Simon Reynolds - C or D

Moany moan moan! Anyways, why do you think that European dance labels like Kompakt get all the kudos from Pitchfork but not Underground Resistance?
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you know what really gets on my tits about Simon Reynolds? It's the disjointednesso his books, the way he - oh never mind.

Moany moan moan! Anyways, why do you think that European dance labels like Kompakt get all the kudos from Pitchfork but not Underground Resistance?
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Pipecock?

the dubious "lifestyle" propagated by some English working class, ecstasy-gulping slack-jawed yobs or other

Snotty & the Wankers: Arctic Monkeys of 2002?

huh?

Digital maximalism is the ultrabrite, NutraSweet, Taurine-amped soundtrack to a lifestyle and a life-stance that could be called NOW!ism. In most dance scenes there's a vein of nostalgic reverence, an in-built deference to a lost golden age. But with EDM, there's just this feeling of NOW! NOW! NOW! And that's the thing I found heartening and refreshing about Hard Summer: the utter absence of any sense of the past being better than the present.

From the updated third edition of Energy Flash - http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1879

so what

he needs to stop writing things like NOW!ism but im pleased he keeps on keeping on

so what

Hm, I might buy a copy of the new edition. Lent my version of Generation Ecstasy to someone years ago, haven't read the section on dubstep from the last version either, plus there's apparently stuff on UK Funky. Also glad he keeps on writing, especially on topics like brostep, digital compression, maximalism, EDM, etc. that rarely get any serious coverage. Reynolds still has strong critical voice, Retromania struck me as essentially a work of net criticism ala Morozov/Carr/Lanier.

NOW!ism feels like something he needs to believe in, rather than a real thing. Mentioning Justice as an example is odd for starters, given their massively obvious love of classic rock. You just can't divide musicians into retro and non-retro camps.

Well, Justice is mentioned by this Josiah Schirmacher dude (a DJ-producer friend?).

I'm sure EDM NOW!ism is a thing. It might not fixate on the past, but clearly ain't no sound of the future either.

Probably unfair of me to judge his whole argument on an extract. Maybe there's more to it.

reynoldzzzzzz

"NOWism" seems more like "young people listening to arena techno/dubstep that never cared about 'dance' music that much before". ie, no past to romanticize = now is better. Only a slight nudge from "entitled internet-era Millennials who think they are smarter than everyone ever". Certainly isn't a "movement" that anyone participating would want to be a affiliated with.

Where is a critic that aims serious music criticism

More cynically, it also just reads as an amalgam of things he's been saying elsewhere repackaged in the hope of selling more books off the back of the EDM hype.

what i'm reading is equal parts obvious (justice is loud, young people are crass) and imaginary (dance music is focused on the past, now!ism exists, young people are engaged with the present in some new way)

I finally read Retromania and it was just as frustrating as I had assumed it would be. I was pretty angry throughout the whole book and I kept adding post-it notes to highlight things that I was going to come here and comment on, but by the end I was so exhausted I didn't care anymore. I used to like Reynolds but lately I just feel like he's hitting DeRogatisian levels of wrongness.

like a lot of popists i think he doesn't have that much enlightening stuff to say about the music so he just projects a bunch of half-baked cultural crit ideas onto the audience

tbf this is kind of a widespread thing in music criticism

Wait are you saying you're a popist or he is? Cause he isn't

I feel like he's personally conflicted about the state of new music and his nostalgia for the old "new" (or NOW!) music of his youth. In Retromania he consistently talked about rave and post-punk as if it were an objective truth that those two genres were totally new or even the only totally new music of the past 30 years. And he did it seemingly without any self-awareness that his opinion was totally colored by personal nostalgia.

In that Hard Summer article he points out that the music doesn't sound that much different from the '90s but then in the end he describes all of the ways in which it sounds and feels new. It's like he's always on the verge of this revelation but he never quite connects the dots and realizes that something can borrow from the past and still be new, or that there can be subtle innovations and evolutions within a genre that are only noticeable to the people who are deeply involved with it. All throughout Retromania I felt like everyone he interviewed and everything he discussed throughout the book was leading up to this revelation. That he was just kind of trolling us and the book was actually going to illustrate the process of debunking the thesis he put forth in the beginning. I kept thinking he was surely going to make a 180 degree turn at the end and realize that he was wrong.

I disagree with the above, a bit - he uses rave and post-punk a lot b/c they were ~his genres~, but while

(a) I wasn't around for them (literally for post-punk, was < 11 when rave was happening); and
(b) I like new music plenty

I also think there's a big difference between the extent of musical possibilities opened up in a few short years in those eras, and the extent we've seen in the last ten years or so.

