Retromania: Pop culture's Addiction to its Own Past. (New Simon Reynolds book).

my original point was about just the idea of electronic=future being a british thing rather than a specifically electronic thing

I don't think that really makes sense. When electronic music was new, there was obviously an objectively futuristic quality to it. But that was in the '40s and '50s! That feeling lasted for a while though since the technology took time to mature and it took a while for electronics to be fully absorbed musically. And then subsequent technological developments came with their own temporary feeling of newness (drum machines, sampling, autotune, etc). But the same is true for earlier advances in technology like electric guitars and organs, or even the drum kit.

then my explanation was meant to be that this was partly because of the british media (and that there is a parallel in non-dance genres, the turnover aspect, but without the future thing)

Yeah that's true. I think the problem is really with dance music specifically rather than electronic music more generally. It's a form that on the one hand has a hunger for the new and yet simultaneously creates all of these stylistic and musical constraints (such as prescribing particular bpms) that lead to a stasis.

I would have gone crazy for an album like Person Pitch if that came out in 1997

Me too, but mostly because it would have fit in perfectly with all the stuff I was already listening to around then...

I didn't remotely get the sense from this book that Reynolds thinks music has gotten "worse" -- I mean, he's obsessed with Ariel Pink, so looking backwards clearly isn't an absolute sticking point for him. The most interesting parts of it aren't really about "stasis"; they're a bunch of different micro-histories of revival movements, collectors, reissue labels, etc., mostly in the service of getting a big-picture look at how we think about new/old anyway. (And part of his take is that it's people who "know" about music who experience the stasis, while plenty of genuinely new music still comes from the usual places -- e.g., dance crazes for city teenagers, music that has a function and is attached to a specific pocket of culture.)

P.S. -- In terms of dubstep, and most every other UK dance trend of the past 10 years or so, the giant tech development I see is software synths. There's a particular dry / hollow / "cheap" sound, totally characteristic of all that software, that's all over every one of those genres -- I don't know why it's never remarked on that this is the one new technology that's had a massive effect on how things sound. It just happens to be a slightly rinky-dink sound, not some mind-boggling futuristic one.

the whole 'future' concept/buzzwording is a bit misleading - i mean in the early 70s i doubt led zep sounded like 'the future' or that ppl imagined led zep were pointing to some brave uncharted world, but they were def sounding diff to what came before, doing something that didnt really sound like the previous generation, hence they were innovative. i think thats all SR is asking for. and for it to get into a mass-accessible space, though thats just harder these days.

no idea what you're talking about re:house music dog latin - definite emphasis on a) vinyl and b) (old) analogue equipment in house music

c) how long have funktion ones been around?

― post, Wednesday, 27 July 2011 17:56 (28 minutes ago)

I banged on about this in a review of Nicolas Jaar a wee while ago, but house/techno has been getting slower and more minimal throughout the last ten years but retaining its power and muscularity.

The paradox of it, is that these constantly changing micro-genres promoted by the British press actually create a stasis of their own. I guess I value variety and eclecticism so to me, when I hear jungle, d&b, garage, 2 step, dubstep, etc I feel like they should be 5 different tracks on one artist's album, not entire genres that are mined for a couple of years. And then you hear a song from the '60s or '70s that doesn't sound like anything else, that represents some underexplored possibilities and ideas that haven't already been driven into the ground, it's logical for an artist to want to borrow from the past.

― lizard tails, a self-regenerating food source for survival (wk), Wednesday, 27 July 2011 18:51 (37 minutes ago) Bookmark

This is a good point. Before my induction into dance music proper, I used to scoff at people who "like melodic uplifting trance but have also been getting into dark melodic trance recently", but for a long time now dance is about having an idea and running with it for the length of a DJ set or mix CD. Rock doesn't really work like this, and yet it's the rock press nicheseekers who weirdly seem to want to achieve the same thing. They hear something and try to turn it into a movement rather than accepting it as a single statement or song.

well except in house music most dj sets are still vinyl only, and people use analogue kit to get away from the flimsyness of vsts

lots of traditional music works that way though

Me too, but mostly because it would have fit in perfectly with all the stuff I was already listening to around then...

