Hypnagagme pop

Interesting collection of articles in the new Wire about various contemporary uses of past music, particularly analogue and early electro pop music of the late 70s and early 8os. The one with the most currency for me is Byron Coley's slightly curmudgeonly (natch) take down of Hypnagogic pop and contemporary synth music, in service of elevating raw American guitar rock a la The Bassholes, Siltbreeze groups, et al. He at least has a sense of humor about the whole thing sorely lacking in the other participants' entries (save Keith Moline's usual droll observations), and his paragraph on the proliferation of bygone music era simulacrum cum instant internet experts needed to be said years ago, and repeated often.

I like a decent amount of what gets lumped under the Hypnagogic pop banner, but part of what's irritating about it is it's a genre named and defined by David Keenan (the same guy (ir)responsible for "New Weird America") in the pages of The Wire about a year ago. Since then, he's used the term in almost every profile or longer article he's written. He's even gone so far in a profile as to include a quote by the guy from Rangers commenting on Keenan's use of the word, thinking aloud as to whether he's a part of a genre the author invented a name for a few months earlier. What's more, many other Wire scribes use the term excessively, so it's appearing at least a dozen times per issue, probably more. Meanwhile, if New Weird America is mentioned, which is rarely now, it's done so somewhat sheepishly, and the Noise kick they were on a few years ago has receded into the background.

This is to be expected, and The Wire of all magazines is justly respected for picking up on new trends as they continue to monitor old ones. They continue to do a remarkable job of keeping up to date as a print magazine, even staying ahead of most online music magazines and popular blogs. And Keenan does make a lengthy if somewhat sketchy case for the Hypnagogic genre and what might constitute a practitioner. However, if a Mojo or Q were to invent a name for a genre and have their writers using it excessively within months of coining it, you can imagine the snickers and tut tutting coming from The Wire's offices. As it is, I feel like the magazine has beat that particular horse to death in less than a year, and I'm sick of hearing about it.

What's more interesting to me, and this could very well be because I'm American and don't have as thorough access to information about this music and the culture it reflects and is created in, is the hauntology movement represented by Mordant Music, James Kirby's various projects and Ghost Box, among others. In fact, Mark Fisher's article in this month's survey reminds us Kirby was 10 years ahead of Oneohtrix Point Never and Justin Bieber pranksters in finding the sublime hidden in the dregs of pop music. And, yes, I know hauntology was probably appropriated from Derrida by a Wire writer, but for me its application to the music it describes is both clever and appropriate. Plus I generally like the music better.