Artist: White Hinterland

Album: Kairos

Reviewer: Laura Snapes

The Quietus, 2010

Writing Disorders: Jargon Palsy, Purple Hemorrhage








Longest Sentence: 62 words

Dollar Words: Aubades, lucubrations, melismatic, diaphanous, hypnagogic

Wha Happen?: “a qualitative state of time suspended rather than a chronological march, one that exists in an ether”




Laura, were you born without a limbic system? If you’re physically capable of enjoying music, it doesn’t show. Well, that’s not true. You did suggest a margin of enjoyment at the very end of your review:

“it’s a pleasure to hear her rejoicing in the freedom of her vocal reincarnation”

Wow, that sounds like a wild dopamine rush. Did you even upturn the corners of your mouth in approval? Sigh, such a free spirit. I’m biased here, Laura, but stale as it was, that was probably the most succinct idea you translated into words. Some examples for comparison:

“Subject matter and colour spectrum taken into consideration, this record could easily have floated off into the ether of shapeless lo-fi amoebas without the appropriate anchoring.”

“Much of Kairos takes place around a dark lake in the wooded grounds of Dienel’s mind’s eye, beneath a glowing dewy orb.”

“looping patters around dubby thumps, at others jabbing and spindling with the precision of an industrial weaving machine.”

I think you need a change of venue for your thoughts, Laura. You know, you could try sculpting, soap carving, or even interpretive dance. I think I’d understand flailing and prancing about White Hinterland’s new album more than I understood the stuff you wrote.

You see, Laura, when you write such weird, abstract gibberish about an album that few people have experienced yet, you’re not exactly holding their hand on the tour. If you’d written this review two years hence after swaths of people had soaked it in, half this stuff might make sense. Now it just reads like a really emo yearbook page. Wait – my mistake. A really emo yearbook page with level 4 encryption:

“a gorgeous collection of aubades, full of the uncertainties that late night emotional lucubrations bring.”

I feel like I’m in a Chinese butcher shop, not knowing what the hell’s in front of me. Look, I get that the Quietus isn’t geared towards the grown-up kids in remedial math, but could you at least ATTEMPT to include folks who don’t carry a pocket Webster’s? What’s your angle here, Snapes? You saying only those who’ve studied the Total Codex can sit in your tree house? Well, f**k your tree house.

Piecing together what would possess someone to mold this lump of bird suet is a struggle. Conspiracy theories are now bouncing around my brain. Even though none of your writing’s ever tickled my taint, I don’t remember it being such a literary hysterectomy. I’m starting to think John Doran put you up to this. Did he refuse to publish it unless you stretched those sentences? Did he dangle your job and the option of writing four more adjectives to describe a cloud?

“In spite of the many words that have been bandied about to try and describe this new hazy, dreamy, diaphanous, gauzy, hypnagogic cloud that’s engulfed music in recent months, it seems that the Ancient Greeks coined the perfect encapsulation of all that woozes over 2000 years ago.”

Who’s been bandying the words? Sorry, I didn’t hear about that new hypnagogic cloud in passing near the water cooler. Let me know who’s been trying to describe it, though. They sound like my kind of writer. In the meantime, Laura, you might want to get your pleasure center checked out or at least take it for a spin sometime. You might learn something.