This is evidence of time travel. Not in a good way.
In the future, we’ll still be in thrall to the past, still looking back and longing. We’ll still be unable to understand the terrible now. We’ll read and re-read Simon Reynolds’s Retromania (really must get round to that; it’s on my Christmas List. The irony of not reading it yet is killing me) and we’ll use it as a guidebook rather than a warning. Then, in 2033, Planas will be born and, in the confusion caused by the First Animal Rebellion, we’ll confuse it with retro-cool, will raise it, will make it good.
No one will mention Emperors or Clothes.We’ll see the pilfering (from Burial, from Massive Attack, from Rustie – Christ, Rustie was only last year!) and yet we won’t see it; it’ll hide in plain view and challenge us to not see it as swerve, as reconfiguration. Time will bury these sounds next to each other, as if they co-existed all along. In 2033, there’ll be no way of seeing the join without assuming some alchemy. Others will listen to Planas and form similar shapes, setting every producer on a bad trajectory, a soulsucking spin into oblivion. Pop will eat itself but by then even that whored phrase will just be a dimly remembered prayer.
This record cannot be allowed to exist, in any time. You’ll see recommendations for it all over the place (my demo came with gin-slicked praise all over it, from good people soon to be lost to the cause), people are already looking forwards and hoping to catch up with the future. Don’t believe a word of them.
Oh, and before I forget, Ferraro.
-Loki-
