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Lugia
970 posts

Re: Negative Reviews
Jul 10, 2004, 19:33
But...

Let's take an example of a fabled, storied album that's obscure, but which really isn't a musical essential due to some wack-type content, but because of the album's connections to other cool stuff, etc, it's got a 'cachet' that might lead some people on to picking it up. While I understand that 'championing' lost rock etc is important here, I also consider it important that people know that some of this material doesn't live up to the unobtanium-gilded hype.

Case I'm citing here, of course, is my review of the "Liliental" album. Looking at it, with Dieter Moebius, Conny Plank, Asmus Tietchens et al, you would presume this would be a stupendous piece of work on par with the great Basel scene collabs that resulted in R-U. Kaiser's Kosmische production output. But appearances deceive, as the album really only hits home about 50% of the time, if that. So in this case, I felt that reviewing this in order to shed some light on the DOWNsides of this release was worthwhile. And I can think of other 'unsung'-type examples where pointing out certain flaws on a hyper-hyped album would be worthwhile to readers.

So I don't think you can slam things which don't 'champion' something...mainly because by exposing some of the sub-par work, people will be able to better concentrate with their ears and wallets on that which IS worth championing. In the end, though, it all comes down to true critique, in which Dog3k succeeded with the ELP review and Aardwhatever failed with the presumptive Spiritualized slam. Things have to be viewed in that light, I think...is it valid critique, or is it just pure smackdown for smackdown's sake?
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