Like, you can agree that:

something can borrow from the past and still be new, or that there can be subtle innovations and evolutions within a genre that are only noticeable to the people who are deeply involved with it

while also saying "yes but the innovations and evolutions used to be a lot more sweeping than that, as a general rule."

I don't get doom and gloom about that, and I think that one needs to unpack the relationship b/w macro- and micro-transformations (or inter- and intra-) to appreciate that a lot of the time the former are just examples of the latter that were in the right place at the right time.

but I don't think his basic thesis is fundamentally incorrect.

the book definitely disproves itself despite itself!

funnily enough I'm reading totally wired atm and it's brilliant, twice the book rip it up is. Cause reynolds is pushing his thesis but the interviewees are pushing back.

don't hate this guy at all, I think he's cool although he says mindblowingly stupid shit sometimes

(xp)

i was identifying him as a popist which I guess he's not

while also saying "yes but the innovations and evolutions used to be a lot more sweeping than that, as a general rule."

Another problem with the book is that there was very little discussion of changing technology. Yes, there were a lot of new sounds in the '60s when things like multitracking, wah pedals, and moog synthesizers were new. And there were a lot of new sounds in the '70s and '80s when synthesizers became more widely available and drum machines and samplers were new. And there are some new sounds being made now although the technological changes aren't as radical on a surface, sonic level. But there was no discussion of any of that in the book from what I can remember, and now real exploration of micro editing, tuning, the ease of computer home recording, or the kind of digital sheen and hyper compression styles that he touches on in the Hard Summer article.

but I don't think his basic thesis is fundamentally incorrect.

He doesn't really give a shred of evidence to support it and he gives a ton of historical evidence that illustrates that "retromania" is nothing new! Nor does he ever give a convincing argument as to why the appearance of "newness" is actually a valuable element in art. And every artist he interviews in the book has more intelligent and interesting insights on the topic than Reynolds, but nothing they say seemed to influence his thinking at all.

There was a time when electric pianos were a new sound, and clavinets were a new sound, or hammond organs, spring reverbs, fender guitar amps, marshall stacks, analog synthesizers, 808 drum machines, analog string machines, etc. And now there's a time when all of those sounds can be fairly convincingly emulated on a laptop with the built-in samples and effects that come with a program like Logic. That is one of the truly radical recent advancements in music technology, and it's no surprise that musicians are therefore using all of those old sounds again. But I don't think he really approached the topic with any kind of curiosity. He had his mind made up going into the book and he stuck to it.

Gaaah, now I can't stop thinking about it. I guess I should take it to the retromania thread, but oh well, I'm here. There are a couple of other major things that bothered me.

He didn't talk about how much of the musical innovation throughout history came from different cultures being exposed to each other and their musical forms intermixing and emerging as new hybrid styles. With the rise of mass communication and recorded music during the 20th century, that cultural mixing reached an all time peak to the point where we arguably hit an almost total globalization of culture. That type of cross-cultural synthesis arguably won't happen to the same degree in the 21st century now that we're all culturally interconnected instantaneously.

I also thought he hit on an important point early in the book when he briefly mentioned retro porn that focuses on natural hair and breasts. But he seemed to dismiss the idea immediately and didn't entertain the possibility that different body shapes and body hair styles are an issue of personal taste and that it's the homogenization of body images in porn (universal implants and waxing) that leads people to seek out the "retro" stuff. Likewise, corporate consolidation, radio deregulation, clear channel, etc. has led to an increasing homogenization in mainstream music. But not everyone wants slick futuristic sounds all of the time, so some people logically look to the past to borrow sounds form other eras in music that were more sonically diverse.

the slick, futuristic sound of Adele

No seriously, everything you mention is relevant, and he downplays most of that too much, but from memory he also frames increasing retromania as in part a reaction to all of that stuff. Definitely technological changes have encouraged it.

Another problem with the book is that there was very little discussion of changing technology. Yes, there were a lot of new sounds in the '60s when things like multitracking, wah pedals, and moog synthesizers were new. And there were a lot of new sounds in the '70s and '80s when synthesizers became more widely available and drum machines and samplers were new. And there are some new sounds being made now although the technological changes aren't as radical on a surface, sonic level. But there was no discussion of any of that in the book from what I can remember

what happened to mark s's book anyway

i totally agree with wk, wonder if i went on about this on ilx already as much as i thought i did

mb the biggest problem is that his 'increasing tide of retromania' works for, like, dance music and pitchfork rock. but how does he deal with genres that have achieved some kind of formal stability -- i'm going to say metal, hardcore, jazz, all of which v arguable obv but like: there's not been a tide of 70s style heavy bands obliterating recent developments in the form, nor a second coming of trad jazz

i really want to work this argument around to calling him a racist but enhh

Genres heavily engaged with pop culture vs genres not

bullshit

Another problem with the book is that there was very little discussion of changing technology.

