Future Mania: A Guide to Electronic Music by Simon Reynolds, translated by Rie Eguchi
ISBN:978-4-911484-13-5
Why do we seek "music of the future"
and love electronic music?
A guide to electronic music worth a lifetime of listening
by one of the most influential music writers, now finally available in translation!
Simon Reynolds's Future Maniac is filled with a celebration of music that hints at "the dawn of tomorrow."
Beginning with a vivid first chapter on Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer, it features profiles that delve into the core of Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, synth-pop, YMO, Ryuichi Sakamoto... then gabber, Electronic Body Music, Acid House, through jungle, Boards of Canada, Burial, and Daft Punk, followed by a discussion that Auto-Tune is the definitive sound of 21st-century pop, and the 2010s of New Age and ambient...
Future Maniac elevates the history of machine music from the 1970s to the present day into a chronological narrative. It is packed with electronic music listening experiences worth a lifetime.
"No music journalist captures and defines the zeitgeist with such skill."
── The Guardian
A5 softcover / 400 pages
Simon Reynolds
Born in London, UK, in 1963. After graduating from Oxford University, he began his career in 1986 as a staff writer for the music weekly Melody Maker. In the mid-1990s, he moved to New York and has since worked as a freelance writer, publishing sharp critiques in numerous influential media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wire, and Pitchfork. He has authored many important works, including the acclaimed Rip It Up and Start Again (2005), which comprehensively summarized the history of post-punk; Energy Flash (1998), which traced the history of rave culture while presenting his famous "hardcore continuum" theory; and Retromania (2011), which analyzed the excessive return to the past in popular music. In 2026, he published his eagerly anticipated latest book, Still In A Dream: Shoegaze, Slackers And The Reinvention Of Rock, 1984–1994, which covers the rise of shoegaze, grunge, and dream pop.
Contents
Introduction
PART 1
Music from the Future: Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte’s “I Feel Love” and the Invention of Electronic Dance Music
How Kraftwerk Created the Future of Pop: A Florian-centric Narrative
The Analog Synth Gods of the 1970s: The Final Frontier
Technopop: Yellow Magic Orchestra and Ryuichi Sakamoto
Dub Reggae: Keith Hudson, Creation Rebel, The Dub Syndicate
UK Synthpop: Electronic Dreamers
Industrial Dance and Electronic Body Music
Acid House: Into the Future
Rave: Aysen’s "Trip II The Moon"
Gabber and Groomcore: The Mover and PCP Records
Jungle: Omni Trio's Breakbeat Symphony
Artcore: A Guy Called Gerald’s "Black Secret Technology"
Minimal Techno: Gas and Wolfgang Voigt's Germanic Vision
IDM: Boards of Canada
PART 2
Grime: We Run the Roses
Dubstep: Burial
Maximal Nation: Rustie and the Rise of Digital Maximalism
PART 3
A New Wave of Women Electronic Musicians: Synths and Sensibility
Xenomania: Loving the "Alien" in the Expanding Internet Soundworld
Footwork: Jlin's Martial Art Form
Daft Punk: "Digital Love," "Random Access Memories," and the Failure of the Future
The Life of Auto-Tune: How Pitch Correction Revolutionized 21st-Century Pop Music – From Afrobeats to Atlanta Trap
Permanent Return to Ambient and New Age: Back to the Garden
Conceptronica
PART 4
Coda: Sonic Fictions (A Two-Part Consideration)
Part One: “If This Is the Future, Why Is the Music So Lame?” Science Fiction in Film
Part Two: Visions of Future Sound: Science Fiction Writers Dream of Future Music
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Music for Future Maniacs
Further Reading for the Future
On Publication
Index