Like what!!??? I would have been totally hungry for something like that back then.

I guess I should read the book. Based on the premise, what I've read about it here, and what I've read of Reynolds writing in the past, I was assuming that I wouldn't like it. Still, I think there's an implicit value judgement if he's asking why there's less forward looking music now, and if he thinks there's a danger in "retromania".

I also disagree with you on the differences with softsynths which are subtle at best.

and again, those technical changes would apply to every other form of music including the most boring stuck-in-the-'90s cookie cutter rock music, since everyone uses vst synths, plugin effects, pitch correction, sample replacement or layering, drum retiming, etc.

it's not the sound of software synths that has changed things drastically, it's the fact that DAWs and soft synths have gotten both way, way better and way more accessible since the '90s. that's had a massive influence on the musical content of '00s electronic music.

Yeah, and I think that's true with everything. Accessibility. The accessibility of self-recording for all types of musicians, the easy access to all of this music from the past, access to what's going on musically in the rest of the world at any given moment. All of that had a massive effect on all types of music in the first decade of the 21st century.

it's almost as if some huge information sharing system has come to dominate everything we do in the last 20 years.

ham radio killed music :(

There's many truth bombs in this thread but the one that resonates the most is Nick's point that we all speak from our own history. I'm in my mid-40s and am experiencing that common mid-life crisis where nothing penetrates my psyche like it used to and/or things that used to give me PLEASURE merely satisfy now. When it comes to music, I'm still finding things to love albiet not nearly as often as I used to. As far as I'm concerned that has little to do with the music being made today, it's all about my own expectations and open-mindedness (or lack thereof). Right now I'm finding more to love from the past but to cast aspersions over the entire output of the present is foolhardy. It's right and appropriate that my reaction to new music today is wildly different than when I was 17 and it was ALL new.

Having said that, I'm never going to give up searching for new sounds but the effort required feels greater than the reward at this moment.

You don't have to make an effort or chase things, just let things come to you. You may be surprised by what comes into your life. I chase after nothing, I read no reviews or articles, and yet I hear more great new (and new to me) music than I ever have.

And it wouldn't matter if there was less

The "we all have our own history" seems like a good way to halt conversation and avoid looking at the objects we all have a different perspective on

Wk very wrong about the way dance music works itt. Or just music in general, really.

The "what would this current thing have meant to people in the past" is one of the worst ways to think about music because it simply ignores the fact that music's meaning is built from shared codes, assumptions and uses. We might as well ask what kids in the eighties would have thought of "LOL" and "OMG".

You don't have to make an effort or chase things, just let things come to you.

That may be true for your life circumstances, but I assure you if I didn't make an effort I wouldn't be finding a damn thing.

The "we all have our own history" seems like a good way to halt conversation and avoid looking at the objects we all have a different perspective on

It's not meant to halt the discussion, if anything the implication is there's value to all our experiences so it's worth sharing them.

Wk very wrong about the way dance music works itt. Or just music in general, really.

specifically.... what?

It's not meant to halt the discussion, if anything the implication is there's value to all our experiences so it's worth sharing them.

― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Wednesday, July 27, 2011 11:08 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

agree w that

The "what would this current thing have meant to people in the past" is one of the worst ways to think about music because it simply ignores the fact that music's meaning is built from shared codes, assumptions and uses. We might as well ask what kids in the eighties would have thought of "LOL" and "OMG".

If that's in reference to me, I wasn't asking what something "would have meant to people in the past." I was saying what something would have meant to me personally a decade ago. I think it's equally ridiculous to assume that you know what somebody else hears as new and radical. I hear all kinds of current music that sounds new to me. Dubstep doesn't. If somebody says that nothing sounds new to them except for dubstep, I'll just have to assume that we're coming from two totally different frames of reference. But if that person tries to make an argument that there in fact isn't anything new going on, and tries to draw some larger cultural comment out of that assumption, I'm going to call bullshit.

