so i walked into the pitchfork party last night and honestly all of my darkest suspicions about pitchfork were like immediately confirmed. the first thing i noticed was the walls and floors and ceiling were made of stone, the office looked just like a medieval castle or the clubhouse of an ancient secret society. there were no conventional lights but the walls were lined with flaming torches. i knew i was about to witness something special.

then i saw the staffers: there were about 75 tall, impossibly handsome and truly sinister-looking thirtysomethings with severe five o’clock shadows and grins of pure evil flashing across their faces, almost impossible to detect but there nonetheless like flashes of genius in the Lucksmiths catalogue. so all these pitchfork staffers were impeccably groomed and clad in the suavest and most expensive hip eveningwear available, like rag & bone, they all looked like princes of darkness. there were wives and girlfriends with horrified looks on their faces huddled together in a corner while their men gloated about who had destroyed the most bands in their pitchfork reviewing careers and what models of drum machines dominated early Detroit techno, whether or not 8-track tapes would eventually overtake cassette tapes as the preferable format for music consumption. there were three doors on the far side of the room: one labeled Mens, one labeled Ladies, and one labeled Vomitorium. an unlabeled door near the entrance led to what someone told me was the dungeon

the floor was littered with check deposit receipts from record labels to pay for the Best New Musics they get. a videochat with scott plagenhoef was projected on the ceiling and his eyes were bright red and he didn’t say anything but he periodically erupted into cackling fits, and the laptop was pointed toward the crowd so he could see us too, it was like he wanted us to know he was keeping watch over his minions. i wanted to take a picture of the stuffed corpses of what i recognized as two of the members of the band Sound Team that hung from the ceiling in nooses like in that scene in the Sixth Sense, but my phone doesn’t have a camera. also a fire pit was dug out in the middle of the room with a spit rotating over it and when i asked Sean Fennessey what they were gonna roast on it he looked me in the eye and said “you’re the kid who writes pitchfork reviews reviews right?” then he winked and licked his lips. i was like trembling with fear and i told him i didn’t know what he was talking about, told him i never read a pitchfork review in my life, “i didn’t even know you guys did reviews, thought it was all news and videos,” i trembled, “my girlfriend brought me because she wrote a couple reviews for you in like 2008-2009,” i said “you can have her, just take her, please, i don’t want any trouble”

a hush fell over the room when ryan schreiber made his grand entrance, he stood eight feet tall and was trailed by three interns hoisting boomboxes over their heads that were playing Wolf Like Me by TV on the Radio, and also two interns carrying smoke machines. this lent a certain epicness to the proceedings you know what i mean? one of the interns with a boombox fainted and got swiftly carried out by two guys from the Advertising department (who i could identify because they were covered in complimentary American Apparel). before they reached the door schreiber commanded them to immolate the intern’s body in the video editing suite that’s located above the main office space, noting how that intern had cracked under the pressure. anyway schreiber was wearing a t-shirt for an Ed Droste side project so obscure that ryan schreiber is literally the only person who has ever heard it. during the thirty seconds i talked to schreiber, he told me he’s planning to review the Ed Droste record himself and give it a 10.0, you will have to download the review in a PDF to connote the gravity of the writing, and then schreiber will delete the mp3s of the record then burn the master tapes so no one can ever hear it, and maybe put the video for what would have been the single on Pitchfork.tv but make it a broken link, and then after he told me his plans he smirked and nodded in self-satisfaction and said “yeah that’s what i’m gonna do, that’s how much i loathe independent music and culture.” couldn’t believe what i was hearing. when Beach Fossils played later in the evening he stood behind them, brandishing an actual pitchfork menacingly, and when i talked to the lead singer he said ryan kept whispering, “play tighter, play more authentic” but they didn’t know what that meant

luckily i slipped out before anyone found out who i was, but now you know what kind of shit really goes on over there