Late-2000s electronic pop continues a mode of synthpop curtailed in the mid-1980s

Evidence

MF: I think part of the reason I like the Darkstar record so much is that I don’t hear it as a dance record. In my view, it’s better heard almost as mainstream pop that has been augmented by some dance textures. “Aidy’s Girl is a Computer” apart, if you heard the record without knowing the history, you wouldn’t assume any connection with dubstep. At the same time, North isn’t straightforwardly a return to a pre-dance sound. Much has been made of the synthpop parallels but — and the cover of the Human League track brings this out — it doesn’t actually sound very much like Eighties synthpop at all. It’s more a continuation of a certain mode of electronic pop that got curtailed sometime in the mid-Eighties. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1244

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Fisher’s recurring identification of hauntological lost futures, where contemporary music dialogues with a pop lineage that was cut off rather than superseded. — connects to: North continues an electronic-pop mode that stalled prematurely in the mid-1980s — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 447; Electronic pop’s lost link to avant-garde art reads now as a requiem — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1223; Old electronic music no longer ages because the culture stopped progressing — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1237 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Mainstream music of the 2010s fixated on recreating past sounds rather than innovating #qualifies (0.78)
• Post-Nineties electronic music retreated into conventional musicality and recessive detail #complicates (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1252
• Artists who once innovated turned to re-creating past sounds by the 2010s #qualifies (0.74) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 389
• Twenty-first-century pop culture stagnated as artists mined the past rather than the future #qualifies (0.72) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 381