The idea that music is "built from shared codes, assumptions and uses" is assigning way too much specificity and clarity to a form that's largely abstract. That argument sounds way too structuralist for my taste.

I was saying what something would have meant to me personally a decade ago.

Actually you presumed to know how a dubstep track would sound to a jungle dancefloor audience in the mid-90s.

You can't talk about what people (whether considered as a group or as an aggregate of individuals with individual opinions and experiences) get from a piece of music or a genre of music divorced from that music's diachronic and synchronic associations of difference (there's some structualism for you).

Dubstep doesn't necessarily sound like "the future" to people who are into it, but it may well sound distinct, novel, or like it satisfies a need that they may not have recognised they felt before they got into it (nb. it mostly does none of those things for me, but that's by the by).

Those needs are both inspired by the music itself (like a craving for chocolate - which I think logically is impossible to experience before you've actually tried it) but also other different-but-related music and music-experiences. I find the story mostly unmoving personally (and I was "there", though only following remotely and from another country), but Martin Blackdown can get very teary-eyed (at least in internet terms) over how dubstep's sudden and dramatic deceleration from 2-step tempo to halfstep tempo circa 2003-2004 felt like a whole universe of possibility opening up.

What is opening up in Martin's head and in his mental projection of the dancefloor space? A sonic sensibility largely defined by

(a) what had preceded it - the jittery bounce of 2-step; and

(b) what existed alongside it - the still-jittery, but also harsh and sometimes suddenly lethargic arrangements in grime.

"Novelty" (let alone full-blown futurism) in music is never a distinct and independent quality that pieces of music or styles of music possess.

It is always more like a response or a riposte, a taking of what was there and what was around it and twisting that.

That twist doesn't have any objective nobility, but for people who follow current music it's like a turn in the conversation, a bridge that leads from one place to another place, a development in a story which, if you care about the story to begin with, might hook you in even further, or turn you off and make you look for other stories.

Trying to abstract back from that process means that you're judging music for lacking a quality (let's call it "objective futurism") that of course it never had in the first place.

And in general (and as I said to resounding silence upthread) I think it's really important to emphasise that this whole debate is not about the music but about the stories we tell about music. In this regard it does largely exist in the heads of critics and internet stans and ILX people because we're the ones who most like to tell stories about music, to ourselves and to others ("the average consumer" has lots of stories about music too but they don't tend to worry over them so much).

One of the key issues in the relative breakdown of the narrative of progress is that the way we tell and listen to stories is changing. Internet writing on music, for instance, has radically democratised this story-telling process by facilitating an explosion of storytellers and a concomitant dimunition of the status of individuals who before were better able to define the narrative.

One of the consequences of this is that retrospective narratives have much more difficulty gaining traction than they used to because the proponents of those narratives have relatively less authority and prominence.

Another is that, on a broader scale, received wisdom becomes more entrenched than before: in the absence of individual voices being able to change the course of debates, the stories that do gain traction are those which have the air of something we've been told before (Adele as representing a triumph for authenticity, for example).

Of course on a micro-level people are telling stories all the time. But interestingly the stories that often gain traction (at a micro-level at least) are the ones that most of the audience weren't there for. Blackdown is one of the most successful storytellers I can think of in the past ten years (which is a sign of their reduced prominence as much as anything else) because he became the spokesperson for a genre that became broadly popular only some 4 years after he started covering it, so a lot of newer fans simply buy the backstory wholesale.

We don't tend to have so many of those long germination periods these days where the narrative can be honed and refined "in secret" before suddenly being taken up on a broader level, so the above is kind of rare now.

"diminution" even.

you presumed to know how a dubstep track would sound to a jungle dancefloor audience in the mid-90s.

Presumption is one thing, but I don't see why speculation about something like this is problematic in general. Someone that knows a lot about Northern Soul, for example, might hear some 1960s soul track and be able to speculate on how it might have sounded to NS fans.

And I have a little background in musicology so I definitely see music writing as being about music (as opposed to "telling a story about music").

