Not really, the media has always worked along the lines of building someone up and then knocking them down. It’s just another cog in the machine.

I still think a lot of people reading this will be laughing at the idea that I don’t criticise things, or use easy targets.

I can think of a few quite well respected artists I’d like to tear into critically, but despite a string of 12s they aren’t even making a decent career I doubt. As such it doesn’t feel right.

i didnt realise how bad it was initially in dance music, it was only when dubsteb started getting huge and it was one of the ammunition people who was writing almost all the articles about it! i was truly flabbergasted, and people seemed to not know at all that these articles were being written by someone who had money to earn from the records they talked about being sold. and now that beatport exists and things are forever available, any bad reviews of those tracks eats into potential profits. there’s way too many reasons to be suspicious of people who are too nice in their coverage.

i will say this about your criticisms: theyre mostly aimed at pretty easy targets. a criticism of a revered dance figure is alot more interesting than a criticism of the black eyed peas

I still don’t think that that makes it best though. People like lots of stuff!

my background is heavily rooted in both hiphop and punk music where criticism is far more common than in dance music. obviously, the main reason i started my blog was to try to big up the stuff i like, but it was also to add that element of criticism to the mix. and i think people are definitely responding to that element, as they are with some other blogs who have been critical of things in dance music.

I’ve already explained, I choose what to review from a large list, I then listen to it and give it a review based on how I rate it. It’s a pretty honest process, there’s no “backslapping” involved.

If I’m ambivalent about it (and this, rather than HATE is usually the case with the bad records, as I have a decent idea of what I hate and don’t ask for it to review) then I don’t tend to review it. The records I don’t review are not usually terrible, just bland or don’t inspire me to write anything.

Nor are they ever on M_nus or similarly big labels, if they were, sure I might pan them. Especially if I’d been anticipating the release, eg that Leena review which is up on RA if you want to read it.

As for an uncritical culture, I hardly think one reviewer can be blamed for an uncritical culture, not least when I spend hours every week deciding what records I do rate and do want to include in the podcast, here on the blog, and perhaps in the column one day.

The fact I am thinking a lot like this about what I like, why I like it, and which records really are valuable doesn’t often leave me much time to focus on music I don’t like.

So I don’t. I’ll leave that to someone else. Though there are few techno reviewers whom I’d say illuminate my choice of buying records by negative criticism. In fact there are none.

But even when giving negative reviews practically all the time when I worked in print, as a result of being forcefed albums I had no interest in, I never really believed what I was doing was achieving anything, except having a bit of a laugh occasionally.

I still think plenty of stuff is crap…but I really don’t get animated and furious about crap dance music as most of it is in fact bland rather than offensively awful.

I guess, whatever you think of it, there is quite a lot of stuff being produced in the vein of the music I play.

Mind you when I say I get sent stuff, a lot of those might not be good. I’d say in a given week I like maybe 10-15 records.

That’d be a good week really.