Rave culture’s energy may be one symptom of a wider cultural depletion

Evidence

In 2006, James Kirby, the man behind the V/Vm record label and the Caretaker, began a download project called The Death of Rave. The tracks have a thin, almost translucent quality, as if they are figments or phantoms of the original, exhilarating sound of rave. When I interviewed Kirby recently, he explained that the project had been initiated to commemorate a certain energy that he believes has disappeared from dance music. (Energy Flash was, of course, the title the critic Simon Reynolds gave to his compendious study of rave music and its progeny.) The question is: were rave and its offshoots jungle and garage just that — a sudden flash of energy that has since dissipated? More worryingly, is the death of rave only one symptom of an overall energy crisis in culture? Are cultural resources running out in the same way as natural resources are? — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1226

Categorization

• SEED: Fisher’s provocation — cultural resources running out like natural resources — seeds an essay contrasting energetic ruptures in art history (rave, punk, modernism) against periods of refinement and stasis.
• XREF: connects to: Mainstream dance-pop’s forced euphoria masks rather than relieves cultural depression — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 461; Mainstream Rave-sampling pop denies rather than laments Rave’s obsolescence. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 465; Dance music’s affect was collective catharsis, not romantic introspection — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1304 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Boredom is a symptom of one’s own cultural and ideological limits #corroborates (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 213
• Dance music’s affect was collective catharsis, not romantic introspection #corroborates (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1304