4/26/2013 • 12:24pm
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Ordinary Machines

"The early days of MTV were all about epic narratives and the dazzle of rapid fire cuts, but the more my life and average workday starts to look like something out of Minority Report— constant clicks from browser tab to browser tab; imploring IMs and Gchats and email prompts— I have noticed a shift in what I consider to be a good music video. I still want to escape, but escaping looks different now. Maybe this is why a lot of my favorite videos from the past couple of years— Robyn’s “Call Your Girlfriend”, Grimes’ “Oblivion”, Tyler the Creator’s “Yonkers”, Zebra Katz’ “Ima Read”, Beach House’s “Wishes”, Kanye West’s “Power”, Jessie Ware’s “Wildest Moments”, and of course Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies”— feel either suspended in slow motion or brazenly low-concept. Slow and simple becomes rebellious in a world that’s anything but."

— Lindsay Zoladz considers the past, present, and future of the music video in her latest Ordinary Machines column.



3/25/2013 • 1:32pm
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Ordinary Machines

"On P2P sites, most things that seemed too good to be true actually were: SEO-baiting, fantasy-football remixes (“Big Pimpin’ Remix [ft. Eminem, Dr. Dre, DMX, Nas, Biggie and Tupac”), “covers” that were actually just the original song (“You Really Got Me” by the Who turned out to just be the Kinks’ version), or painfully obvious amateurs uploading their demos and calling it, say, “Beastie Boys— Intergalactic ALBUM VERSION.” Plenty of mislabels were obvious as soon as you previewed them, so you could simply cancel the download in progress— but this was still annoying. Considering that plenty of Napster and early P2P users had temperamental, slow-as-molasses 56k modems, these kinds of mislabels spelled nothing but frustration; they were wastes of all-too-precious downloading time. Looking back now, though, I find something almost poetic about them— inviting the listener to imagine cross-generational mash-ups and back-from-the-dead collaborations, the titles themselves read like fan fiction in miniature."

—

katherinestasaph:

a) As usual, this is very good.

b) The one I remember most is the fake clip of Sarah Brightman performig the Diva Dance from The Fifth Element. As far as I could tell this was pure wish-fulfillment — but it seemed plausible at the time! (Actually, it probably seems even more plausible now considering she did Repo and all….)

Lindsay Zoladz revisits the days of Napster-era mislabeled mp3s in her latest Ordinary Machines column. It seems like everyone was duped at least once back then …



2/11/2013 • 9:02pm
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Ordinary Machines
lindsayzoladz: The third installment of my Pitchfork column Ordinary Machines is up, and it is about digital grief, virtual cemetery experiences, and the late folk singer Judee Sill. It was partially inspired by something Kate Durbin said in this interview recently (“…the social media age is changing our cultural relationship to death. I think the internet has made us feel closer to the dead, like some Eastern or Native American traditions, where the dead are always close at hand”) and it is dedicated to the memory and the comfortingly, mischievously enduring Twitter feed of somebody very special.

lindsayzoladz:

The third installment of my Pitchfork column Ordinary Machines is up, and it is about digital grief, virtual cemetery experiences, and the late folk singer Judee Sill. It was partially inspired by something Kate Durbin said in this interview recently (“…the social media age is changing our cultural relationship to death. I think the internet has made us feel closer to the dead, like some Eastern or Native American traditions, where the dead are always close at hand”) and it is dedicated to the memory and the comfortingly, mischievously enduring Twitter feed of somebody very special.



12/26/2012 • 1:51pm
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ordinary machines Grimes
In the latest installment of her column Ordinary Machines Lindsay Zoladz offers a chronicle of pop fandom’s 21st century evolution— from “Whackstreet Boys” to Carly Rae Jepsen to Grimes— and a looks ahead to what’s next. 

In the latest installment of her column Ordinary Machines Lindsay Zoladz offers a chronicle of pop fandom’s 21st century evolution— from “Whackstreet Boys” to Carly Rae Jepsen to Grimes— and a looks ahead to what’s next. 



10/30/2012 • 12:36pm
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Ordinary Machines Columns
Introducing Ordinary Machines, a new column by Lindsay Zoladz about the bizarre and fantastic ways music, technology, and identity intersect in the 21st century.

Introducing Ordinary Machines, a new column by Lindsay Zoladz about the bizarre and fantastic ways music, technology, and identity intersect in the 21st century.