RipFork

Artist: Armin Van Buren

Album: Imagine

Reviewer: Shumit Dasgupta

Stereo Subversion, 2008

Writing Disorders: Scorn Disease

Most Emo Phrase: “I’d like to imagine a world where music doesn’t feel like someone stuffed your ears with a paste composed of pulverized sorority girls, hair gel, and cheap knock-off cologne.”

Whitest Words: ilk, tawdry, maudlin, redolent

TMI: “Admittedly, I am fickle about the electronica I like – most of it is of the twisted sort, strains you won’t hear at your local club.”

Hi, Shumit. Wow, you really didn’t like this one. I think this phrase sums that up:

“Perhaps I’m being unfair, but the world is becoming more and more a place of finite resources, and I’d like to slap the person who decided that they should be spent funneling this crap over the airwaves.”

Yeah, I’d say you’re being unfair. Because unless you powered your laptop with a bicycle, you probably burned one too many dinosaur bones to type a 600-word review of an album you hated. Heck, at least this Van Buren chap went into a studio and recorded something. Don’t worry though, I’m sure one of these days, your review will get at least one tweet to make it worthwhile. A year and a half later…fingers crossed dude!

But enough funny stuff. You quickly get down to business.

“And on that note, I do have a job to do, and so I must, sadly, address the ‘music’. I’ll try and stretch this out as long as possible, in the spirit of taking one for the team, but forgive me if I duck out early to retch.”

While some will disagree with me, I define a job as something you get compensated for. Otherwise it’s slave labor or a hobby. You might have a paid job, but writing about music isn’t it. I wrote for Stereo Subversion and you don’t get paid. You just get to keep the album you review, and in this case, it’s pretty funny that the only compensation you received was an album that makes you want to puke. And who says you needed to “stretch this out as long as possible?” Is it your duty to write the most loquacious album review possible without even mentioning a single song on it by name? And if listening to music makes you puke, then you must have a pretty weak stomach. Some people get shot at for a living.

“I can only assume Armin has spent the last two decades in a small German hamlet connected to the outside world only via Morse code, and was, of course, the resident DJ, such is this tawdry set of hair-mousse beats.”

So…you can only assume that a musician you’ve never met lived his life according to a bizarre, improbable theory you concocted to explain why you don’t like his music? What’s a hair-mousse beat, Shumit?

And then comes your big reason for why you loathed this experience so much:

“Admittedly, I am fickle about the electronica I like – most of it is of the twisted sort, strains you won’t hear at your local club.”

Oooooh, tell me more, you dark, sexy man. Twisted electronica AND strains I won’t hear at my local club?! Goodness, I need some E. You must have mad dance parties in your room. Can I bring my glow sticks? You can paint my body!

Seriously though, over the course of this review, you managed to inadvertently sound intensely bitter for no reason and more than a little creepy. You can still paint my body if you want. Invitation’s open.

Also, Shumit, if you happen to stumble on this post when you’re google searching your own name, send me a link to your Myspace music. I’d love to hear your bass playing. And I’d love to write about it.