The architecture tango

News from the music press this week that bloggers have started writing about music. Inevitably most are making a mess of it, Alexis Petridis getting it reliably wrong for starters, scouring the Internet far and wide for new music, if you mean as far and wide as the Arctic Monkeys' forum, Pitchfork and Myspace, akin to an amateur astrologer trying to discover solar systems outside our own by ringing Heather Couper (her that used to be on Going Live every so often) and looking through back issues of The Astronomer and that column that used to be in the Telegraph. The Observer then stepped in with its cutting observation that, well, some US websites use odd language sometimes, especially Pitchfork (them again), apparently on the basis of their unfollowable Lady Sovereign single review from the other week. We've always been able to make both head and tail of it, but never mind. Pitchfork, being a regularly updated website, is obviously now a blog despite predating the word itself, as are, seemingly, Village Voice, the New Yorker and Playlouder (the Playlouder that is several years old, employs proper journalists and runs its own Singles Club and gig nights, yes. You might as well say nme.com is a blog.) "Write a 50-word 'Bloglish' review of your favourite recent album or track; the funniest will win our next four Albums of the Week" it states. On the other hand, don't, it'll be shit. The BBC's go is better, even if it does suggest early on that you should steer clear of any site writing about new music. So much for development, and indeed the guiding principle behind the very root of this sudden interest in Internet music writing. We wonder how many casual browsers escaped from the ILM links with their faculties intact.

While we're about it - Information Leafblower's Top 40 Bands In America Today (Okkervil River 24 - excellent! Kelly Clarkson 16 - uh?) which has inevitably given us an idea we'll have to think about, and a word for the closure of Last Night An mp3 Saved My Wife, one of the superior UK mp3 blogs.