Sabrina, let me tell you “writing about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s a stupid thing to want to do”
I often ask artists for a biography. This time, Sabrina’s biog had me scurrying to work out why I write at all, so inventive is it. “writing about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s a stupid thing to want to do” is attributed to Elvis Costello.
More cutting still was rettop, a commenter in the Grauniad, who said in 2009:
music journalism is in a sorry state for many reason, here’s a few
1.To say something meaningfull in 100 words(the ave length of reviews in mojo/nme) is next to imposible
2. The critical faculty is washed out of rock journo’s by working for magazines where they have to give favourable reviews to stuff they don’t like, to work there way up the staffer’s ladder
3. the death of the inkie’s
4. the internet being dominated by amature shit (drowned in sound anyone!)
5. the interent being dominated by pitchfork- it used to be good, what happened !
6. Arthur magazine is the only decent music writing of come across since ET became an old crumodgen and swells died , any recomendations ?????
(All spellings his own)
And Sabrina’s biog, that said “Sabrina Spellman was mixing dope beats in the other realm, which she recorded onto her inherited heirloom tape machine, made with her carboot-sale drum machines and charity-shop synthesizers, and decided to import them into her eMac. She was pleased with how they sounded, and used Bias Peak to bring them in-line with ITU BS.1770 standards. Suddenly, after a rousing game of chase-and-mouse, the housecat (Salum) ran into her bedroom with his typical brusque countenance. “Hey, who’s been raving out to some GROOVY tunes?”, and SaylemCat suddenly started dancing on the keyboard of the computer. All was quite funny, when Salem the CAT hit upload by accident and sent the tracks raining from the New England attic onto Soundcloud in the future, via inter-timeal-dimentional-modem-travel. Now the tracks are being uploaded and the social media is updated by Salem the cat, from an old colonel dutch-house, somewhere in 1996.” See. No actual information, just magical realism. And I can only deal in monochrome reality.
And the track, that’s Be Good. It really does sound like something put through a blender of all dance music from 1988-1996. An eight year blend of house vocal, phat beats, tinny 80s syndrums and a dollop of positivity. All sparkles, unicorns and strobes. Bottles of water, tiny handbags and cheeky halves.
For the comedown, Beautiful things, a tribal ambient sound, where the glitter is less in your eyes than sprinkled across your cheeks or on your cupcake. Eat up, precious.
ACID TED 