RipFork

Artist: Tiesto

Album: Kaleidoscope

Reviewer: Jess Harvell

Pitchfork, 2009

Writing Disorders: Infectious Punctuation, Scorn Disease

Longest Sentence: 79 Words

Junior Shakespeare: “a masterclass in half-assed dance”

Most Emo Phrase: “keeping up with the mix CDs and ephemeral whatnot feels a little too pricey when the belt is tightened enough to risk amputation”

I gotta start this with something, Jess. It’s just that…I don’t really know what the hell trance music is. Is it like the music in that Elf Trance flash video? Or the first Mortal Kombat movie? On a side note, that soundtrack was my first CD. Hell yes, it had Traci Lords showing off her talents in the studio.

I practically laughed my bladder empty with this gem from your first paragraph:

“Certain kids still scream through all holes whenever a DJ drops a circa-1998 hiccuping synth line”

So you’re saying that certain kids howl, urinate profusely, invert their eardrums, hammer out snot rockets, ejaculate, and fire brown balls of fury out their butts…whenever somebody plays a synthesizer note with a DJ effect applied to it?

…and Jesus amiga, are you a card-carrying master of the synthesizer or something? You “drop” any sweet lines lately? When’s the last time you cut an album that got savaged by an essayist named Jess?

An essayist who writes baffling, WTF phrases up the wazoo.

“like most of you reading this, I couldn’t set foot in a trance club without a lethal chemical cocktail to mute my sense of shame”

You ever take statistics in school, Jess? Good, neither did I. But here’s what I think. I think that STATISTICALLY, it would be silly to think that most people who decide to read your attack on music before they go clubbing…do so only under the influence of a chemical that targets not the body…but the shame.

That’s cool alchemy, Jess. Sounds like Harry Potter fan fiction, except not as cool.

WTF continues:

“your pop-standard four-minutes-and-change– a sure sign that a producer’s shooting for blogland instead of clubland”

I don’t get it. Which one of them is better? Blogland or Clubland? Is this like a Jets/Sharks rivalry? Blogland vs. Clubland? Clubba pack heat? Blogga pack a lemon?

WTF continues unabated:

“this is a guy who released a cackhanded trance version of “Adagio for Strings” four years ago”

…

Jess, I had to look that word “cackhanded” up in the dictionary. You know, if someone didn’t know what “bolster” meant, they at least have a shot of figuring out that it means to strengthen something. Like “they bolstered their defenses.” But who the hell would know – offhand – what “cackhanded” meant? And more importantly, who would realize off the bat that it was just a typo and not some weird word indigenous to Pitchfork?

I’m sure it was a typo. Cackhanded ain’t a word. But now I arrive at another question. Did you mean to write “backhanded” or “cockhanded?”

I’m 99% sure you meant to write “a backhanded trance version” and not “a cockhanded trance version.” Because a dude [or lady] with cocks for hands…would not be very good at civilization.

Anyway, enough fun. Let’s get back to your writing.

“They dutifully trudge along, never sounding like presets but never remotely wowing you, adding a little electro grit here, a little Van Dykian wax there.”

Who…or what…the fuck is Van Dykian? Jess, most journalists [or opinion writers] who aspire to be more than stuffy niche writers try to incorporate as much of the audience as they can. Here, let me rewrite it with the information I was able to gather on Van Dykian.

“They dutifully trudge along, never sounding like presets, but never remotely wowing you, adding a little electro grit there, a little ‘itinierant band of separatist lesbians founded by Heather Elizabeth and Ange Spaulding in 1977′ wax there.”

Yep, that’s what I got when I looked it up on the google. Is that what you’re really talking about or should you explain? While you’re at it, you might as well explain the whole thing. Because I’m completely lost.