Very nice review of Futuromania in The Times Literary Supplement by Milo Nesbitt.
Here it is in easier to read form
One hates to be one of those "gift horse in the mouth" quibbly types..... especially with a review so thoughtful and generous...
But there were a couple of things that puzzled me.
"Never it's most lyrical stylist" - well, that's in the reading eye of the beholder obviously, but I dunno, in my day I was known as rather a rhapsodist. Indeed someone who possibly overdid it a bit! Presumably he's not seen Blissed Out or the Melody Maker stuff. But that kind of thing is not altogether absent from Futuromania. For sure, as you get older as a writer, you get a little less gauche in your blurtings.
And then the thing about future shocks being harder to find after the '90s and the secret silent argument of Retromania lurking beneath the text.
Well, maybe, maybe not... Fully half the book is taken up with the 21st Century, and futuristic thrills are found in grime, footwork, digital maximalism, Auto-Tune trap, and conceptronica (my reservations about that area are not to do with a dearth of futurism but a dearth of the Dionysian - and its replacement by the Didactic).
Of course, he's right that jungle will always be a benchmark, a pivot point in my life - the first time that those sort of lingering feelings of being "born too late" were blasted away by the full force of future-now - the awe and gratitude of being in the right place at the right time, at last.
Similar to how punk transfixes perpetually those who lived through it in real-time (I didn't, not quite - not in the sense of being forefront-of-consciousness aware, let alone actually involved in events as they unfolded. I biologically coincided with punk without witnessing it).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Another very nice review here from Bethan Cole, music writer turned beauty journalist and novelist.
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