“i wonder if anyone has ever seriously-
nnoooooo”
Intro to Pisscore
what is pisscore? ask Harmonia “Piss Spears” Swagtacular herself, she created it
but you’re asking me instead, so let me speak very briefly as the Chief Scholar of the PIsscore Aesthetic.
The best analogy that I’ve come up with for pisscore is that, if the entirety of music today was transformed into Youtube, pisscore would be youtube poops. The compositional method is extraordinarily similar: rip wholesale from original works, and then mangle those works beyond all recognition to produce something that is completely divorced from the source material and utterly inane. Continuing in this vein: pisscore, like a (good) YTP, has some inexplicable value that saves it from being the utter trash that it probably should be.
In this way— much like, it’s just occurred to me, the webcomic Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, if that helps contextualize it for you— pisscore straddles this fine line between being genuine garbage and making an artistic statement by purposefully breaking the conventions of its medium. Part of the “statement” of SBaHJ is its delivery: the image compression, the spelling errors, the intentionally obvious panel “redraws”— it’s all part of the “joke” of it. Pisscore is similarly holistic in its presentation with its poor production, the very specific sample material, and the obnoxiously long track titles, to put a name to a few of the key elements that make up the genre.
For those of you looking to imitate the style, here are a few pointers (examples of these in I Created Pisscore will be in parentheticals):
- Your samples should consist of Billboard Top 40 hits (Gotye, Levels, Skrillex), whatever is hottest in the EDM scene at that moment (trap music, Levels, Skrillex), internet eclectica (Kyary, Harlem Shake, the more esoteric /mu/core), and Vocaloids. Feel free to combine any and all of these together— proper pisscore depends on it.
- Rarely does pisscore drop below 144 BPM, except in drastic slowdowns/weird contemplative sections.
- Compress everything. Compress everything miserably. And then make it loud as hell. Brickwall your songs. Enjoy it.
- When in doubt, throw a Vocaloid on the track. Make it say stupid things. Can’t go wrong with that.
Ultimately, pisscore is vaguely satirical, mostly of popular musical trends but also of music production in general (just as SBaHJ found its genesis as a pastiche of the generic “gamer duo” webcomics of the mid 2000s). That’s not to say it’s easy to replicate— like SBaHJ (man, that’s a really good comparison actually), it takes an awful lot of effort to make the final product as carefully orchestrated in its shittiness as it needs to be to be successful, and a serious knowledge of how to properly produce EDM in order to flagrantly ignore those correct ways.
In other news, go listen to I Created Pisscore, available for free now on Bandcamp.
Mal wrote up this frighteningly accurate dissertation on Pisscore. If you want to help contribute to this growing internet movement, follow these vague steps!
In other news, watch out for the next PISS SPEARS release, “Paige is just an innocent teenage girl who really likes Gumi but not like bad porn of Gumi (But I think she wants to get it in with Gumi if you know what I’m saying”, coming soon.
;3
this is my favorite thing
oh no this rules
i am one million percent sure this joke has been done to death and this is stupid but it made me laugh and that’s all that matters, thank you for your time,
I fell for a week.
best photoset of acnl yet
I wonder what the neighbors thought…
“Well shit guys….the mayor’s drunk again…”
If you are queer, or trans, or have mental illness, or all of the above, you probably know something about the perils of presenting yourself as you really are. Dan-Savage-style coming-out narratives notwithstanding, many of us who are placed socially in these ways find that we cannot be completely authentic in all aspects of our lives. I definitely want to express myself, but I have to balance that against other needs, like being able to make a living in a capitalist society. If I dressed the way I’d prefer to, if I talked more openly about the times when my depression and anxiety prevent me from getting work done, I might find it harder to fit in, to stay attached to a professional group, to stay employed, than I already do. So instead, I wear T-shirts and cargo pants, and I let people think (at times) that I’m merely disorganized or not that committed to what I do.
In my opinion, it takes a lot of privilege to assume either that greater authenticity leads to greater happiness, or that the only reason you would leave who you are at the door when you step or roll into work is the formal, organizational structure of the place where you work.
![tastefullyoffensive:
[chuck&beans]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/4731f09e4d2f15fe3c76c9c480bb5a79/tumblr_mmlf4pPIJo1qewacoo1_500.jpg)
two millennials are barreling towards adulthood at 95 miles per hour. one of them has been coated with the most extravagant paint money can buy, but their steering apparatus is locked up until that coat’s paid off; the other’s breaks have been ripped out mid-trip, the thief yelling, “what, did you think you were entitled to these?” over their shoulder. half the tracks have been torn away to build second, third, and fifth garages for trains that are no longer running. solve for x.
tell me again how the song goes — i’m so inadequate i might forget. if we’re not informed enough then we’re apathetic morons, but if we’re too informed we’re oversensitive reactionaries; if we think we deserve more then we’re narcissistic cutthroats, but if we’re happy where we are then we’re passionless layabouts. if we’re making money then we’re materialistic automatons who only care about stuff and don’t value the important things in life, but if we’re broke then we’re disgusting, spoiled children who expect everything in life to be a handout. if we spend too much time with technology then we’re antisocial, soulless zombies who spell the end for human interaction as we know it, but if we spend too much time together we’re a dangerous, unstable element who should get real jobs already. we’re a disgrace; we’re a embarrassment; we’re a mistake; we’re a disappointment; we’re not what you wanted, however you slice it, and all of it’s our fault, right? right? oh, god, am i getting the melody wrong?
here’s what i propose, everyone who wants to open their twenty-four-hour news cycles or their pork-barrel mouths, who wants to use their filthy fucking hands to tear this generation a new one: you try it. you come up with a picture of the generation you seem to want: one that’s neither apathetic nor engaged, one that’s neither ambitious nor content, one that’s neither rich nor poor, one that’s neither technologically connected nor interpersonally involved. don’t forget to factor in the variables — the years of economic instability; the globalization of everything from communication to art; the hugely stratified individual experiences we’ve had based on things like race, sexuality, gender, and socioeconomics, on things that come with whole histories of systemic bullshit; the overwhelming burden of student debt that so many of us face; the fact that hindsight is 20/20. you write the formula for the millennial that will shut you the fuck up about all the things we should be and aren’t, about all the ways we’ve failed you, and then you bring it to me. i promise you, i will try it. anything for a little peace and quiet, right? anything to stop hearing it everywhere i go: that voice saying that, at twenty-three, i might already have flunked out of life.
(both millennials crash, spectacularly and yelling for help, into the station that never built a platform for them to pull into. onlookers stand by and shake their heads, wondering about the deplorable state of trains today. that’s what happens when nobody does the fucking math.)
