sideways

"As a concept in mass media, “future” is associated with whatever upcoming movement or far-reaching cultural shift will inalterably change what things sound, look, and feel like. But mass media don’t necessarily work that way anymore. We are no longer moving together as a single culture in a straight line; we are individuals zigzagging between different worlds with their own self-contained ecosystems....  It has completely unmoored us from our former sense of time. When people have the freedom to travel rapidly between different eras in the space of a single iTunes playlist, time as a descriptor of a musical aesthetic becomes irrelevant. Certain guitar or drum sounds that might normally be described as “’60s-sounding” are as common today as they were then. And they’re free to be combined with other sounds that older listeners associate with bygone eras, while musicians see them simply as colors on a generously expansive sonic palate that can be dipped into and slathered together.... "-- AV Club's Steven Hyden, riffing off White Fence (aka Ty Segall and Tim Presley) and off of Retromania

“I only use sounds that I know and love. I can’t concern myself with trying to be ‘modern’ or whatever that means. Electronic music? What is modern?” -- Tim Presley of White Fence

All this strikes me as a pretty notable and radical development  - the end of cultural synchrony, the obsolescence of concepts like "modern" and "future"!  

As it did Rem early in this, the 21st Century....

"When did time stop moving forward... begin to spool in every direction, like a tape spinning out of control? ... Change has been divorced from the idea of improvement. There is no progress; like a crab on LSD, culture wobbles endlessly sideways"--Rem Koolhaas, Junkspace

 

"Hair is not “innovative” as the word is commonly defined."--Steve Hyden, on White Fence aka Ty Segall and Tim Presley