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Retromania. Musica, Cultura Pop E La Nostra Ossessione Per Il Passato (2011)

by Simon Reynolds(Favorite Author)

3.8 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

8876381708 (ISBN13: 9788876381706)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Isbn Edizioni

review 1: Music critic Simon Reynolds is perhaps best-known for his coining of the term, “post-rock.” He is also regarded for his incorporation of critical theory in his analysis of music. His 2011 book, Retromania was my first encounter with his writing. “I recently read Simon Reynolds’ Retromania and it was so spot-on as far as our current attitude to music and its history. For my money he’s one of the most intelligent music writers in the last two decades” — DJ FoodRetromania turned out to be much more than a critical examination of popular culture’s fascination with its past. It was a revealing study of my own approach to culture, trends, styles, and music. And I’m certain that I wasn’t alone in this discovery. Like most readers who made the person... moreal decision to read 500 pages of cultural analysis by a music critic, it demonstrates the emerging and growing demographic of cultural curators. Brian Eno noticed the rise of the curator and grasped its implications way ahead of the pack. In 1991, reviewing a book on hypertext for Artforum, he proclaimed: Curatorship is arguably the big new job of our times: it is the task of re-evaluating, filtering, digesting, and connecting together. In an age saturated with new artifacts and information, it is perhaps the curator, the connection maker, who is the new storyteller, the meta-author.’The new century is rich with metadata and globally-accessible archives of content from all cultures and eras. Youtube alone adds 100 hours of new video content every minute, and the emergence of music streaming services have only further-accelerated the accessibility of media, old and new alike. This raises perhaps one of the biggest questions of our era: can culture survive in conditions of limitlessness?Chapter 4: The Rise of the Rock Curator was the first glimpse into my own rationale as a cultural custodian. It begins with the New Musical Express’ weekly column in the early 1980s – ”Portrait of the Artist as a Consumer.” Several rock groups of the decade presented their music with a kind of invisible reading-and-movie-watching list attached, conveyed through literary references within their lyrics of images depicted on their album jackets. (Sgt. Peppers is perhaps the best-known example of this execution.)Reynolds writes that “being a Throbbing Gristle or Coil fan was like enrolling in a university course of cultural extremism, the music virtually coming with footnotes and a ‘Further Reading’ section attached.”As the decade progressed, this curatorial baton was passed from the artists to their fan-base, who began, (whether consciously or unconsciously) to compile not just their favorite artist’s records, but the films, novels, and art which inspired their recordings.The book goes on to explore the nature of collector-culture in the digital age and touches upon both the decisively retro action of record collecting and the inherent merits and dysfunctions associated with the activity, as well as the hoarding habits of media collection with respect to digital music.But it was in a chapter on the 60s’ embrace of revivalism that I found the greatest revelation regarding my own bizarre fascination with music, art, and culture of the past. Reynolds writes - Remember the Pop Boutique store in central London with its slogan ‘Don’t follow fashion. Buy something that’s already out of date’? Just as vintage can have an undercurrent of recalcitrance towards fashion, similarly it is possible for rock nostalgia to contain dissident potential. If Time has become annexed by capitalism’s cynical cycles of product shifting, one way to resist that is to reject temporality altogether. The revivalist does this by fixating on one era and saying: ‘Here I make my stand.’ By fixing identity to the absolute and abiding supremacy of one sound and one style, the revivalist says, ‘ This is me.’Retromania is a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening read. In a simple skimming of the book’s index, I found what was effectively a list of the contents of my own studio. The book examines:Pierre Henry’s Le voile d’Orphée I et IIVarese’s Poème électroniquePerrey & Kingsley’s The In Sound From Way Out!Bell Telephone LaboratoriesThe BBC Radiophonic WorkshopThe Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music CenterRaymond Scott’s Manhattan Research IncThe City of Tomorrow (1924)Blade RunnerThe Philips Prospective 21e Siècle labelThe 1956 Ideal Home Exhibition1958 World’s Fair in BrusselsMetropolisAmazing StoriesCold War Modern: Design 1945-1970Disney’s TomorrowlandEinstürzende NeubautenThe Winstons’ Amen BreakNegativlandPublic Image Ltd.The Black DogStereolabPlunderphonics2 Many DJs24 Hour Party PeopleWilliam BasinskiSteinskiPop Will Eat ItselfThrobbing GristleEno & Byrne’s My Life in the Bush of GhostsiPod Therefore I AmBoards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to ChildrenThe Avalanches’ Since I Left Youfifties revivalismThe Man Who Fell to EarthThe Hauntology Exhibition at the Berkley Art MuseumThe Orb’s Adventures Beyond the UltraworldThe KLF / Justified Ancients of Mu MuDJ Shadow’s monumental Endtroducing LPThe glo-fi / chillwave / hypnagogic pop sceneand much, much more!
review 2: Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past eftir Bretann Simon Reynolds er þéttur hlunkur sem ég var loksins að klára eftir langt hark. Í bókinni er gríðarmikill fróðleikur umvafinn pælingum Simons um þróun poppsins og spurningin: “Afhverju er ekkert nýtt að gerast lengur” borin fram og reynt við svarið.Eins og augljóst má vera er þróun poppsins fólgin í stanslausu endurliti og endurnýtingu. Ekkert verður til af engu (nema kannski allt, skilst mér). Poppið er eins og einstaklingur. Í fiftís rokkinu og sixtís umbrotum var það barn og unglingur, en svo miðaldra og eiginlega gamalmenni í dag. Gamalmenni sem lítur yfir farinn veg og er alltaf að rifja eitthvað upp. Þessvegna eru allar nýjar hljómsveitir eins og eitthvað gamalt, nema kannski með örlitlum breytingum og breyttum áherslum. Spurningin er bara hvort gamalmennið drepst og eitthvað annað fæðist, eða hvort þetta gamalmenni verði til að eilífu. Því get ég ekki svarað, enda get ég ekki fengið tímavél til að hlusta á vinsælasta lagið á Íslandi árið 2100. Kannski verður það bara Vor í Vaglaskógi í grunge eða döbb-útgáfu?Það er bara búið að gera svo margt að það er erfiðara að gera eitthvað nýtt. Striginn er ekki auður eins og þegar hægt var að sletta fram einfaldri snilld eins og Wild thing og You really got me og það hljómaði ferskt og spennandi.Þetta er mjög skemmtileg bók og eflaust gæti ég borið hér á borð ýmsar gagnlegar pælingar úr henni ef ég væri ekki búinn að gleyma öllu. less

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