12 Songs: Retro-Futurism
Sorry in advance to the squares – we’re getting weird again this week.
In Lieu of our recent excursion down the Pharaoh Sanders/Floating Points rabbit hole, we thought it’d be fitting to compile a few artists whose work possesses a similar feel. It’s that retro-futuristic aesthetic: the fusing of music’s past with the ultramodern sounds of its future in a way that could belong to either era, but is tastefully reminiscent of both - just like that guy on the finless shape who tastefully decided to share the wave of the day with you last weekend.
Gary Numan always did it well - we threw two classic Tubeway Army tunes in the mix for good measure.
JJ Cale’s Durango sounds a bit like waiting room music for a time travel agency.
When I played Floating Points’ Kuiper for a friend, they described it as “Miles Davis playing Radiohead, but on LSD,” which actually makes total sense. So I guess that fits the bill.
And perhaps my favorite inclusion on here is Bowie’s Stay, whose tribal rhythms go nicely with the song’s more artificial sounding layers of string-synth and guitar.
This week’s playlist is certified algorithm free, as always. Next week we get out of orbit and back to Earth. —Jackson Todd
Gary Numan, Getty Images
{Above artwork by Julie Mehretu, Stadia II, ink and acrylic on canvas, 2004}
