ElectroRetro

1/  Purple Legacy

As Angus Finlayson notes in his review of this comp for FACT, it does seem a trifle premature to doing a retrospective on a sub-flava of post-dubstep that was in vogue only three years ago, But that's what Purple Legacy: A History of Purple Wow is doing viz-a-viz the sound invented by Joker, Guido, and Gemmy.

The hallmark of genres in the age of hyperstasis/atemporality is their accelerated life-arc and their inconsequentiality: they disseminate superfast, but burn out quick, leaving little trace in terms of influence...  that's what seapunk was parodying


2/ Electrospective

A website launched by EMI, as part of their campaign  to celebrate the legacy and living-ongoing history of electronic music (which involves a double CD compilation, promotion of classic albums, a round table discussion event, competitions, etc). Skewered here by Rory Gibb at the Quietus, who also invokes the dystopian image of the future: "Imagine crap trance riffs and recycled one note basslines stomping on a human face, for ever."

Personally I think EDM / Skrillex-Deadmau5-Bassnectar-stuff, as a bastardising/popularising move that brings out yet again the buried rock-ness of rave,  may well be a positive development.  After all, they dissed ardkore as "heavy metal house" in 91-92, you know!  Devolution of a style actually still represents a linearity, a kind of forward-logic, as opposed to the endless recursive involutions of hyperstasis (postdubstep, post-mnml, etc). Certainly I  wouldn't be surprised at all if this EDM moment had more fruitful and consequential reverberations than pico-genres like Purple.  

Keep stompin', you bastardisers!