Presumption is one thing, but I don't see why speculation about something like this is problematic in general.

Sure, but not if you reduce it to "would this have sounded like the future y/n" when what people recognise as "futuristic" in music is way way way more complicated than is being acknowledged.

And as far as I know this debate is not being conducted in musicological terms.

By "this debate" you're talking about the Reynolds book?

Actually you presumed to know how a dubstep track would sound to a jungle dancefloor audience in the mid-90s.

I thought it was clear that I was referring to myself as a member of that audience. Although I think it's far less absurd and presumptuous to speculate how some hypothetical past audience would have responded to a contemporary piece of music than to tell somebody that they're wrong about how music works.

It is always more like a response or a riposte, a taking of what was there and what was around it and twisting that.

That twist doesn't have any objective nobility, but for people who follow current music it's like a turn in the conversation, a bridge that leads from one place to another place, a development in a story which, if you care about the story to begin with, might hook you in even further, or turn you off and make you look for other stories.

But of course the same is true for "retro" music and the people who make and listen to it. It's just that the retromania involves a much broader view of "what's was there and what was around it." I guess I do tend to be dismissive of people whose participation in that conversation is engaged solely with very recent music, and whose context is so narrowly focused that a simple tempo change could inspire the feeling that whole new worlds are opening up.

Of course it is the same. Which is why your position here is kinda objectionable:

I guess I do tend to be dismissive of people whose participation in that conversation is engaged solely with very recent music, and whose context is so narrowly focused that a simple tempo change could inspire the feeling that whole new worlds are opening up.

The whole point is that a "simple tempo change" can be massively important in a particular context, or entirely uninteresting in another. All musical styles are comprised of the interrelationship between observing rules and breaking them. Unless you're invested in the rules to begin with their breach will usually seem underwhelming.

One of the reason the deliberately diverse, eclectic polystylistic dance albums you call for upthread so frequently are underwhelming is that a common consequence is the sensation that nothing is at stake in all the perverse trampling of rules.

By "this debate" you're talking about the Reynolds book?

and this thread.

It's not just musicology, though. Today, for example, I posted something on the Velvet Underground Live 1969 thread because I wanted to say something about Irmin Schmidt from Can and organ playing - basically, that Irmin was a great player. I didn't do analysis to demonstrate the point, but I think I was still definitely talking about the music.

And I have a little background in musicology so I definitely see music writing as being about music (as opposed to "telling a story about music").

Yeah, I'm not really sure how to respond to the claim that we should be talking about talking about music rather than music itself. After all, Reynolds is making claims about the state of music, and the decline of novelty in contemporary music, isn't he?

I think that the stories we tell about music certainly create a lot of problems for music. Retrospective narratives are often damaging and stand in the way of a real understanding of the music and its historical context, so I'm not sure I'm too worried that they're having trouble gaining traction. And at any rate, I don't buy the premise that there is any problem with the quality or output of contemporary music (the only problems are economic) so the impact of the stories we tell are only moderately interesting to me at the moment. If anything, I think the democratization of music writing that you're talking about has had a positive impact on actual musical creativity.

xpost

The whole point is that a "simple tempo change" can be massively important in a particular context, or entirely uninteresting in another.

Sure, to an individual. Reynolds is the one who is making broader claims about a musical decline.

Unless you're invested in the rules to begin with their breach will usually seem underwhelming.

So likewise it seems to me that Reynolds simply isn't invested in the rules and context of all of the other contemporary stuff that he finds underwhelming.

One of the reason the deliberately diverse, eclectic polystylistic dance albums you call for upthread so frequently are underwhelming is that a common consequence is the sensation that nothing is at stake in all the perverse trampling of rules.

But again, that's your context. That's your thing. I've never in my life listened to a piece of music and felt that anything was "at stake." That's just not how music "works" for me.

It's not just musicology, though. Today, for example, I posted something on the Velvet Underground Live 1969 thread because I wanted to say something about Irmin Schmidt from Can and organ playing - basically, that Irmin was a great player. I didn't do analysis to demonstrate the point, but I think I was still definitely talking about the music.

