The rise of the machines

It's the mark of a good book that you find your thoughts drifting in its direction continually for days, weeks, months, even years after you finished it. Two such tomes came to mind while I was reading Richard Evans' Listening To The Music The Machines Make: Inventing Electronic Pop 1978-1983.

The first was The KLF: Chaos, Magic And The Band Who Burned A Million Pounds, for the point John Higgs makes about non-fiction authors developing a thesis as a way of imposing some form of order onto a disorderly array of facts - a thesis that is by its very nature partial and only tells some of the story. The problem with Evans' book is that, curiously, such a thesis is largely absent - he generally avoids authorial narrative or value judgements, preferring to bombard the reader with release details and the music opinions of the journalists of the time, presumably hoping that the facts will speak for themselves.

The second book was more obvious: Simon Reynolds' Rip It Up And Start Again, which Evans rightly cites. Comparisons are inevitable, and unflattering for Evans - Reynolds covers the same ground as part of his own survey of the post-punk landscape, but marshalls the raw material in a much more engaging and colourful manner. Reviewing Reynolds' volume, I described it as "no dry guidebook (if such a thing were even possible or desirable)". Sadly, Evans' book proves that it is possible after all.

Anyway, here's my review for Buzz.