Period instruments are miles away from retro affectation, and as two Proms this week will show, can actually bring historical music up to the momentNostalgia. What a kick. And what a commercial boon for the music industry. Love the sound of 60s pop and 70s disco?
You need the original synths if you’re a composer or producer. You listen to music on digital streams? Loser! Join the retro-future of vinyl enthusiasm, and feel the grooves under your fingers like your parents or grandparents used to. Or you can even make music physical again through the horrible medium of cassettes: all that plastic, all those tiny liner notes, all that high-speed dubbing.Retro-futurists cherish what they claim is the extra warmth and sonic richness of vinyl, but there is no acoustic reason why vinyl is better.
It is in fact objectively worse as a carrier of sonic information than any high-resolution stream of the same track, song or symphony. For cassette nostalgists, if it’s got that old-fashioned tape hiss, it sounds more “real”. We’re now looking for things to sound less clean.
Because we distrust today’s technological utopia, we want signs that our music is less polished, less perfect, and thus more human. Continue reading…
