Bands are essentially productions these days, demonstrations of the members’ knowledge of pop music, and how well they can represent, distort or contraposition variously sticky sets of ideas past and present. In many cases, the demonstration extends to their ability to coax timely sounds from GarageBand, Ableton, Logic or Final Cut Pro, and the farther an act skews toward this side of the argument, the more academically their music is usually received, recognized as an exercise in exercising software.

From every angle, fiendish new clothes and wild stylistic promiscuity are the order of the day: cf. Animal Collective’s tenaciously refined Maximalism , the cut-and-paste Facebook rock of an act like Attack Attack, mainstream hits massive as “Gee”, from K-Pop phenomenon Girls’ Generation, and Rusko's strobe-light remix of Kelis’ "4th of July". Each exemplifies how many sounds listeners seem eager to process over the course of three minutes. On the youth circuit, these ideas are simplified, their best moments broken out and expanded, as new artists take their first steps. For going on two years, the focus has been chunky mid-‘80s drum machines augmented by new production techniques, and drowned in grainy FM synthesizer pads.

Retro-lust is nothing new, but in the digital era, nostalgia is an increasingly received impulse. Invocations of “The 80s” and “The 90s” in 2010 are soon to be wholly reflexive, as whatever complicated and real meaning these times held for the people who lived through them is stripped away in favor of their corniest, most amusing—read: obvious—excesses. Mr. Dream’s drummer sharply bemoaned the play-nice, find-and-replace excision of “derivative” for “nostalgic” in most recent critiques, but stopped short of the harsher truth: you can’t be nostalgic for something you have never experienced. You can only parrot its echoes.

MDREME

11 - Let Everyone Down (An April March)

8 - Init United

7 - Jane Churm

6a - Loop

6 - Sheffield Park

5 - My Cavalry

4 - My Girlfriend

3 - Return True

2 - Beloved

10 - Fire For Effect

1 - Unoriginal Pirate Material

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