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Futuromania

Electronic Dreams, Desiring Machines and Tomorrow’s Music Today

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Futuromania

By: Simon Reynolds
Narrated by: Rich Keeble
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About this listen

Simon Reynolds's first book in eight years is a celebration of music that feels like a taste of tomorrow. Sounds that prefigure pop music's future - the vanguard genres and heroic innovators whose discoveries eventually get accepted by the wider mass audience. But it's also about the way music can stir anticipation for a thrillingly transformed world just around the corner: a future that might be utopian or dystopian, but at least will be radically changed and exhilaratingly other.

Starting with an extraordinary chapter on Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer, taking in illuminating profiles of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Boards of Canada, Burial, and Daft Punk, and arguing for Auto-Tune as the defining sound of 21st century pop, Futuromania shapes over two-dozen essays and interviews into a chronological narrative of machine-music from the 1970s to now. Reynolds explores the interface between pop music and science fiction's utopian dreams and nightmare visions, always emphasising the quirky human individuals abusing the technology as much as the era-defining advances in electronic hardware and digital software.

A tapestry of the scenes and subcultures that have proliferated in that febrile, sexy and contested space where man meets machine, Futuromania is an enthused listening guide that will propel listeners towards adventures in sound. There is a lifetime of electronic listening here.

©2024 Simon Reynolds (P)2024 Orion Publishing Group Limited
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Honestly the best book on Electronic music I've ever read

This is a great overview of Electronic music, specifically because it goes beyond origins and 1970s to 1980s as most books on electronic music limit themselves to. There is a massive gap in the market for books like this on Electronic music from 2000 to today. The book is well-written and well-read, I hope Simon Reynolds publishes more on Electronic music in future.

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