If Pitchfork Media is the Rolling Stone of the internet, and Stereogum is the Spin, then RetroLowFi is a trashy zine printed off on a borrowed copying machine when no one is looking. All of us are very aware of the fact that we’re small potatoes, and I don’t think any of our writers have any problem with said fact. We started RetroLowFi to share opinions on the things we love and hate with others. Giving a voice to a few people that don’t seem to fit into any nuance of todays media, right?

Lately, we’ve been getting fed up with the constant barrage of media available at the touch of a button. The problem is thus: since everyone has an electronic voice nowadays, everyone thinks that they’ve got something important to say.

Let’s face it, folks. We don’t.

The constant barrage of media available to us now never seems to slow down. The chaff comes at you with as much tenacity as the wheat does, making it harder to truly give a piece of art a chance and make an informed decision on wether or not you actually like or dislike something. The end result is that your eyes and ears tire before you’ve actually had your life enriched in any way by the product in question.

The online media strives for daily content, seemingly positive that if they lag on being tastemakers and reputable news sources for even a single day that another website or reporter will swoop in and usurp them, resulting in people looking elsewhere for a list of records they should download for free - or worse, people will just buy a single MP3, which pushes albums-as-an-art-form further along in their death march.

As a result, people’s attention spans get shorter and shorter, making it impossible for them to sit through anything in it’s entirety or appreciate anything for what it is. It gets increasingly difficult in this current atmosphere to be truly affected by anything for more than an hour, since your iPod will likely change your mood for you. Ok Computer wouldn’t stand a chance in 2007.

The media is reporting news that doesn’t exist about people that haven’t done anything.

No, seriously. Recently, Pitchfork ran a story about the fact that The Wrens haven’t announced anything at all. I’m sure it was meant as a joke, but it ain’t exactly news. Pitchfork, you aren’t The Onion, you’re a media source that tons of kids in too-tight shirts depend on to decide what they’ll like without thinking for themselves.

RetroLowFi wants no part of this ridculous stream of non-news and articles-as-filler mindset that this type of creativity tends to breed. We’re tired of talking about mediocre albums that someone sent us in an email. We’ve gotten a lot of these lately, and we’ve noticed that pretty much all of them uniformly suck. Personally, I haven’t reviewed many of them, because it’s the laziest thing in the world for a label/artist to do. Yeah, just send me a file in an email and hope that all the blogs will help your band blow up Clap Your Hands Say Yeah-style? Nuh uh. We aren’t interested in that. We don’t care about what’s popular, or what the labels think we should be telling you about.

With that, we’ve got a few announcements to make concerning the way we’ll be conducting business at RetroLowFi for the foreseeable future. Hope you’re writing this down:

1. We’ll only update when we have something to say.

What a shocking idea, right? A faction of the media that eschews trying to cover everything at once in favor of only covering what the writers… care about? Well, we’re only five people and not all of us passionately love or hate something every single weekday. If we keep up the current pace, we’ll be just as mediocre as the next website. Sorry, we’re not letting that happen. We’ll literally post whenever we have something interesting for you to read. Could be a rant, an interview, a review, a news item… whatever.

If you don’t see any updates for a few days, it doesn’t mean we’ve abandoned the site, it means that we’re waiting to either love/hate something in pop culture. No more of this silly ‘publishing any old thang just to have some content’ crap. We’re doing this because it’s the type of website we’d actually like to read, you know?

2. Please, send us your books, films and music… through the post office.

When labels send us MP3’s to promote their latest flash-in-the-pan, they’ve ranged from almost-okay to flat-out laughable. If you don’t care enough to send us the actual, you know, record, why should we take it seriously? Heck, we’ll even take a CD-R, but show some initiative, guys. If the art in question doesn’t inspire you to go to the post office and excitedly send it out, you probably shouldn’t bother releasing it at all.

On the upside, if you send us something physical in the mail, we will at least mention it at some point, be it in a good or bad light. Our mailbag is still light enough to afford us that chance, so take advantage of it while you can.

3. Don’t take it too seriously.

We’re just five film, literature and music geeks. Our opinions aren’t any more valid or important than yours are.

If you agree with what we have to say at some point, don’t be shy, just leave a comment. We’ll have a friendly chat! If you disagree with us, even better! Say something, and maybe we can get a constructive conversation started. Who knows? It could even end with the two discussing parties finding some common ground! Just don’t get offended by what we think about the things we choose to cover.

All of our writers have pretty strong opinions that aren’t terribly popular… and you’ll have to keep in mind that most of our writers disagree with each others articles on a pretty constant basis. We all have a great amount of respect for where each other is coming from, and pretty much none of us have ever argued with each other concerning a RetroLowFi article. So, don’t take the opinions of some pop-culture obsessed dorks to heart, okay? Cool.

There’s a lot of mediocrity in the world, and we don’t want to make it any worse. You can rest assured when you visit RetroLowFi that you’re reading about something that we have a passionate feeling about. Might be positive, could very well be negative, but it’ll be something that we throught was important enough to share with millions of potential readers.

We couldn’t be happier about our new direction, and we hope you’ll enjoy it as well.

Happy Valentines Day, everybody.

RetroLowFi will be back tomorrow, after this commercial break!

Yawn.

It’s Monday. Monday’s are disturbing sometimes, so how about a disturbing video to go along with it? Awright! Hello Cleveland!

Ever wondered, as I’m sure I have at least once, what the great, late Syd Barrett’s house must have looked like inside? I mean, was that guy as crazy as so many Pink Floyd fans assumed he was? Or was he just a normal guy, a little shut off from the rest of the world that enjoyed painting, gardening, and riding his bicycle?

Well, we now have the answer and it’s, uh… both? Probably more the latter, but you be the judge. Or the owner, if you like. Yes, now you can own Syd Barrett’s stuff. Like, any of it. His desk lamp? Go for it. His collection of art books? Put them on your shelf next to your copy of Inside Out.

It sounds creepy and, yeah, I guess it kinda is. Syd, even as a recluse, was known for painting regularly and then destroying the canvas (what were they teaching in art school in the 60’s?), but the handful that he didn’t have time to burn before passing on are also up for sale. It’s almost eerie how exactly they match what you’d expect them to look like.

This would all be in horrible taste and I’d send a big shame on Barrett’s estate for making this happen, but all the proceeds go to an art charity, which is probably exactly what Syd wanted and more than likely had planned. So, you’ve got until Wednesday to scrape at least a few thousand together if you want that CD player he painted circles on.

Browse the full list of Syd’s items for sale (click the section dropdown at the middle top of the screen, it’s down under “The Estate of the Late Syd Barrett”)

A few weeks ago, you’ll remember that we gave a pretty positive review to the new Cale Parks album Illuminated Manuscript (read the review here.). We like it so much that we - as well as the fine folks at Polyvinyl - want to give a lucky reader a free copy of said album. No strings attached, we just want to give it to someone. No silly trivia questions, none of that crap.

All you have to do is email us at contest@retrolowfi.com with your name and address. It’s that simple. Heck, we’ll even give a lucky runner-up a Cale Parks t-shirt!

The deadline for entries is October 31st, 2006. The winners will be chosen so randomly it’ll make your head spin. We won’t give away your address or anything, we just gotta have it for verification purposes… you know, so we can actually send you the record.

We’re pretty excited. It’s our first giveaway, and it just happens to be for a really great record. You can’t lose! Unless, you lose. Then… well, at least you tried, right?

Cale Parks - Wet Paint.mp3
Be a friend of Cale Parks on MySpace!
Big thanks to Polyvinyl Records!