Fuck Video Games (Vol. 2)

So I'm sittin' here in a veritable hell-hole of mechanization. Everyone around me's really into it, y'know? I casually check the blogs to kill the boredom. Oops, here's a videogame blog -- yep, there's another. GTA4's coming out, yeah? Looks like it's time for another FVG.

First I'd like to point out that this post will be entirely void of images. Images, man. Who needs 'em? Actually this is rather an interim period for Blogger and I (fourth wall come back!) and apparently despite the "upload" button I press for my images they're still just LINKED to their original sites. That's why my tissue-trophy Heavenly Sword coverage is now lacking its emphatic "GIVE IT UP FOR ROCK 'N' ROLL", an issue I'm going to have to promptly take up with support staff.

But yeah, anyway, I'm sitting here in this RAM-laced shitgarden and I'm reading these blogs, right? I got exposed to the usual gaming blog drama: the trenches of console loyalty, the pathos-missile rants of excitement held next to anger, the..

Wait, huh? No, there were two avenues I could go down today. I could sneak in a quick game of Mario Kart DS (Fabulous, by the way! 9.5 / Charmed) or I could present my review of M83's latest, Saturdays=Youth. I made my choice, kids!

Fuck video games.

But I am glad I touched briefly on blog drama before entering a discussion of this revivalist (reactionary...?) production. I've found that I enjoy reading a good blog comment thread in the way a masochist takes pleasure in denying himself pain, and in the Grand Old Spirit of morbid curiosity I decided to check out various responses to this (leaked!) album. The results, it seemed, were as I'd feared: announcements that this marked a deviation from M83's previous output -- and quite the negative one, at that.

Bullshit. Unpretentious Pretentious kids (best summarized as the "I'm Accomplished, No Really" crowd or IANRs) attacking pop are identical to '90s bubblegum-girls lashing out against lush production. Identical? No, sorry: when pop girls say they don't wanna fuck, they mean it.

And yeah, "I don't wanna fuck" basically sums up any argument any detractor can possibly throw at Saturdays=Youth.

Let's talk about the role of time in electronic music. Not musical "time" per se -- we all know about boom-boom-boom-boom-CHANGE -- but rather the painful truth that electronic music is subject to the very same chronological-developmental whims of the computers that help create it! One can listen to a computer-assisted record from any point before 2000 (and in some cases up to 2004) and instantly produce a measure of "currentness" based only on the technical prowess of the master and the samples available (or desirable) at the time. The conventional wisdom of electronic production is that everything must be made bigger and better with the passing years, leaving huge openings for genre detractors to identify that "that record you're listening to? It's gonna sound like shit in a year or two." "Maybe they're wrong, maybe they're right" sums up your mental response, doing your best to hide from yourself your own concern about the notorious 3- to 4-year watermark!

So what's the problem? Just use old instruments, right? Sorry -- if you make a big thing of your equipment's age, your form just raped your function and you're being ironic. It's FUNNY, guys! I'm serious! Next thing you know you're in a band called The 8-Bit 1-Ups, and I don't even need to make a snide comment about your fuckin' first release.

Through Saturdays=Youth, Mr. Gonzales has (with startling grace!) reinvented the American 1980s in his image. After a quick runthrough of "Kim & Jessie" even the most grizzled rockist finds himself questioning his own religion: the '80s weren't good, were they? NO! No, 1967 was good! I'm sure of it! Meanwhile their IANR kids are tugging at their pantlegs, demanding info on an apparently brave new-old era their parents had been guarding so selfishly all these years. What the kids REALLY need to learn, though, is that Kim and Jessie have a secret world in the twilight. 8.7 (Charmed)