I keep getting these emails from Amazon.co.uk

Hello SCW Reynolds, we have recommendations for you

Hello SCW Reynolds,

Are you looking for something in our Music, Stage & Screen Books store? If so, you might be interested in these items.

Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past
by Simon Reynolds

RRP: £17.99
Price: £9.00
You Save: £8.99 (50%)

Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984
by Simon Reynolds

RRP: £11.99
Price: £6.23
You Save: £5.76 (48%)

Generation Ecstacy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture
by Simon Reynolds

RRP: £23.99
Price: £22.29
You Save: £1.70 (7%)

Got to give their algorhythms some credit, from my past purchases and searches they have developed a very good sense of what I'm into!

(also recommended by Amazon.co.uk - Luke Haines's Post Everything and Dorian Lynskey's book on protest songs)

"The Rise of Dress-up and the Fall of Pop" (another take on the VMA's from Nitsuh Abebe)

some other good reads:

compression still ruining music (Nick Southall's Quietus update-for-2011 of his celebrated Stylus loudness wars piece

"internet voids" (Joshua @ .. As Though the Shame Would Outlive Him)


genremania (Michaelangelo Matos for the Guardian on where all those damn names came from)

"it's an escape hatch to a better musical world" (long-time-a-comin' sequel to the electronic dance critique "souffle not rising" post, mnml ssgs's on three elecronic non-dance releases that indicate ways forward)

my latest guest-blog for Bruce Sterling's Beyond the Beyond @ Wired is about the retro-fiesta that was this year's Video Music Awards