'Hypnagogic pop is music that reaches beyond its performers’ abilities. It refashions 80s chart pop-rock into a hazy, psychedelic drone. It is listening to Beverly Hills Cop and hearing the music of the spheres. It is the sound that remains after the boys of summer have gone.' -- David Keenan, The Wire
The Skaters
'The largely American movement that journalist David Keenan has tagged “hypnagogic pop” tries to convey the half-remembered, dream-like associations of early childhood in the ’80s – the term “hypnagogic” refers to the state between sleep and waking, as described in the article’s reference to “the moment just before you go to sleep as a child, while somewhere in the distance the sounds of pop and disco come muffled through the wall and infiltrate your subconscious”.' -- Hong Kong in the 60s
dolphins into the future
'Maybe it’s because I spent four years of my life reading Marxist aesthetic theory in a windowless tower, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the politics of Hypnagogic Pop ever since. I commend Keenan a hundred times over for putting into words something that was on the tip of many a critical tongue over the past year but that no one had the guts articulate as something so sweeping as a cultural movement: the rise of a lo-fi post-noise psychedelia that moves past noise’s rejection of consonance and sort of unconscious adherence to the 20th century high modernist ideal of autonomous art (art that engages in discourse with contemporary culture precisely by refusing such a discourse, though noise typically refuses a discourse with academic constructs of this kind as well). Keenan makes an interesting case for hypnagogic pop as a move towards reconnecting with the eternal archetypes embedded in the changing landscape of pop culture, of embracing the fact that our consciousness is structured almost entirely by these archetypes and using them as a spring-board for self-discovery and renewal. But I would have liked him to go a bit further fleshing out how that sound might add up to new political stance or mode of aesthetic engagement. ...
James Ferraro
'So is hypnagogic pop political, in the sense of engaging in some way in the fight against capitalism and capitalist culture? Or does it signify a kind of dying gasp on the part of experimental music, a becoming-consensual of a noise now ready to throw down its hands and to concede that–at the end of the day–people just want to listen to Fleetwood Mac? My personal belief is that, sure, this new music may be somewhat “nostalgic” or “reactionary” in its return to outmoded recording technologies and the pop cultural idioms we grew up with as kids (Keenan zeros in specifically on the ’80s, though I think that any time period and/or geographical origin should be considered fair-game). But in this movement backwards I think there is the implicit recognition that these tropes actually form the fabric of our musical consciousness, and that they present building blocks for us to use as we move forward and try to create art that is true to our experience as members of the Y generation: coming of age with a remote control in one hand and an Ipod in the other, listening to our parents tell us that every good song in the universe has already been written.' -- Emilie Friedlander, Visitation Rites
Spencer Clark
'Given I’ve been thinking about hauntology a lot recently, I was pretty pleased that it was chosen as the subject for the first of The Wire’s new salon events. ... The discussion stretched back from the recent – Herrington bringing up Ghost Box early on, Stannard raising the hypnagogic question – to the first appearance of the term hauntology, with Ian Penman’s article on dub and Tricky being mentioned, as well as Simon Reynolds’s writing – and then beyond. ... The issue of hypnagogic pop led me to want to draw a Venn diagram – was this a subset of hauntology, or was there simply overlap? I’d been having this sort of discussion on Twitter earlier in this week, and we continued it after the panel had finished. While it is easy to see something like Ducktails or Rangers as hauntological, the same couldn’t really be said of Emeralds, who aren’t explicitly referencing any sort of “utopia”, they are just happen to be using some old instruments which make them sound a bit like some older bands – without ever being pastiche.' -- mapsadaisical
Monopoly Child Star Searchers
'Apparently the searching, high-minded folks at British magazine The Wire have started calling music like this "hypnagogic pop," a reference to the state between wakefulness and sleep. I don't buy it. Copeland-- and James Ferraro, and Nite Jewel, and all these coastal folks vomiting up crusty, 80s-inspired psychedelia-- are fully awake, just on some other side of reality. It's not hypnagogic-- it's stoned, daffy, and righteous. It's chewing up something familiar and making it weird again.' -- Mike Powell, Pitchfork
Ducktails
