Simon Reynolds

Simon Reynolds
Reynolds in 2011
Born	(1963-06-19) June 19, 1963 London, UK
Occupation	Music journalist, critic
Nationality	British
Alma mater	University of Oxford
Period	1986–present
Spouse	Joy Press
Website
blissout.blogspot.com

Simon Reynolds (born 19 June 1963) is an English music journalist, critic, and author.

Reynolds began his professional career on the staff of Melody Maker in the mid-1980s, and has since gone on to freelance and publish a number of full-length books on music and culture, ranging from historical tomes on rave music and the post-punk era to critical works such as Retromania and Blissed Out. Over the course of his career, he has contributed to Spin Magazine, Rolling Stone, Melody Maker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Guardian, The Wire, and others.

Biography and career

Reynolds was born in London in 1963. Inspired by an older brother, he became interested in music in the late 1970s shortly after the dissipation of the punk rock movement. In the mid 1980s, he attended the University of Oxford, where he co-founded the music journal Moniter with friend and future Melody Maker colleague David Stubbs. In 1986, Reynolds joined the staff of Melody Maker, where his writing was marked by enthusiasm for a wave of experimental rock and hip hop artists that emerged in the mid-1980s (including A.R. Kane, My Bloody Valentine, Public Enemy, and The Young Gods). During this period, Reynolds and his colleagues set themselves in opposition to what they characterized as the traditionalism and humanism of the indie rock, soul, and pop music of the era, as well as conservative standards of surrounding pop music discourse. Many pieces from this era would later constitute the retrospective collection Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock, published in 1990.

In 1990, Reynolds left Melody Maker (although he would continue to contribute to the magazine until 1996) and became a freelance writer, splitting his time between London and New York. In the early 1990s, he became involved in rave culture and the electronic dance music scene, particularly that of the UK, and subsequently became a writer on the development of the hardcore "rave continuum" and its surrounding culture. During this time, he also coined the term "post-rock" in his review of Bark Psychosis' album Hex, published in the March 1994 issue of Mojo magazine. In 1994, Reynolds moved to the East Village in Manhattan. In 1995, with his wife, Joy Press, Reynolds co-authored The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock 'n' Roll, a critical analysis of gender in rock. In 1998, Reynolds published Energy Flash: a Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture, a history of what became rave music, and became a senior editor at Spin magazine in the US. In 1999, he returned to freelance work and published an American version of Energy Flash in abridged form, titled: Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture.

In 2005, Reynolds released Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984, a history of the post-punk era. In 2007, Reynolds published Bring the Noise: 20 Years of Writing about Hip Rock and Hip Hop in the UK, a collection of his writing themed around the relationship between white bohemian rock and black street music. In 2008, an updated edition of Energy Flash was published, with new chapters on the ten years of dance music following the appearance of the first edition. He contributed a chapter to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008), edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky. In 2011, Reynolds published Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past, a critical investigation into what he perceives as the current situation of chronic retrogression in pop music.

Reynolds has continued writing for magazines, as well as his blog, Blissout. He resides in Los Angeles.

Critical style

Reynolds has written extensively on gender, class, race, and sexuality in relation to music and culture. He has on occasion used the Marxist concepts of commodity fetishism and false consciousness to describe attitudes prevalent in hip hop music. In discussing the relationship between class and music, Reynolds coined the term liminal class, defined as the upper-working class and lower-middle-class, a group he credits with "a lot of music energy". Reynolds has also written about drug culture and its relationship to various musical developments and movements.

Early in his career, Reynolds often made use of critical theory and philosophy in his analysis of music, deriving particular influence from thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Georges Bataille, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari. In the last decade, Reynolds has made use of Jacques Derrida's concept of hauntology to describe a strain of music and popular art preoccupied with the disjointed temporality and "lost futures" of contemporary culture.

Books

• Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock. Serpent's Tail, August 1990, ISBN 1-85242-199-1
• The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock 'N' Roll . Co-authored with Joy Press. Serpent's Tail, January 1995, ISBN 1-85242-254-8
• Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture (UK title, Pan Macmillan, 2008, ISBN 978-0-330-45420-9 / 1998, ISBN 0-330-35056-0), published in abridged form as Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture (North American title, Routledge, 1999, ISBN 0-415-92373-5)
• Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. Faber and Faber Ltd, April 2005, ISBN 0-571-21569-6 (U.S. Edition: Penguin, February 2006, ISBN 0-14-303672-6)
• Bring The Noise: 20 Years of writing about Hip Rock and Hip-Hop. Faber and Faber Ltd, May 2007, ISBN 978-0-571-23207-9
• Totally Wired: Post-Punk Interviews and Overviews. Faber and Faber Ltd, February 2009, 978-0571235490 (U.S. Edition: Soft Skull Press, September 2010, 1-59376-286-0)
• Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past. Faber and Faber Ltd, June 2011, 978-0571232086

CD

• Rip It Up and Start Again : Post Punk 1978-1984 - CD compiled by Simon Reynolds, 15 May 2006, V2 label

External links

• Official blog
• Furious.com interview about Rip it Up
• Repellent review and interview of Rip it Up, 2006
• Seattle Weekly interview about Rip it Up
• A New (Rock) Polarity, a 1995 review of The Sex Revolts by Robert Christgau in the New York Times Book Review
• Review of Rip it Up in the New York Times, 2006
• Rip It Up and Start Again blog
• Bring the Noise blog
• Energy Flash blog
• Blissed Out blog
• The Sex Revolts blog
• ReynoldsRetro blog — an archive of Reynolds' writing
• blissout (Reynolds's defunct website, last updated 31 October 2002) - copy at the Internet Archive
• Rock's Back Pages — biography and list of articles by Reynolds
• "Bind and Heal: An Interview with Simon Reynolds", in Oxonian Review with Alex Niven about Retromania, 2011.