Amnesia Scanner, on the other hand, despite drawing on essentially the same sonic palette – the highly processed nasal vocals, the doomy riffs played on over-chewed distortion-pedal guitars, heavily gated reverby drums, 8-bit hip hop samples, random bits of faux-gregorian chanting, shrieks and sirens and grunts and dive-bombing glissandi – seem to cultivate nothing so much as an image of extreme boredom. But at least, I guess, they could be bothered to try and look like they cared. The likes of Korn and Papa Roach always seemed to thrive on a particular kind of impotent acting-out, a carefully cultivated image of transgression pieced together in the most sterile laboratory conditions. But one thing they agreed on was the utterly execrable nature of nu-metal. Kodwo Eshun spoke of being "dragged into another sonar system" by "sonic spaceships," of recorded media as an interface between science and myth. Simon Reynolds wrote paeans to that "surging-into-the-future feel of periods like the psychedelic sixties, the post-punk seventies, the hip hop eighties and the rave nineties." Mark Fisher penned excoriating blogposts against "trad rock" and "arch-conservative tediocrats" as if any music that wasn't looking ahead was somehow betraying its prime directive. Talk of accelerationist aesthetics, sonic fictions and musical futurism harks back to a set of discourses elaborated by a group of writers more or less associated with the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at Warwick back in the '90s (and, following that, the fervid blogosphere of the early and mid-'00s). Which is odd, in a way, because their new album sounds uncannily like a Limp Bizkit B-sides collection. They are even tagged 'accelerationist' on LastFM. For a certain kind of twenty-first-c music critic, Amnesia Scanner have come to represent the big-f-Future, living proof that all the old 'nuum bloggers of a decade and a half ago were wrong and pop can indeed still innovate and surge forwards in a breathless rush, beckoning on the gleaming white heat of the high tech utopia. Skrillex for people who like to start their tweets with, 'Actually.' Tearless by Amnesia ScannerĬlearly, though, this is a grift that works, 'cos from what I can gather the cool kids are fucking falling over themselves for this group. But it is a lot less colourful and playful. That first Amnesia Scanner record, when it comes down to it, is no less dumb. I mean, fuck it, 'Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites' is kind of a tune in a rather crude, brash, dumb sort of way. But if I'm honest I think what I liked about them was that they basically sounded like Skrillex but were somehow less embarrassing to namedrop. My wife literally fell asleep in the back of the club during their set, but I thought they were alright. I saw them live in Shoreditch somewhere, supporting Holly Herndon. I had a certain sympathy for the duo when their first album came out in 2018. Amnesia Scanner appear to take themselves very seriously. As much as, say, Skrillex makes essentially bad music, it is bad music that at least has the benefit of a certain liveliness, a sort of colourful playfulness. It's, you know, EDM – but not for those sort of people.Īnd sure, why not? Who wouldn't want to disassociate oneself from all that vulgarity, those gurning bros with their athleisure wear and questionable sexual politics? One may sympathise and yet still recognise a certain resentment at work here of the other's enjoyment. Amnesia Scanner want the drops, but they don't want to get flecks of whipped cream and possible glacé cherry from someone else's hurled cake on their nice clothes. It would associate and simultaneously keep apart, mark a certain distance. What then is the geographical relationship between Amnesia Scanner and, say, Skrillex or Deadmau5 or whatever other Electric Daisy Carnival alumnus? I would suggest that Amnesia Scanner's professed 'adjacency' is intended to work a subtly different form of magic to that which would seek to raise rents in Tower Hamlets with the abracadabra-like sigil, 'SoSho'. Battersea), and 'Herne Hill Borders' (Brixton). Think of those notorious London neo-toponyms 'Blackheath Approach' (or Lewisham, as everyone outside of the Foxtons payroll calls it), 'Lower Chelsea' (i.e. The realtor's sleight of tongue is suggestive of the smooth creep of gentrification. As we learnt from the extract of Wayne Holloway's novel Bindelstiff published on this website a little over twelve months ago, "the argot of Californian realty" will have it that "properties not in Beverly Hills but close by are designated Beverly Hills adjacent, spoken with as little pause between each word as possible." Amnesia Scanner describe themselves – straight-faced, apparently – as "EDM adjacent." The phrase is notable for the way it draws upon the peculiar vernacular of estate agents.
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