It was as inevitable as an embarrassing blog photo after a night of free Sparks: the Pitchfork thrashing of Steve Aoki’s mix CD, Pillowface and His Airport Chronicles. One could have almost held a betting pool on just how low the score would be. Five? Two? A monkey peeing in its own mouth? The final verdict? 2.5, and a written tirade so spiteful and unsubstantiated that it pretty much decimates any credibility the indie rock monolith had left, especially when it comes to the world of “indie-dance” music.
Full disclosure: I had a DJ residency in Los Angeles with Steve for six months 2005. And full, full disclosure—we didn’t really get along very well. No hating, we just didn’t bro down. It was an interesting time for Steve, as he was right at the cusp of impending fame. Already a known name for his Dim Mak label and frequent DJing on the “magazine” circuit around the country, he was not yet a globetrotting headliner with his own line of headphones and awards won in Ibiza. Oh, and he mostly played three-year-old hip-hop hits with only dashes of rock and dance music tossed in. Nothing like the electro rockers that appear on Pillowface. But this was the norm for the time, pre-Daft Punk Coachella revolution and the rise of Ed Banger. And if Steve is to take heat for progressing into a new sound, then every other hipster DJ in the country deserves the same flogging.
2005 also marked the high water point in Pitchfork’s impact and influence. With articles written in major newspapers about how they could make or break a new release with a single review. Indie rock was peaking as well, with LCD Soundsystem and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs reaching creative heights, newcomers Bloc Party and Arcade Fire getting folks wound up, and Interpol bassist Carlos D landing on the cover of URB–not for his band’s fashionably gloomy second album–but for his DJing of rock and goth hits at clubs, including Steve’s Fucking Awesome night at Beauty Bar.
It was a great time all around. And Steve certainly rode the wave, despite detractors who never cared for his LA-tude and the perceived style over substance that came with his “Kid Millionaire” name. But something significant happened between 2005 and 2008. Dance music came back into vogue in a big way. And while in 2005 “indie-dance” mostly aligned itself with “indie,” the “dance” side has taken over, and made sites like Pitchfork appear quaint when stood up against the hottest hipster blogs and MP3 sites like Floukids and Discobelle. So little wonder they are hitting back at the softest spot.
Pitchfork may suckle at the teat of Justice and Daft Punk, but you know at their fundamental core, they’d rather be giving Arcade Fire the obligatory handjob while posted up in their Chicago digs (Chicago indie rock, btw, is the most pretentious smarter-than-thou scene in the entire country). So that leaves poor Aoki, alone with his mix-CD on Thrive (a quintessential old-school electronica label) to pummel mercilessly as the once mighty Pitchfork lashes out against a section of the music industry that doesn’t need their approval to survive. And it stinks.
As for the CD itself? It’s OK. With a selection of tracks as current and exciting as one could hope when playing the full-licensed game, and additional vocal drops by man of indie-dance’s biggest stars, it far exceeds expectations. I patently disagree with Pitchfork’s panning of the verses by Pase Rock and The Faint, but the review is so full of bile and bitterness that I will not address it on a point-by-point basis. It is enough to say that Pillowface is a group of fun tracks assembled as seemlessly as any professional mix-CD since the ubiquity of Pro-Tools made “mixing” a non-argument. And the extra effort put into producing the drops with such a wide array of artists elevates the disc from mundane to exceptional when compared to the glut of blog mixes that fill zShare’s servers.
It a shame that Pitchfork didn’t officially review the recent Justice Fabric Mix that ended up an internet sensation when the the label declined to put it out. Well aware of the approaching saturation when it came to electro-mixes, the duo created an inspired selection of pop oddities that would have deservingly scored high on the notorious P4k scoreboard. But had Justice gone the other route, and merely mixed an hour’s worth of party-starting hits–then called up their top-shelf creative friends to add spice and character, well…let’s jut say most folks would have been quite impressed with that as well. Maybe a seven? Six at the worst. Certainly not a 2.5. And everybody knows it.
steve aoki is god