'In a recent post on The Guardian’s music blog, titled “Blog rock lacks a political edge,” Ben Beaumont-Thomas claimed that current, popular North American independent music is “set utterly outside the city, outside work, outside the America of healthcare debates and ongoing wars.” He cited lo-fi artists like Woods, Best Coast, Wavves, Surfer Blood, and Julian Lynch, alongside a few artists (Ducktails, James Ferraro) associated with the hypnagogic pop descriptor coined by David Keenan in the August 2009 edition of The Wire, as exemplifying apolitical and escapist values. By emphasizing pastoral escapism conjoined with nostalgia, these artists dangerously put aside the material world of political reality and choose to embrace a form of dreamlike, childhood fantasy that results in apathy and inaction.' -- Elliott Sharp, Tiny Mix Tapes
Pocahaunted
'I hate to admit it when some wanker makes up a downright terrible term to reign in a disparate group of musicians, but the whole hypnagogic pop thing sort of says it. In the August issue of Wire magazine, David Keenan asserts that bands like Skaters and Zola Jesus and Pocahaunted draw their powers from slivers of what they remember from 1980s pop sounds. ... Of course, the concept of a pop music that draws from an unconscious past ("the ones between waking and sleeping... where mis-hearings and hallucinations feed into the formation of dreams") means that "hypnogogic" music is specific to its maker.' -- Henry Gruel, Impose
Emeralds
'It remains to be seen whether “hypnagogic pop” as it has been described by The Wire, will turn out to be the most significant genre classification since dubstep, or if it will be consumed into the greater whole like nu-balearic, but there is no doubt in my mind that this burgeoning movement has created some of the most exciting and melancholic music that I have heard in the last year. For those who don’t know, hypnagogic pop is lo-fi in its production values, supposedly occupying a dreamspace somewhere between the stations on the AM radio dial. Songs borrow the synthetic elements of 80s pop, but, perhaps as a reaction against the current wave of hyper-produced neon alt-pop and electro, they add woozy, fuzzed out layers of shoegaze sound, creating an effect that is akin to hearing songs as half remembered from childhood.' -- urblaushits.co.uk
Mark McGuire
'On some level, this stuff could be seen as a rebuke to the Day-Glo-dazzled, upper-drug-addled hipster hop and club-ready party music of the past year(s); whereas that stuff is extroverted and brash, chillwave is introverted and soft-spoken (grunge was to hair metal as chillwave is to Mad Rad?). Or it could be taken as an escape from the recent crop of rootsy, retrograde Americana—just as nostalgic as that genre but unbound from the strictures of tradition, a "post-" music that's made as much on effects pedals as it is played on "real" instruments. Taking the longer view, though, this sound draws on decades of music—notably such '80s punch lines as yacht rock and "healing" or world musics, but also shoegaze and ambient as far back as Brian Eno's coining of that enduring genre.' -- Eric Grandy, The Stranger
Gary War
'Basically hypnagogic pop is some American ltd-edition cassette/CD-R noiseniks who've realized that noise is a bit of a dead end (better late than never eh?) and have been making this oneiric no-fi wooze, through which flicker memory-mangled traces of Eighties music: overbrite and clinically-tight mainstream pop and rock (Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer" gets a special mention); sequencer-chattering and digi-synthy themes from movies and TV; New Age, and so forth. All of which apparently seeped into the consciousness of these young twentysomething musicians when they were toddlers.' -- Simon Reynolds, Bliss Blog
Oneohtrix Point Never
'I like the letter to this month’s Wire magazine by Vivien Priestley of Walsington, UK who wrote in response to David Keenan’s provocative (and, I have to say, confusing) article on what he calls Hypnagogic pop. This is the name he gives to the strand of (mostly) American music which blends together elements of the nation’s old weird past and more recent pop culture. (It has already been nominated by some as the ‘worst genre created by a journalist’). The letter points out that musicians like The Skaters, Pocahaunted & Ariel Pink are “wrestling with various versions of the past and trying to get beyond a merely nostalgic revivalism”. The writer asks “……has there ever been a moment in music before now where sound has been so completely soaked in traces of the past without actually sounding like anything other than the present, or the future?”' -- Animal My Soul
Ariel Pink
'In the infamous Wire article on hypnagogic pop, James Ferraro had at least two incredible quotes. The first was about his membership in the “first church of Lenny Kravitz”: “My membership there has helped me with this process: trying to download someone else’s headspace–sometimes the most extreme being that of a virtual celeb image–opened up different aspects of consciousness and life potential and interactions beyond my wildest dreams.” The second concerned his interest in so called “trash” culture: “I think aspects of human culture that some people regard as unimportant actually operate within a really deep system of ancient symbolism and human archetypes. Hard Rock Cafes, strip clubs, gyms, celebrities, etc, are all great examples of this, of roadside temples. My albums are like downloads from that body of information…”' -- Daniel Krow, The Decibel Tolls
U.S.F.
