Monday, May 15, 2006

Jel / Soft Money / Rating: 6.0

“Like everyone in Anticon, Jel has been involved in many in-house collaborations (most notably Themselves, Subtle, and 13 & God), and his debut LP-- a murky palimpsest of disembodied samples and dirty beats, incantatory rhymes and live instrumentation, leftist rhetoric and absurdist non sequiturs, breathy female vocals and ephemeral melodies-- features the usual array of cameos from Anticon and like-minded artists. In other words, it's another archetypal Anticon record. “

Longest sentence found in a PFM review aside: if Pitchfork keeps posting so many accurate and well written reviews (as Grettir has joked) us Tuning Fork types might be out of a hobby…and to be honest that is just fine, we could all probably be doing something better with our spare time, ha!

There are bigger crimes in the world but what a fucking drag it is to keep replaying the same cd only to realize it has ended and you haven’t heard a thing. Not because you weren’t listing to it but because nothing found on the cd grabbed you enough to attract your attention towards it and keep it there. I’ve played this Jel record 4 times in a row and all I can think is A) Pitchfork really said it all and B) Why DOES the Anticon collective keep making the same record featuring the same people? (And yes I know an art collective does kinda work that way by nature but a good collective shouldn't have to repeat itself.)

You can shuffle up your guest appearance order as dramatically as you want but when it is the same old people doing the same old thing you can’t expect your fans to keep buying into it forever. We were bound grow tired of it eventually and well I draw the line here; enough is enough.

I will let the 6.0 rating go this time but Anticon associates... consider yourselves warned.

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Dear labels,

If your catalog is all going to sound like chapters in a dollar bin book, maybe you should stop using artist names and start numbering them instead.

Your pal,
Pitch Perfect