which means, i think, that i am agreeing, that negative reviews are a positive thing. to not like something isn’t to be jaded! and talking about a path taken that you don’t like is just as useful as a path taken you do like.

the whole picture

There definitely is a binary culture when it comes to assessing dance music. And the key to good reviews is breaking past that and not just saying “good” or “bad” but why or how something is good or bad. Including being able to accept why something that isn’t from a genre that you like, is still a good example of that genre.

But it seems to me that the root source of this is that when you’re consuming dance music, especially as a DJ, your mode of listening is to rack up a big pile of vinyl (or queue up a big playlist of mp3 samples) and whip through the lot pretty quickly looking for stuff that is “good enough to buy” or “that I would play”. Just to cope with the volume of stuff, people have to take quite a binary approach.

The more critical in-depth bit then happens at home, post-purchase when people start thinking about when they’d play the stuff they like, what sort of mood it engenders and what other tracks it goes well with.

The question this poses is whether we’re just tilting at windmills by expecting people to read reviews with any more nuance than “good vs bad”…

Honestly, read a bunch of reviews of an EP from twelve, twenty-four months ago. You’ll find that, with the benefit of time/hindsight, the reviewer was overly generous. Often ridiculously so. Part of this is also because reviewers are expected to turn reviews around so quickly. Another part of this is that reviewers are going to get more press/attention/love from either sledging or boosting. They feedback off and amplify the split, bipolar tendencies of the review machine.

The problem is this ‘ bipolar machine’ – people take a defensive, antagonistic view of the world. People get defensive, and because they like the thing and you attack the thing, they interpret as an attack on them and lash out.

A lot of people have a great deal of difficulty coping with ambivalence. Ambivalence is complex. Much easier to revert to splitting the world into two: good/bad; with me/ against me; friend/enemy and so forth. I see this happening on RA ALL the time now. If you praise a record, people take it as a personal praise ‘He’s with me!’ ‘I am good!’ and then they write something like:

“Awesome remix!!! Best of the teh year!!! I’m diggin’ this!!!” (emoticon)

But, on the other hand, if you criticise it, they say something like:

“This reviewer doesnt understand what their talking about!! Two stars is wwway too harsh, IMHO. This is a Great record!!”

etc.

Question: Why can’t large numbers of people (judging from overwhelming numbers of comments on RA) handle it when somebody is criticising something they like?

I think Chris has the answer above.

Too much dance music writing is little different to the press release. There is a strong tendency toward presentism and boosterism. Criticism is uncommon because it’s ‘the odd man out’ – people aren’t used to it. They feel threatened, they split the world in two, become defensive and lash out. In turn, the risk is that reviewers become scared of flak or loathed by distributors/promoters for not being a ’safe bet’. There are certain distrib/promo people who will even withold EPs from certain writers/outlets if they’ve received a bad review.

If you want to be court philosopher, it’s simple: butter everyone up, say everything is good….ignore everything that isn’t. The peepz on the forum don’t have to get defensive, the promoters/distributors know you’re a safe bet, and so on… the circle jerk tightens, and everyone within it knows that everyone else within it agrees with everything else that everyone says/does/is. Have a VIP lanyard! Have a drink! Want a line? Want a (****) job?

It’s quite obvious that if RA was just a forum, it would degenerate into a fortified version of this kind of defensive complex. Thanks to RA’s editorial team for supporting critique; and thanks to every writer for having the guts and integrity to cut through the bullshit and write what they really feel about any given recording.