Read 'Childhood's End' by David Keenan
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p.s. Hey. In theory, today is our day off re: the theater work, or that was the plan, although there's a little too much left to do to stay completely away, so it's more of a rest stop for the performers, most of whom have been here working every day since the first week of May. But since I'm just the text guy, and since finessing technical stuff is more the issue at the moment, I'll probably see more daylight than usual. ** Scunnard, I do recall you talking about the power that Mt. St. Helens had on your childhood and imagination, yeah, and it's interesting to be reminded and hear more. I thought the video walked the line very gracefully. ** Misanthrope, Use the old evil parent trick: tell her you're driving her to ... Disneyworld or something, and then swerve into the doctor's parking lot, although you still might need to have a fake gun or something. No, you didn't corner yourself into doing a book cover day. I just thought I might catch your imagination and goodwill off guard. Yeah, Robert Pollard is always making insanely great music. No need to be cryptic, heh. ** Kier, That 'HITLH' character reminds me of me too. Hence, I guess, the remake idea. The Lithium feedback here was most rangy and contradictory. What was your doctor's final decision? ** David Ehrenstein, I've been reading about that Firouz story, and, yeah, the UK had better just fucking pony up. I can imagine Cameron granting her asylum for the pro-gay PR and then basically deciding he has done his duty to us. Ron Paul just lost himself the election, which is quite fucking nice. ** JoeM, Pretty good Hari piece, yeah. Didn't know of him before at all. ** Jesse Bransford, Yeah, I can only imagine how amazing that show and the event was. Hudson's still such a mad genius. I'll go greedily check out the FB shots. Did you snag anything? Maybe your FB gallery will tell that tale. I'm assuming the artists had average joe-style grabbing rights too. Wish my NYC timing was better so I could catch your lecture. Might be, in fact, since the 'Them' revamp show might be in October, and I'll need to be there to help prep if so. Do youtube it or something, though. Really great of you to be here, J. It's really nice. ** Steevee, How cool that the Resnais is getting a proper US release. That's quite a pleasant surprise. I can't recall what The National's singer looks like. I can't get into that earnest, sweeping, big rock thing that they increasingly do. ** Alan, You've got your TM, man, should the case arise. Thanks for answering the caste question. Well, if it's circulated, I imagine I can get it somehow. That's my great interest, of course. ** Sypha, You don't sound overly critical of Bret's stuff. You just sound like you're attentive and taking his work seriously. It's the kind of kneejerk anti-Bret people that annoy me the most. How cool about the Facebook roll-out of your first novel! I'm a bit impaired while I'm here, but I'm going to catch up with that as soon as I can. ** Rigby, Thanks, big R. Smiles galore, thanks to you. The holograms squeaked through yesterday and finally found their rightful place, whew. ** Toniok, Thanks a lot, man. Things are kind of rough going over here, but I think this particular piece needs that to get where it needs to go. ** Jose, Hey! How's it going? Yeah, I know a bit about 'Portal', and I'm kind of dying to get my controller on it, and it's just about the main reason that I'm looking for the means to spring for an XBox360. ** Wolf, Oh, shit, I never sent you your prize? Fuck, you're right, I didn't. A hundred lashes. Soon as I get back to Paris, I swear. ** Bollo, Ha ha, you didn't make me late, I did. You've been getting a steady stream of great book input lately. Curious to hear about the Parrino book, if you remember. I'm on the fence about his stuff. ** Justin, Okay, yeah, a cutting room floor rescue post. That's a good one. I've got a notebook full of scribbled, seemingly doomed Day concepts. I'll do that. You've got it. Just need to get my head offstage and my body back home first. ** Alex Rose, Sir, my total honor, it won't surprise you to hear. Just consider me one of your many agents or volunteers or something. Good news about the extra free day. Use one of those 3-day weekends to slip in and out of Paris. ** JW Veldhoen, Rose and Woodman? Interesting. I need to think about it. Interesting. Me, wise? Tell that to my theater piece collaborators, ha ha. Can we compromise on uncle? I could go with that. ** Frank Jaffe, New boyfriend, eh? Well, that's very good news, obviously. Coming down to see you ... a New Yorker? Excuse my curiosity. Anyway, that's really, really nice to know, Frank. The only Florida I've been in is a little section of the panhandle. Florida proper remains a dream vacation, or at least the multi-theme park part. I really need to check out that new Harry Potter park. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Theater piece? Well, need I say, I want to hear a lot more about that when your time is right. Would love to compare notes and all that. Yeah, I've had to normalize novels in one way or another to some degree at some point in the process, sure. I just try to normalize the surface but leave the peculiar skeleton unbroken if possible. Think about the normalization as a means only of giving readers more access, period. I guess that's the only basic rule I try to follow. It doesn't always work, of course. