"A better question is whether the cultural relativity induced by having all musical histories on tap 24/7 renders the act of attempting to connect historical threads a fool's errand. Being inside this cyclotron of atomized information from my own vantage point produces a palpable sense of vertigo. A feeling that it could be anything in any order by anyone at any time for any reason. Everything pointing in all directions quaquaversally but arriving at no destination. And its effect is a cancellation of affect. A feeling like Baudrillard's screen stage of blank fascination has reached its terminal phase and all previous depths are collapsing into an endless vista of dazzling surface play. In my case, it's caused me to recoil and retreat to engaging with music in the way that I did when I was in my early teens, which is to say with no concern at all for what else I might be missing at the same time or what else "I need to know about," since there's no sense any longer of a beginning, end or causation in the spaces between, so I just tune into a select few things that I then revisit with depth and intensity and block out the rest of the hubbub"--Eric Lumbleau, Mutant Sounds

that's the penultimate, climactic quote in a roundtable of sharity-cases debating "The Rise and Fall of the Obscure Music Download Blog", convened by Mike Allen at the Awl

on which subject, I had been aware for a while now of a discernible dimming of energy in the arcana-provider blog circuit...  some blogs getting very sporadic in their posting.... others coming to a halt without explanation....  others announcing their closedown on account of threats and warnings of prosecution...  but more noticeable still, a dearth of new ones forming...

the loss of Megaupload and turmoil and changes and new strictures institutued in re.  other file hosting services is part of it, obviously

but i had also attributed it to some degree to an exhaustion of the overall Project...  the  obscure-music seam mined out ...  little left of even marginal interest or worth to introduce to the world .... all once-derided/overlooked zones of any construable merit or consequences now thoroughly reclaimed, sucked dry...

(some of the roundtablers disagree with this idea though)

as for Mr Lumbleau's comment, i know how he feels, oh yeah...