Contemporary electronic music has decelerated from rave’s rate of innovation
Evidence
The current decade, however, has been characterised by an abrupt sense of deceleration. A thought experiment makes the point. Imagine going back fifteen years in time to play records from the latest dance genres — dubstep, or funky, for example — to a fan of jungle. One can only conclude that they would have been stunned — not by how much things had changed, but by how little things have moved on. Something like jungle was scarcely imaginable in 1989, but dubstep or funky, while by no means pastiches, sound like extrapolations from the matrix of sounds established a decade and a half ago. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1228
Categorization
- XREF: Echoes the ‘weeks-long generation gaps as cultural vitality measure’ theme from ch56 and Fisher’s broader argument about cultural deceleration running through the book. — connects to: A music generation can elapse from rave euphoria into haunted deadbeat melancholy — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 215; Mainstream music of the 2010s fixated on recreating past sounds rather than innovating; Old electronic music no longer ages because the culture stopped progressing — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1237 (+3 more)