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hey. Hm, that makes sense about pets, about wanting something to be dependent on you, and I guess unquestionably loyal too, right? Like something (someone) who won't jump ship for a 'better' owner, won't fuck around on you or whatever. Interesting to think about, if so. Not that I wish complicated feelings on you, but I think yours are complicated in the best possible light. Never done Oxy. Is the high special in some way? Your car-centric life sounds so LA to me. I can relate to that. I like that image of her in her prom dress traversing the everyday. Yeah, I know about that Japanese vending machine dress. There's a funny youtube video of a Japanese news report on it, but I didn't save the link. Stuff like that is what makes me a borderline Japanophile, or maybe not borderline. Yeah, Romeo remaking 'Deep Red' sounds grim. I'll hit that Josie Cotton link when the internet signal I'm stuck with ups its ante. It's always weak here in the mornings for some reason. My day: Another long, non-stop work one. The good stuff: The holographic projection element of the piece finally settled in yesterday, found the right level and locales, and I think we're through the uncertain phase on that front. That was a big relief. The scene that caused the difference of opinion yesterday was revamped to accommodate both of our ideas, and it might just work with some more fiddling. We'll see, but it looks hopeful as of last night. We spent most of the day running and rerunning the central part of the piece where the paranormal fog/ holographic event overtakes everything and then transitions back into the more naturalistic stuff. I think it's getting there. Up to this point, the stage has been covered up this see-through scrim that was intended to create the visual look of a diorama, but it's been causing us problems with the projections and fog and lighting, and Gisele has pretty much decided that we're going to remove it because the stage seems to look enough like a diorama without it. We only need to use it during the last scene when there are live birds onstage, so the current plan is to lower it only for the ending of the piece which ideally will make that scene look different, more fake and romantic, which could be good. The last couple of days, I've been very concerned that my texts aren't working well. Gisele is moving the piece further and further away from the narrative/story, and it began to occur to me that my texts, which address the narrative and speak of the characters' emotions mostly, were beginning to create a disconnect, possibly a problem, a confusion. I started to worry a bit that the piece as it is developing might be being held back or distorted by the need to hang on to the narrative i.e. my texts, and the idea to me that my part of the work could end up being its downfall has been bothering me. So, I brought this up in a meeting, essentially asking if the piece needed the texts anymore and whether removing the texts might free Gisele to take the piece where she feels it needs to be. She explained how and why she thinks the texts need to be there, and how they're giving the piece something crucial, and I was very glad she feels that way, of course, and I told her that she should think about it and make sure that the texts are there because they're important and not just because they were intended to be there originally. I think maybe she's right that they do give the piece something that it needs, and I feel a little better, but we'll see what happens. So, that plus lots of small stuff filled the day and evening, and afterwards I just watched some TV and crashed. Sorry for such a long report today. I got a little carried away, I think. Friday + you = ? ** Killer Luka, An ode fit for Zeus, that one. Awesome. ** Chris (British), I think I've seen just a little bit of that Eastern European animation you mention. It was gorgeous. Yury has talked about it to me. Of course it was a fairly regular childhood input for him. I'll have to see if I can find enough and enough about it to put together a related Day. ** Armando, You made total sense, man. Of course I love the sound of your writing. Or the sound of the sound of you writing, I guess, ha ha. Flow is hard. I know that hardness well. Give it time, I say. Keep thinking about it and let your ideas about how to make it flow evolve. I'm a really slow writer myself. Things take time to work, especially when they mean a lot to you. ** Hedi, Hey. Gosh, if it's easy, a copy of that book would be amazing! Thank you a lot. I'd forgotten the title: 'Extreme Canvas'. What a great title! Oh, that bookstore on Sawtelle near the Nuart, sure. Amazing it's still there. I've been going since I was, wow, young. It's super exciting to hear you talk about the Duvert. There's really nothing I'm looking forward to more than it. Well, the new Malick film is neck and neck, I guess. Thanks so much, Hedi. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Wednesday and Thursday were pretty intense, yeah. I hope the 'day off' today brings a slight chill with it. Chill as in the 'LA speak' sense of the word, I mean. Whatever that convention is, I hope it was nothing but funness. Thanks for the good thoughts, man. You've got mine too as long as you don't mind them being slightly battered at the moment. ** Math, Hey, Math! I hope so too, what a coincidence, ha ha. How's the West Coast doing? Love, me. ** I'm going to wander around the relatively quiet theater now and see if the 'off' in day off is really happening. Some so-called Hypnagogic writings, opinions, and music for you to maybe play and contemplate today. I like the words and sounds myself, or most of them, but see what you think. Bye.
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