Retromania

connect_icut

Well-known member
Did anyone see that article in the Grauniad yesterday? Hilariously irrelevant pictures and captions! Charlie's Angels????
 

muser

Well-known member
I'll be interested in to what conclusions he comes to about its cause. The accessibility to the past from the internet is an obvious one but I think theres probably more to it than that. I think for example the popularity of using old equipment has lead to people making more retroistic music even if they hadn't originally intended to, or for it to at least sound retro just by the sonic signifiers. But also theres all of the soul diva stuff, whinehouse, duffy etc which again may be less to do with more access as it is to do with just having a larger overall recorded music history for producers to pick from and market. I'm sure there are some wider social reasons but I couldnt even begin to think how you would join the dots to relate it to this really. Looking forward to reading this.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Is Retromania any different from the idea of Hauntology though?

I thought hauntology was a microgenre steeped in old reference points, or have I misunderstood?

Retromania is obviously a history of music's (and other art) increasing tendency to look backwards and frame itself with old reference points.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Reynolds blanked me IN MY LOCAL on Sunday. Harsh par.

Having said that I am probably still going to buy the book*.

*When it's remaindered in 2018.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
I'll be interested in to what conclusions he comes to about its cause. The accessibility to the past from the internet is an obvious one but I think theres probably more to it than that. I think for example the popularity of using old equipment has lead to people making more retroistic music even if they hadn't originally intended to, or for it to at least sound retro just by the sonic signifiers. But also theres all of the soul diva stuff, whinehouse, duffy etc which again may be less to do with more access as it is to do with just having a larger overall recorded music history for producers to pick from and market. I'm sure there are some wider social reasons but I couldnt even begin to think how you would join the dots to relate it to this really. Looking forward to reading this.

Things were better back then. Old sounds remind us of when life was more fun and carefree. Also kind of feel like Quentin Tranatino has a lot to answer for with Pulp Fiction. Seemed like a big trigger for today's retromania.

edit: shouldn't post when drunk. scratch the tarantino bit.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
I thought hauntology was more to do with imagined, alternative, might have been pasts and the futures (or possibly present) which didn't grow from that but could have done. Ghost pasts and presents basically.
Although that's not quite what it says here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology

Maybe what I'm describing has more to do with retrofuturism and parallel worlds. But I imagine hauntology as a kind of retrofuturist other world that somehow overlaps and bleeds into ours like a ghost.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Reynolds blanked me IN MY LOCAL on Sunday. Harsh par.

Having said that I am probably still going to buy the book*.

*When it's remaindered in 2018.

I was possessed by the urge to shoplift a copy of Wire today in Smiths so I could read this. I failed though, because I am old.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
I thought hauntology was more to do with imagined, alternative, might have been pasts and the futures (or possibly present) which didn't grow from that but could have done. Ghost pasts and presents basically.
Although that's not quite what it says here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology

Maybe what I'm describing has more to do with retrofuturism and parallel worlds. But I imagine hauntology as a kind of retrofuturist other world that somehow overlaps and bleeds into ours like a ghost.

Oh. You'll gather I skipped that chapter :eek:
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Fucking hell - you're supposed to be setting an example to the kids you teach! Getting thrown out of clubs for taking gack, shoplifting - what's next, mugging old ladies?
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Fucking hell - you're supposed to be setting an example to the kids you teach! Getting thrown out of clubs for taking gack, shoplifting - what's next, mugging old ladies?

I'd like the record to show I never mug old ladies unless really desperate.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I was possessed by the urge to shoplift a copy of Wire today in Smiths so I could read this. I failed though, because I am old.

I've finished with my copy of that issue now. So I could send it to you...

Or I dunno, burn it or something. ;)
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
From what I can gather, the term exists in large part because it's a pun ("'auntology" = ontology) in French. Kind of how the term "metrosexual" exists because "metro" rhymes with "het(e)ro".

I thought hauntology was more to do with imagined, alternative, might have been pasts and the futures (or possibly present) which didn't grow from that but could have done. Ghost pasts and presents basically.
Although that's not quite what it says here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology

Maybe what I'm describing has more to do with retrofuturism and parallel worlds. But I imagine hauntology as a kind of retrofuturist other world that somehow overlaps and bleeds into ours like a ghost.

I like that last sentence.

The thing about the mania for the revival of old styles is that it's been going on forever - imperial Rome's emulation of the art and architecture of classical Greece hundreds of years earlier, the Renaissance taking cues from the Classical civilisations, then neo-Classical architecture in the 18th century, neo-Gothic in the 19th...though I guess with today's pop music the difference is the sheer range of styles and periods that are being recycled or pastiched, be it trad folk, '60s pop-rock, post-punk, synthpop, trad metal, rave or big-band jazz.

A few years ago I was at the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club and there were people there, most of them younger than me, dressed in the costumes of just about every decade of the last century from the '20s to the '80s.
 
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