Simon Reynolds

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

Simon Reynolds (born 19 June 1963) is a British 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 popular culture, ranging from historical tomes on rave music, glam rock, and the post-punk era to critical works such as The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock 'n' Roll (co-authored with his wife Joy Press in 1995) and Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past (2011). Over the course of his career, he has contributed to Spin, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Guardian, The Wire, Pitchfork, and others.

Biography and career

Reynolds was born in London in 1963 and grew up in Berkhamsted. Inspired by his younger brother Tim, he became interested in rock and specifically punk in 1978. In the early Eighties, he attended Brasenose Collage at the University of Oxford. After graduating, in 1984 he co-founded the Oxford-based music journal Monitor with his friends and future Melody Maker colleagues Paul Oldfield and David Stubbs along with Hilary Little and Chris Scott. In 1986, Reynolds joined the staff of Melody Maker, where his writing was marked by enthusiasm for a wave of neo-psychedelic rock and hip hop artists that emerged in the mid-1980s (including A.R. Kane, My Bloody Valentine, Public Enemy, Throwing Muses and The Young Gods). During this period, Reynolds and his Melody Maker colleagues set themselves in opposition to what they characterized as the conservative humanism of the era's indie rock, soul, and pop music, as well as the unadventurous style and approach of most music criticism. Pieces from this late Eighties era would form the remixed collection Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock, published in 1990.

In 1990, Reynolds left the staff of 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 theorized the concept of "post-rock", using the term first in a Melody Maker 1993 feature about Insides and then in a more developed form in a May 1994 thinkpiece for The Wire and in a review of Bark Psychosis' album Hex, published in the March 1994 issue of Mojo magazine. In late 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 house music, techno and later rave genres like jungle music and gabber. The book was published that same year in America in abridged form, with the title Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture. In 1998 Reynolds also became a senior editor at Spin magazine in the US. In 1999, he returned to freelance work.

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 decade of dance music following the appearance of the first edition. In 2009, a companion volume to Rip It Up and Start Again was published, Totally Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews, containing interview transcripts and new essays.

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, with a focus on the effects of the internet and digital culture on music consumption and musical creativity.

In 2013, a second expanded update of Energy Flash was published, with new material on the rise of dubstep to worldwide popularity and the EDM or Electronic Dance Music explosion in America.

Reynolds's eighth book, a history of the glam rock era, Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, was published in October 2016.

In addition to writing books, Reynolds has continued freelancing for magazines, giving lectures, and appearing in music documentaries. He also operates a blog, Blissblog along with various satellite blogs such as the book-focused outlets Energy Flash, Retromania and Shock and Awe, and the drivel blog Hardly Baked. Reynolds also maintains an archive for his writing, the blog ReynoldsRetro. He resides in Los Angeles.

Critical style

Reynolds' writing has blended cultural criticism with music journalism. He has written extensively on gender, class, race, and sexuality in relation to music and culture. 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 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. 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. In the 2000s, Reynolds 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
• Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, from the Seventies to the Twenty-First Century. Faber and Faber Ltd, October 2016, 978-0571301713

CDs

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

External links

• Blissblog - Reynolds' main blog
• ReynoldsRetro blog – an archive of Reynolds' writing
• Energy Flash blog
• Hardly Baked blog
• Shock and Awe blog
• Retromaniablog
• Rip It Up and Start Again blog
• Bring the Noise blog
• Blissed Out blog
• The Sex Revolts blog
• 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
• "Worth Their Wait" - Pitchfork Review article by Reynolds on British weekly music press and its formative influence
• Furious.com interview about Rip It Up and Start Again
• Seattle Weekly interview about Rip It Up and Start Again
• "Bind and Heal: An Interview with Simon Reynolds", in Oxonian Review with Alex Niven about Retromania, 2011.
• "Rave Confessions: An interview with Simon Reynolds" - Electronic Beats interview about the 2013 edition of Energy Flash
• "From Bowie To Gaga: How Glam Lives On" - Pitchfork interview about Shock and Awe