Simon Reynolds: Retromania

I'm fascinated by the current state of music and how its production and reception have changed since the internet came and fucked everything over. Sure, there have been benefits, but try finding me one person as excited by music now as they were ten years ago. Or, as Reynolds puts it - play me one piece of music from the 2000s that doesn't sound like it could have come from the 1990s.

Retromania explores all the obvious issues affecting music and popular culture - the interweb, file sharing, Youtube, sampling, pastiche, irony, etc etc etc. but many beyond these, and points to a widespread rejection of the new and the exciting that dates back to the late sixties. Despite Reynolds' final note of optimism, his declaration that he remains a committed modernist futurist and holds out hope for change, Retromania paints a bleak, largely hopeless picture. I'd not expected anything else, but just how much we're locked into the past hadn't completely registered. The book's real message is that the West's time has past, that we're in the midst of the decline and fall, that 'It's time for the West to rest'. Reynolds looks instead to the prospect of other powers taking charge - China and India - and developing new forward thinking approaches to art and cultural production. But even this is merely glanced at, and anyone even slightly aware of the way these two countries are pursuing capitalist greed will not see much hope in the future being in their hands.

Unlike the society he critiques, Retromania keeps expanding and updating itself, of sorts. Reynold's essay in the Wire some months back kicked it off, and his final post for Bruce Davison's Wired blog looks at hyperstasis and contemporary classical composition (and other genres - heck, aren't they they all interchangeable in this polystylistic world?).