Retromania

I've just finished reading Simon Reynolds 'Retromania'. A book about the modern world's obsession with it's recent past, the way that future technology is used mainly as a tool for looking back and the effect this is having on the music of today.

Reynolds tries to explain why the music scene has plateaued since the 2000's with no new genres created and nothing groundbreaking produced.  He partly credits it to the fact that all music ever recorded is now readily available for listening/sampling/copying and thinks that the glut of influences is having an adverse affect and causing the creativity of today's music makers to stagnate.

He compares the viewing habits of David Bowie's alien Thomas Jerome Newton in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth', who watches hundreds of different TV channels at once, to the way music and culture is consumed in the modern age and suggests that if we were to hear the music created by Newton  it would sound something like  Rustie or Hudson Mohawke,  electronic artists who throw a bit of everything into the mix giving us a sound that is on first listen rich and exciting but ultimately nauseating and bewildering to most.