Coisas que definem as coisas

(Via ILX. Em itálico, neilasimpson. No resto, Alex Macpherson. Alex está 200% certo e não, esta discussão não começou hoje, mas convém sublinhar o essencial a intervalos regulares.)

the whole axis of let's call it 'avant garde club music' like arca/rabit/lotic/sd laika. even if you're familiar with all the precedents and influences involved (idm, industrial, trance, whatever), it still sounds very 'now' to me because of the way it references and flips the tropes of recent dance music

i have no idea how any of these artists are avant garde or "new". and not necessarily because others have done it before, but i don't hear where the freshness is. i think "nowness" is not a specifically definable trait and also shouldn't be confused with "cutting edge"

my interest in this topic comes from things like Simon Reynolds' Retromania and Mark Fisher's Ghosts of My life, which discuss the causes and manifestations of a lack of interest in the future, a lack of faith in it, and a general inability to conceive of or create a future that's too different to our present

i guess firstly stop taking that bollocks seriously and actually engage with what people and artists are doing rather than what over-the-hill theorists think is happening? firstly i don't think an obsession with futurism is laudable in and of itself, secondly an interest in the future doesn't have to sound "futuristic" (scare quotes crucial as it often denotes a very specific and well-trodden sonic path). it's not that people can't conceive of a future, it's that their conception of what the future should sound like is very limited