The chapter on YouTube is great imo re: technology and transformed engagements with music.

the chapter on youtube is the one where he has some quotes from lopatin and ends "and i guess these people have opened up interesting new affective possibilities but i'm just going to handwave about that for a bit", right

i feel like there are a lot of kinda retro sabbath type metal bands now tho

thomp went in hard on the retromania thread, I remember that, it was great

and I didn't dislike the book

the slick, futuristic sound of Adele

Well, right the alternative to "NOW!" sounds is to use sounds from the past, right?

Arguably every style of music that sounded radically new was created because of either new technology (electronic music), borrowing styles from other cultures (post-punk), borrowing overlooked styles or ideas from the past, or all of the above (psychedelic rock or hip hop). I would have liked to see more of an exploration of how that process actually works, and whether or not novelty has actually slowed down, or how art reacted to similar periods in the past.

the chapter on youtube is the one where he has some quotes from lopatin and ends "and i guess these people have opened up interesting new affective possibilities but i'm just going to handwave about that for a bit", right

Yeah, I thought the Lopatin interview quotes were the most interesting parts of the book and I was sure after that Reynolds was headed for a reassessment of his thesis.

bullshit

― i better not get any (thomp), Tuesday, 9 July 2013 9:38 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how so? I admit that dichotomy is tossed off, but given retromania is a fairly-widespread (but not monopolising or universalising) tendential phenomenon it stands to reason that genres more beholden to generalised fashion trends / developments in social media technnology / developments in radio and music video trends / etc. are more likely to pick up on it.

Whereas genres whose contemporary critical dialogue is more internalised will not.

In dance music, for example, the more internalised/tribal/cut-off-from-the-broader-world a sub-genre is, then the less retro it is, as a general rule.

Arguably every style of music that sounded radically new was created because of either new technology (electronic music), borrowing styles from other cultures (post-punk), borrowing overlooked styles or ideas from the past, or all of the above (psychedelic rock or hip hop). I would have liked to see more of an exploration of how that process actually works, and whether or not novelty has actually slowed down, or how art reacted to similar periods in the past.

― wk, Tuesday, 9 July 2013 9:50 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agree with this though. The biggest problem with the thesis is that it hypostasizes a particular type or manifestation of novelty as innovation. I think SR probably would acknowledge that's an issue but it's too determinative of his general worldview for him to effectively move past it.

yeah it's not really bullshit, i just didn't feel like articulating a proper argument /:

i guess i would probably point to hip hop as a space where things are way more complicated than 'increasing retroness' would allow. i spent way too much time arguing with this book in my head and getting annoyed at it/myself to be able to think about it much at a later date

Agree with this though. The biggest problem with the thesis is that it hypostasizes a particular type or manifestation of novelty as innovation. I think SR probably would acknowledge that's an issue but it's too determinative of his general worldview for him to effectively move past it.

yah on the book's thread i claimed something like this but in hokey jamesonian terms because i was doing that for some reason: "addiction to the novum, as an aesthetic mode, is as much a symptom of culture under capitalism as dependence on pastiche"

how so? I admit that dichotomy is tossed off, but given retromania is a fairly-widespread (but not monopolising or universalising) tendential phenomenon it stands to reason that genres more beholden to generalised fashion trends / developments in social media technnology / developments in radio and music video trends / etc. are more likely to pick up on it.

Whereas genres whose contemporary critical dialogue is more internalised will not.

In dance music, for example, the more internalised/tribal/cut-off-from-the-broader-world a sub-genre is, then the less retro it is, as a general rule.

That doesn't ring true to me at all. There are insular niche genres that have remained almost completely stagnant for 20 or 30 years including large swaths of metal, punk, hardcore, and dance music. Or they have undergone subtle evolutions that are not perceptible to outsiders but are very important to aficionados. Plus there are many niche genres that are completely absorbed in nostalgia and pastiche. And on the other hand, contemporary pop music seems to still be primarily focused on all that is shiny and new. But you seem to be saying that retromania is in fact something new and therefore music that is focused on changing fashions is currently steeped in retromania. Which seems to be the conflict at the heart of the book that Reynolds can't quite reconcile.