Sure, but what relevance does the above have to what we're talking about in this thread? Of course it's possible to talk directly about music. I'm saying that this debate isn't really about that. The question "whether or not an album can have as much impact as Nevermind today" is much more a sociological question than a strictly-musical question.

Yeah, I'm not really sure how to respond to the claim that we should be talking about talking about music rather than music itself. After all, Reynolds is making claims about the state of music, and the decline of novelty in contemporary music, isn't he?

Necessarily, a book about the fetishisation of retro signifiers is as much about stories about music as it is about music itself. Retro cannot be reduced to "that sound sounds great."

The notion of "the decline of novelty in contemporary music" is necessarily an abstraction away from actually existing music because it is not possible to do an exhaustive reconciliation of all music past and present and its effects. Which is why everyone in this thread has been talking in generalisations about the perceived social role and impact of music.

Sure, to an individual. Reynolds is the one who is making broader claims about a musical decline.

I think Reynolds is saying that generally speaking people, considered as aggregates of individuals, are experiencing this less and less often, or that these experiences are increasingly refracted through notions (fantasies often) of the past.

Whether this is indicative of a musical decline is a separate question.

But again, that's your context. That's your thing. I've never in my life listened to a piece of music and felt that anything was "at stake." That's just not how music "works" for me.

You were the one who came into this thread and said dance music fans have a crap way of listening to music.

e.g:

I think the growth of electronic music in the '80s and '90s led to this whole generation of musicians, djs, writers and fans who have a very limited musical education and no historical perspective so they can't see beyond their little niche. That, combined with an antagonism toward rock or anything that's considered old fashioned left a whole segment of people really unequipped to understand what's happening in music now.

"what relevance does the above have to what we're talking about in this thread?"

Not sure as it's a long thread at this point and we're talking about the text of the Reynolds book too. Didn't know you were just talking about topics like "whether or not an album can have as much impact as Nevermind today" when you referred to "this whole debate" and that's why I asked about it.

"whats happening in music now" = rock fans got together and decided rock was the most important music?

Tim the debate on this thread has mainly been regarding whether individual albums can have as much impact now as they used to.

Yeah, I guess that was the big theme for today's revive anyway. Sorry for the confusion.

"whats happening in music now" = rock fans got together and decided rock was the most important music?

I wonder if it's more that the rock narrative goes through periods of being more or less coherent, e.g. I think the above has happened at a generalist critic level at various points in the early-to-mid 90s, the early 00s, and the late 00s (and many times before that obv).

My well-meaning dad taped for me a doco called "The Seven Ages of Rock" which was exactly what you'd expect. I assume ages 8 and 9 (if a sequel ever is made) will be the New Rock Revolution and GAPDY?

About as much as you could say for the fallow periods (late 90s, mid 00s) is that many critics if prodded might have said "we can't categorically guarantee that rock is the most important music."

Necessarily, a book about the fetishisation of retro signifiers is as much about stories about music as it is about music itself. Retro cannot be reduced to "that sound sounds great."

Why not? I think that at this point in history it really can if that's what you want. By privileging this idea that music is a part of some kind of ongoing contemporary conversation you seem to be denying the possibility of appreciating music outside of its immediate historical or geographic context. That is unless someone makes up a retrospective narrative to frame it for you. If that's how you want to relate to music that's fine. But if you then complain that nothing interesting is going on then yeah, I'm going to start to think that maybe the way you approach music is broken. I'm not trying to attack you personally or paint all dance music fans with that same brush, but I can't help but think that kind of singular focus on the new is what is coloring Reynolds' perception.

I think Reynolds is saying that generally speaking people, considered as aggregates of individuals, are experiencing this less and less often,

How can he say that for anyone but himself? Why is this any less of a leap than trying to presume what people in the past would think of contemporary music?

or that these experiences are increasingly refracted through notions (fantasies often) of the past.

