The now defunct online 'zine Stereomojo enjoyed spilling dirty little secrets to suggest that their coverage was more unbiased and honest than the competition's. Today is about something so basic that it's no secret at all and certainly not dirty. But it's the honest truth and far from little. It's all about enforced disloyalty so the opposite of fidelity. 'High' fidelity doesn't ever factor. What am I on about? The fact that reviewing demands changing our carefully tuned system by replacing a key component with a loaner. If an active reviewer publishes 40-50 reviews a year, that equals nearly one review a week. How often does our chap—it's virtually never a chaperone—enjoy his system as is? Hardly ever. He's one serial adulterer and his system a permanent construction site. Something's always changing. For greenhorn reviewers, that's the whole appeal. They're kids in a candy store working their way through all the flavours. But as time progresses, that initial exploration casts off most flavours as 'not my favourite'. Our budding reviewer learns what's most important to him; what his room can and cannot support regardless of budget; what's possible. What started as a blank sheet becomes a map ever more populated by actual experiences. The allure of the unknown replaces with an ever keener grasp of reality not imagination. In parallel, long engagement with a singular topic sharpens our 'absolute' sound in ever starker relief. It's intensely personal and quite possibly intensely specific. Listening to anything but our own system becomes ever less fun, the endless assignations in the sleazy motel exhausting. A stocked harem looks fab in the imagination but once we've slept our way through all temptations and fallen hard for just one, why carry on playing Don Juan?
It's why I say that for a reviewer to carry on successfully year in year out requires a different focus than hardware. Sooner than later, hardware burns itself out. There's only so much variance and headroom before it repeats on us. To maintain the Juan once sameness happens needs higher purpose. Having chatted with my Berlin and Lisbon colleague John Darko, we agree. What keeps our fires burning is creative self expression against daily efforts to hone our craft. It's an endless apprenticeship with creativity channelling itself through a very narrow aperture: writing on hifi for me, making videos about it for him. Our unending learning happens in public so is exposed to constant global criticism. Now taking applications for would-be reviewers in a corner office near you. Ready to rent a room in that by-the-hour motel?
