I've gotta say 2015 has got to be the worst music year since fuck before the 2nd World War, I reckon. I'm stuck in 90s musical zones (see above) myself and don't particularly care that my listening isn't drifting back to the now. In fact I want to stay right in those places when and where the possibilities seemed endless. Me and the Mrs discussed a furniture shop closing down near our house the other day and ended up in the terrain of "Is that it then? Music's finite so i guess furniture is too." I was saying how these retro interior design shops had become so uninspired and formulaic, why would anyone want to spend money on this new old shit when there's plenty of old shit anyway?. The retro eclecticism, of the products in these shops, is disappearing up it's own arse at an accelerating rate. Is it that no one is game enough to say right here's a new style? So we just continue down these tasteful but conservative aesthetic avenues? Nobody's killing their idols. There's way too much reverence. We lived through a modernist time but that has gone. Where are the generation gaps? The kids don't even want one. Teenagers don't seem to exist anymore, kids don't leave home until they're over 25 now. You used to leave home and disassociate yourself from your family and become a whole new you, severed from the past. Emma went to the Bowie exhibition in Melbourne last weekend and said there were kids sans parents there. I thought what the fuck? These youngsters are going back 40 years. In 1985 diggin the 60s seemed old but it had only ended 15 years prior. When I was 17 (by then we had Public Enemy, The Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jnr., Acid House, Hip-Hop etc.) I wouldn't have been caught dead being interested in a culture that was 40+ years old. Strange days indeed.
*This is raw thought data that's still being processed in my mind.
**A retro curio in itself. First issued in 1971 (maybe the year I was born) on his Hunky Dory LP then was later released as a single in 1973 when Bowie had reached stardom. It became a massive hit in the UK.
i was thinking the same thing, about 2015. Everything seems to have flatlined. At this point, coming up with a Top Ten for the year will be a struggle. Radio's dead. You can have too much Mustard. His style's gone comatos. The only things that have really BLOWN me away are Future's "Fuck Up Some Commas" (and the album is also excellent) and Rae Smemmurd "Throw Sum More". The rest of the music landscape is tootling along business as usual in the well-established genre zones, and pretty tepidly at that. Perhaps there's some weird shit going on in the outer zones of netmusic, but not taken with what I've heard from there either. Things like footwork have become boring, you know what you're getting. Oh yes, and there's the category of failed / flawed / inexplicably un-engaging would-be Masterworks - Kendrick LM, Jam City, Holly Herndon.
ReplyDeleteI thought about what the fuck would be in my end of year lists as well...gee there's not much is there? There's hardly any great reissues either.
ReplyDeleteHey readers feel free to point out anything you may think is a worthwhile 2015 release. 2014 seems golden in comparison.
Yeah the reissue barrel has been scraped bare. Yet Fact now does a monthly top ten reissues you can't miss. As if there could possibly be 120 essential reissues per year. Still, their number one reissue this month, jean Guerin Tacit, is pretty amazing I must admit
ReplyDeletenah, plenty of stuff to be reissued still, and with things like bandcamp, a lot producers release their unreleased stuff from the 90s (or later) these days. However, if a records failed in 1983 to be somewhat of importance it begs the question why that shall be different in 2015.
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