It’s a very interesting read, discussing the new desolation of developments such as Cardiff Bay with its gated communities, its swathes of empty luxury flats and his theory of “psuedomonderism” in general.
But there’s a particular passage that caught my eye…
“While the ruins of the postwar settlement's architecture – the under-maintained estates, the yawningly wide plazas, the vertiginous new spaces of towers and walkways – elicited aesthetic responses in post-punk and electronic music that matched the starkness, power and modernity of their setting, how do you respond critically to something that is trying so desperately not to offend?”
I think we already have a response in what is now derogatively titled Chillwave. Although predominately US based, I think the hazy nostalgia, the ever-so-soft synth washes, the palpable melancholia of the music is the reaction to the disassociation of people with a sense of place and power. The music is imbued with a sense of loss, a loss of feeling for anything. Chillwave is the sound of resentful and frustrated apathy.
The same can easily be said of Dubstep, but I believe that it is still tempered by modernist rather than psuedomodernist architecture.
[Right click and "Download Document" for mp3 of Feel It All Around by Washed Out]
