bunkers for different tastes, increasing the likelihood that the question "You listened to X?"

was found with a shake of the head or with a look of incomprehension.

I wonder if my own ranking would record a Pitchfork-like form, ie a list heavily biased towards the early years. Coincidentally, he had participated in a similar critical survey organized by Stylus , a webzine that was the "friendly rival" Pitchfork until it was closed some years ago. Its authors have reconvened for a special issue of balance of the decade (the results, plus a collection of essays will be available few weeks). Reviewing my own choices, I was surprised to see that the top 10 (and even the 50 discs that I chose in total) were evenly divided between the first and second half of the decade. No decline in quality in my own opinion then. But by inspecting the list more closely I discovered that my choices from the early years of the 00s were significantly more consensual, even "culture media": Radiohead Kid A, The Blueprint Jay-Z, Discovery

Daft Punk,

Since I Left You by The Avanalches (all four also appear in the top 10 on Pitchfork), Original Pirate Material The Streets

,

The College Dropout Kanye West,

Boy in Da Corner by Dizzee Rascal

. While my favorite records of the second half of the decade were strikingly more idiosyncratic: catalog disks Ghost Box label, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Dolphins Into the Future, Mordant Music, High Places ... groups certainly have fans, but are far from central. This led me to wonder whether the same syndrome was affecting the rest of the world. "We're all away from all others? The fragmentation of the rock / pop has been running since I have memory, but this decade seems to have crossed a threshold. There was so much music in which interest and research. No gender disappeared, all moved on, launching products, farm shoots proliferate sound. Nor were removed as musicians were older, those who continued taking things did not die, pushing along with younger artists who hoped to move towards the light. It is tempting to compare the music of the 00s with a garden choked with weeds. Except where a bed of flowers choked by too many flowers would be a more accurate picture, because much of the production was good. The problem is not only the quantity but the quality multiplied by the quantity. There was also the last available than ever before, competing for our attention and affection. The falling prices of home studios and digital recording technologies, combined with the rich history that musicians can absorb and recombine intensified quality music production. But the result of all this overproduction was that "we" were scattered over a vast field of sound. That is why there is so little overlap between the surveys of this year or the end of the decade published in music magazines. If even a relatively non-diffuse community as Pitchfork could only find its center around disks that came in the early years of the 00s, this suggests that the entire culture slide toward entropy is accelerating.

This idea is raised in one of the top 10 comments Pitchofork, around

Funeral, the Arcade Fire record of 2004 set # 2 on your list . Ian Cohen writes: "Whether by increasing fractional listening habits or increasing ability to be heard of dissidents,

Funeral still feels like the last example of its kind, a indie album, sounding able to conquer the universe was exactly what I was getting. " Pointing to the largest deficit of the blogosphere (that agree with the opinion of others does not generate any kind of narcissistic value) Cohen added that "the hyperbole of consensus that found Funeral meant that any other disk that threatened to reach that level were counted so severe or even directly ordered to ridicule. "He concludes, wistfully, that" still, we wonder if they ever happen again something like Funeral

-something tells me that as the music becomes more and more available in the next decade, we can still go through all this with the hope of finding something with the unifying force and the incredible emotional payload

Funeral albums only can generate. " What Cohen is saying here suggests that my two interpretations of the perspective

Pitchfork may have more to do than he had thought, perhaps there is an intimate connection between music and value consensus.

is that I have a hunch. I think if you were to assemble a selection of the best 2000 albums from each decade pop and compare, then win the 00s: 90s expire clearly quite well to the 80s and the 70s vapulearían and 80s. But I am also convinced that if one were to compare the top 200 records the result would be the opposite: the 60s he narrowly win the 70s, the 70s would get a win just more of the 80s, which clearly would beat the 90s and the 90s I would bite the dust in the 00s. It's just a hunch, but it really resonates. Because I think the highest positions of such lists require more than mere musical excellence, must also be present an "X factor", that quality is difficult to define often called "important" or "greatness."

The importance is rarely a purely intrinsic to the music itself or the genius of its creator. A crucial component of the "important" is the impact and reception: what the audience brings to the music. The "unifying force" of Cohen is not entirely inherent in the disk, must, to some extent, pre-exist, look, be reflected in it. In any case, the significance is always a two-way process. Part of the reason why the Beatles achieved greatness by repeatedly is because they knew that the world was waiting, this made them to rise to the occasion. There is a relatively recent example of this syndrome: the release, late last year,

Chinese Democracy by Guns N'Roses and

808s & Heartbreak Kanye West (I wrote about both

here ). The first was a failed attempt to be important, the grotesque and disgusting spectacle of someone trying to exceed expectations, the second was a convincing ego-drama about a narcissistic injury represented on the biggest stage possible.

The result of overload "Quantity x quality" is that those relentless optimists annually chant the year has been fantastic and that each year there is more good music than last year "are right. But the predictable grumbling complaining about the shortcomings of the annual harvest are too. More and more music from good to excellent occurs every year but that very fact frustrates the emergence of the music really great, smothering. The bigger the spread, the more we disseminate "we." And it's even worse: as artists internalize the reduction of expectations, the waning continues to decline as spiral.

[Article in English can be read here

]

to read more texts by simon reynolds

http://blissout.blogspot.com/