Pitchfork

Every Wednesday I commute all the way up to East 72nd Street and follow it until I hit the East River. The very last apartment is the office of a literary review where I evaluate manuscripts from the "slush pile." Given its sizable reputation, the quarterly magazine handles a burdensome daily flux of unsolicited fiction, nonfiction and poetry manuscripts. While a gem occasionally surfaces, I usually find myself weeding through unexceptional prose (I don't even touch the poetry).

Upon rejecting a submission, I slip one of two cards into the self-addressed, stamped envelope. One reads, essentially: "Thank you for submitting your manuscript. We are interested in your work and would like to see more of it." This means I liked the piece, but that it either didn't fit the publication or just fell short of being good enough. The other slip reads: "Thank you for submitting your manuscript. We regret that we are not able to use it at this time." You know what that one means.

While I have yet to find one that's worthy of "the bin"-- where manuscripts for editorial consideration are placed-- I have read a few works that were quite good. But on the Wednesday of this week, I was in no mood to encourage young and/or promising writers. The previous night, I'd joined a high school friend for a few drinks, which, of course, turned into many drinks. Wednesday morning greeted me despite only three hours of sleep. I think I was still drunk as I tore through the day's manuscripts. None were spared.

Funny how these stories work. One of the reasons I didn't get home until early in the morning was that I missed my subway stop-- twice!-- because I was consumed by a virgin listen to Kid A. Then, when I got home from work on Wednesday, I had a message on my answering machine from my brother saying he had an extra ticket to the rare Radiohead show at Roseland. He needs me to call him before 4:30, otherwise he'll have to give it to someone else. It's 6:00. Anger, frustration, then resignation. Listen to two hours and twenty-six minutes of Paul Oakenfold and try to forget about it.

The album opens with Dead Can Dance's "The Host of the Seraphim," which features bombastic bass drum blows, a breaking storm, and grandiose vocals, all of it no doubt echoing throughout a cathedral, ricocheting off the vaulted ceiling and shooting under the flying buttresses. On the cliché-of-genre scale, this ranks up there with the alarm clock opening of any given college fiction story.

Soon, the throbbing hums of Tone Depth's "Majestic" leap between the ears, cheap bongo drums beat away in the background, and synthetic flutes perform unexceptional twirls. Chilled Eskimos' "Take Me Away" rises to power, but doesn't take me away with its ad nauseam repetition of the song's title. Then, Oakenfold tries his hand at Led Zeppelin's "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You." Over a juvenile jump-roping beat and shooting synths firing off into the artificial ether, Plant sings the climax, "Leave you when the summer comes," but he isn't followed by the indispensable pounding explosion of the original track.

With the exception of Max Graham's "Airtight," these are standard house anthems with cheesy Crystal Waters-esque vocals. On his infinitely superior installment of the Tranceport series, Oakenfold avoided vocalists. But here, he chooses tracks with gauche lyrics like, "Be strong/ And seize the day/ And go your way and be true/ You'll fight/ And unite/ It's alright to use any means to get through." And to think that, as I listen to this song and write these words, Thom Yorke is sending shivers up my brother's spine.

But the (vapid) beat goes on. Braccancio & Aisher's "Darker" is a fusion of big beat and house that conjoins the worst elements of the two respective genres: the bounce of big beat and the stylized atmospherics of house. The vocalist on Amoebaassassin's "Piledriver" bears an uncanny resemblance to Richard Marx. Vangelis' Blade Runner track, "Tears in Rain," is ruthlessly butchered. Then, after 73 minutes and 43 seconds of the first disc, Oakenfold spends a measly 17 seconds letting you down, which would be just plain irresponsible if there were anything to be let down from.

While working at the literary quarterly, I often don't read the latter half of manuscripts because I already know that the piece isn't very good. The same goes for this album. The first disc is "slush pile," indeed. Why would the second disc be any different? I've already made my decision: I'm sending Paul the standard rejection letter:

Dear Mr. Oakenfold,

Thank you for submitting your album. We regret that we are not able to enjoy it at this time.

Sincerely,

"