October 2010
7 posts
The New Ruins Of Great Britain →
caughtbytheriver.net
A very interesting interview with Owen Hatherley about his new book. Worth reading all of it, but here’s the music bit:
I was quite keen on making these references, because I find it curious how little those interested in music are interested in architecture, and are perfectly prepared to be philistine about it; so often you’ll find someone who would baulk at ‘that’s just noise!’ talking about ‘concrete eyesores’. It’s interesting how closely you can map modernist architecture and modernist music. It’s no coincidence that the first serious British adaptation of modernism takes place in Sheffield, where you have the first serious adaptation of techno into something distinctively British 20 years later; Manchester’s drastic remaking and its fragmented Gothicism also has an obvious effect…there’s some Peter Saville line about Manchester being concrete underpasses and Gothic cathedrals, with Unknown Pleasures as the first, Closer as the latter. Which then begs the question of what the musical equivalent of Ian Simpson and Urban Splash might be. Stephen Trousse reckons it’s Delphic, which sounds about right.
I’ve always been struck by the fact that the proto-Goth bands such as the Banshees, Bauhaus and The Cure (from my home town of Crawley) grew up in the suburbs and new towns populated by London overspill