I disagree, but if true, so what? Returning to idealized fantasies or superficial stylistic elements from the past has been a pretty fundamental part of the creative process throughout art history.

Whether this is indicative of a musical decline is a separate question.

The assumption that this is a decline seems to be the core of his whole thesis.

"whats happening in music now" = rock fans got together and decided rock was the most important music?

What appears to be happening to me is that these distinctions are breaking down and there is no more rock or rock fans. Which will obviously be a problem for people who are overly invested in these genre divisions.

You seem to be assuming that I agree with SR, which I have never said. I don't believe there's been a decline in music.

Why not? I think that at this point in history it really can if that's what you want. By privileging this idea that music is a part of some kind of ongoing contemporary conversation you seem to be denying the possibility of appreciating music outside of its immediate historical or geographic context.

I'm not denying that possibility at all.

If anything, the opposite: we need to be cognisant of the fact that the use of past sounds can signify extramusically to varying extents (down to near zero in some cases), and that to some extent the historical practice of retro-fetishism actively shapes that level of signification over time - largely, it diminishes over time.

Primarily, sonic motifs can be reused so frequently and in so many shifting contexts that their associations with a given period of history start to rub away, and they stop "signifying" the past so strongly as a result.

Indeed, part of SR's thesis, as I understand it, is that some ideas, sounds, styles etc have now been revived and re-revived and cross-revived to the point where they no longer code as retro so much. The code of retro-fetishism starts to break down.

A contemporary example of this might be someone producing a rap record that harked back to the sound of early 00s Just Blaze beats harking back to the sound of early 90s rap beats harking back to old soul records - those kinds of beats evoke the past less and less over time and just become part of the general building blocks available to people making hip hop.

We can see this dynamic with 80s revivalism now: electroclash's sonic and social signification was "overdetermined" by the 80s at the beginning of the 00s, whereas as its sonic influence has filtered through a variety of pop and dance styles through to Lady Gaga the sharpness of its revivalism has been worn away. Lady Gaga still signifies the 80s but the signification is diminished because the music also signifies the late 00s as well.

How can he say that for anyone but himself? Why is this any less of a leap than trying to presume what people in the past would think of contemporary music?

I dunno, I haven't read the book yet so I don't know how exhaustively he backs up his assumptions. But he's not saying that listeners are "really unequipped to understand what's happening in music now" so he seems more thoughtful on this topic than some people.

I disagree, but if true, so what? Returning to idealized fantasies or superficial stylistic elements from the past has been a pretty fundamental part of the creative process throughout art history.

I didn't say there was anything wrong with it.

The assumption that this is a decline seems to be the core of his whole thesis.

Again, I don't agree with SR on this, but I think his point would rather be something to the effect that eventually pop starts eating itself: its capacity to come up with new twists on the past further and further diminishing, innovation increasingly reduced micro-individuation. So it's less a case of retro-fetishism being bad in itself, but that a pop culture which operates primarily in accordance with retro-fetishism will have a limited productive lifespan.

If or when you respond, I would appreciate it if you could observe my attempts to distinguish SR's opinions from my own.

How do you know what SR is saying or whether you agree with him if you've not read the book in question, Tim?

Necessarily, a book about the fetishisation of retro signifiers is as much about stories about music as it is about music itself. Retro cannot be reduced to "that sound sounds great."

Why not? I think that at this point in history it really can if that's what you want. By privileging this idea that music is a part of some kind of ongoing contemporary conversation you seem to be denying the possibility of appreciating music outside of its immediate historical or geographic context.

To be clear, my comment here was in respect of retro as a component of music production rather than music reception.

Of course you can listen to an old record and just appreciate it as "good music", but I think that that then takes you outside of the meaning of "retro".

see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retro_style

How do you know what SR is saying or whether you agree with him if you've not read the book in question, Tim?

He has built up to this book with many articles and thousands of blog posts and online forum interventions.

Unless he has changed his position dramatically (which given his recent articles evidently he hasn't) I think I have a good handle on his thesis.

I'm mostly interested to read the book to see how he applies that thesis to specific cases past and present.