>Where is the 21st-century equivalent of Kraftwerk? If Kraftwerk’s music came out of a casual intolerance of the already-established, then the present moment is marked by its extraordinary accommodation towards the past. More than that, the very distinction between past and present is breaking down. In 1981, the 1960s seemed much further away than they do today. Since then, cultural time has folded back on itself, and the impression of linear development has given way to a strange simultaneity.
>Two examples will suffice to introduce this peculiar temporality. When I first saw the video for the Arctic Monkeys’ 2005 single ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’, I genuinely believed that it was some lost artifact from circa 1980. Everything in the video – the lighting, the haircuts, the clothes – had been assembled to give the impression that this was a performance on BBC2’s ‘serious rock show’ The Old Grey Whistle Test.
>Furthermore, there was no discordance between the look and the sound. At least to a casual listen, this could quite easily have been a post punk group from the early 1980s. Certainly, if one performs a version of the thought experiment I described above, it’s easy to imagine ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ being broadcast on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1980, and producing no sense of disorientation in the audience. Like me, they might have imagined that the references to ‘1984’ in the lyrics referred to the future.
Well we reached the end point of music recording technology by the end of the 60s so…
Owen Walker
I was just thinking about how Turn on the Bright Lights by Interpol is just Joy Division, and Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective is just The Beach Boys.
Is every album on Pitchfork's Best of the 2000s album list just rehashes?
Was Emo a rehash, or was it the last original music movement?
Owen Watson
My cousin always said every indie rock hit is like a rehash of Sunday Bloody Sunday
The hip hop stuff isn’t but all the Indie shit sure
Wyatt Powell
>Second example. I first heard Amy Winehouse’s version of ‘Valerie’ while walking through a shopping mall, perhaps the perfect venue for consuming it. Up until then, I had believed that ‘Valerie’ was first recorded by indie plodders the Zutons. But, for a moment, the record’s antiqued 1960s soul sound and the vocal (which on a casual listen I didn’t at first recognize as Winehouse) made me temporarily revise this belief: surely the Zutons’ version of the track was a cover of this apparently ‘older’ track, which I had not heard until now? Naturally, it didn’t take me long to realise that the ‘sixties soul sound’ was actually a simulation; this was indeed a cover of the Zutons’ track, done in the souped-up retro style in which the record’s producer, Mark Ronson, has specialised.
Did this nigga really kill himself cause people emulated old music? Did this mf never listen to Sgt pepper or the white album lmao what a dumb dumb
Andrew Cook
This guys actually retarded I bet you look on the dance floor doesn’t sound like a song from the late 70s early 80s. He really had a mental breakdown cause they used an old camera
Angel Rodriguez
Man, that's actually scary to be honest
Luis Miller
I fucking love this dude. Still curious, listening to insane amounts of new stuff, while still being perfectly aware of what would became of the music industry and the impossibility of going any further.
Like seriously the things i listen to lately that sounds fresh, new, are Colin Stetson and Grouper, and both have been making music for about a decade and still sounds like stuff released a long time ago.
Adam Watson
He killed himself because he was suffering from severe depression. His writings on music derive on the same thoughts he has on his writings on depression, but are not the cause of it.
Jackson Collins
He killed himself because he said the Left shouldn't attack their own and then the Left all attacked him for saying that.
Owen Morris
True as trips. Like if only he accepted himself as a chud and transitioned, he still be alive today.
Christian Stewart
People don't want new things anymore, they don't want to explore the possibilities of any art form. People simply want something that makes them feel good, that makes them have fun. Music was a way of socializing during the 20th century, people went to live performances, clubs, stores, they'd become part of a group, the rockers, the metalheads, the punks. Now there's no need for that because the internet provides them all the human bonding they want. Nobody feels the need to create a new form of music and claim it their home because the internet already provides them lots of carefully crafted spaces that fit their emotional needs. Music is just another leisure product now, and the industry certainly doesn't have any need to not play it safe every fucking time.
John Nelson
>Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective is just The Beach Boys. But it's not.
Jacob Barnes
this is “just The Beach Boys” youtu.be/OsSpNjhxoTg MPP is loud, in parts abrasive, has very little identifiable organic instrumentation, sample-heavy and with synthesized hip-hop inspired percussion and basslines. Panda Bear having a choirboy voice doesn’t make everything he does automatically Wilson-esque
Angel Howard
Why does it matter when music was released. It’s new to you the first you hear it?
Kevin Cox
bump
Charles Wood
It's always been like this, it's just that in the past new music was being created, and due to limited options people were forced to listen to it.
Now new music isn't being created, and if it were no one would be hearing it anyway.
Parker Bell
This song is a complete rip off of Smile. It's like Heroes and Villains crossed with Cabinessence, with a bit of Surf's Up and Barnyard.
Luis Edwards
mark fisher's opinion on music always showed how he was not in touch with youth culture like he thought he was.
capital realism is overrated af but its good for non-academics who never read theory anyway there's tons of new shit happening every year. he should have stop being a depressive academic and listen to some aaron dilloway and future and he would have been alived today.
