On Hypnagogues

I think I am a little late (8 months) on all this talk on "hypnagogic pop" talk but I've been out of the loop for the past couple of months. Apparently, David Keenan has been slapped about on the web for the article he wrote in the Wire, coining the term "hypnagogic pop", mainly directed at his temerity to try and classify music. Doesn't he know its just music, man!? It can't be classified. It dropped out of the sky, pure and perfect.

I can't comment too much on the article itself since I haven't read it but the reaction seems to strike me as the cultural version of the "post-political consensus" cited by Mr K-punk amongst comments on the Guardian CIF site in reaction to a piece (an excellent one at that) about Haiti's history after the recent earthquake. In the case of Haiti, the cry was that "politics" and "ideology" should be kept separate from the current emergency. In this case, the idea that music critics try to classify, make connections between artists or use any framework other than "the music" in writing is the crime.

But that's what critics are meant to do, right? The idea that culture exists in some sort of pure plane, free from "politics" or "classification", is pervasive and infuriating. Culture can't be understood purely through other meta-narratives or frameworks (like politics, ideology or class) but they overlap and intersect, these points should be what good critics examine and dissect.

In the next few days, Ill have something up on may two favourite players in "hypnagogy", Gary War and Ducktails.