My ninth book is out in a couple of weeks time!
Futuromania: Electronic Dreams, Desiring Machines & Tomorrow's Music Today is a themed collection about music and the future, looking at the intersection between science fiction and pop, and exploring "the rhetorics of temporality."
release rationale:
Futuromania: Electronic Dreams, Desiring Machines & Tomorrow's Music Today is a celebration of music that feels like a taste of tomorrow. Sounds that prefigure pop music’s future - the vanguard genres and heroic innovators whose discoveries eventually get accepted by the wider mass audience. But it’s also about the way music can stir anticipation for a thrillingly transformed world just around the corner: a future that might be utopian or dystopian, but at least will be radically changed and exhilaratingly other.
Futuromania shapes over two-dozen essays and interviews into a chronological narrative of machine-music from the 1970s to now. The book explores the interface between pop music and science fiction’s utopian dreams and nightmare visions, always emphasizing the quirky human individuals abusing the technology as much as the era-defining advances in electronic hardware and digital software.
A tapestry of the scenes and subcultures that have proliferated in that febrile, sexy and contested space where man meets machine, Futuromania is an enthused listening guide that will propel readers towards adventures in sound. There is a lifetime of electronic listening here.
UK edition 11 April 2024 via White Rabbit
Via select record stores, the first five hundred copies come with a freezine with bonus pieces
US edition on Hachette out on May 7.
For a flavor of futuromaniac music, try these playlists
Quick tour of future pop - Spotify
Extended odyssey into the future frontier - Spotify, Tidal
Finally, I've started a blog (yet another blog!) dedicated to the book: Futuromania, which will initially be a place for news about Futoromania appearances on podcasts and in the media, interviews, and events, and then later will develop into a repository for all the "future music"-related writings I've done over the years that didn't make it into this volume.
Look forward to reading this (although I must confess I haven't read Retromania yet!). I'm always on the listen out for this sort of thing. A few from me: Red House by David Byrne, Music Is The Answer by Colonel Abrams (a fully-formed House record that was played in UK clubs in 1984), and a couple of ECM things by Terje Rypdal - Per Ulv and Innseiling (which hits a great cowbell-led house-y groove towards the end IIRC). A bit earlier and probably outside the remit of the book: Don't Bring Back Memories by the Four Tops, a disco blueprint from 1969 which I've seen on a 1977 San Francisco club playlist.
ReplyDeleteHi Simon, as far as I see it will be a different book from the italian one, right?
ReplyDeleteFrancesco.
There's overlap but it is quite substantially different - the UK one is more focused on popular music and youth culture.
DeleteGreat (just ordered a signed copy with freezine)!
DeleteHey Simon - really looking forward to this. I remember having to turn to 'Here is the News/Ticket to the Moon' by ELO in the days before we had hot and cold running sci-fi
ReplyDeleteCongratulations Simon. Looking forward to this one. I raided those Fururemania Spotify playlists last Wednesday evening for my radio show! Saved me some panic!
ReplyDeleteNice one David. That longer playlist will take anyone deep into the future, as it's about 11 hours long!
DeleteI ordered my copy. Looking forward to it!
ReplyDeleteErm, I'm on a bit of a tight budget right now, and I'll have to wait until next Friday to order a copy. Do you think the signed editions still be available?
ReplyDeleteI don't know, I'm afraid. There are more signed ones than ones with the freezine + signed, that I do know - as I had to presign 1000 loose pages that then get bound into the final book.
DeleteOrdered!
DeleteNice one
DeleteLooking forward to reading it! Will you be doing the freezine with the US edition, as well?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately only the UK publisher is doing it. They have relationships with all these record stores.
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