Futuromania: Electronic Dreams and Desiring Machines

A collection of writing by Simon Reynolds, centered on music that seemed, in its moment, to prefigure the Future

Simon Reynolds’s first book in eight years 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.

Starting with an extraordinary chapter on Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer, taking in illuminating profiles of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Boards of Canada, Burial, and Daft Punk, and arguing for Auto-Tune as the defining sound of 21st century pop, Futuromania shapes over two dozen essays and interviews into a chronological narrative of machine-music from the 1970s to now. Reynolds 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.

Simon Reynolds started his journalistic career in 1986 as a staff writer for the British weekly music paper Melody Maker, and has since then written for dozens of national and local publications, including (but not limited to) the New York Times, Spin, Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Artforum, The Wire, Pitchfork, The Guardian, Slate, Frieze, and the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of four books and five collections of essays and interviews. His books have been translated into ten languages. Born in London, he now lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children.