Synth-pop Bangers... (and Their Repercussions)

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/7ae3a4_216267c1a3aa47e09dfb6000df3249eb/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Just some of the bangers discussed in Synth-pop and its Repercussions. For the complete playlist the editors have compiled a YouTube Playlist from Contributors.

Synth Pop Bangers and their Repercussions

It is exciting to see Synth-pop and its Repercussions now appearing on the Bloomsbury website, complete with its cover design and details of the collection. After the long process of researching, writing and revising, there is something particularly satisfying about seeing the book take a more concrete form.

Edited by Geoff Stahl, Nabeel Zuberi and Holly Kruse, the collection brings together a wide range of approaches to synth-pop, considering not only its sounds, technologies and production practices, but also its imagery, media histories, politics and cultural meanings. Importantly, it approaches synth-pop as an international and transnational phenomenon, moving beyond a straightforward UK- or US-centred account to consider its different local contexts, circuits and afterlives.

My chapter, “Cold War Atomic Pop: Synth Pop and the Aesthetics of Nuclear Armageddon,” considers the relationship between synth-pop, Cold War culture and the pervasive presence of nuclear anxiety during the late 1970s and 1980s. I’m particularly interested in the ways that electronic sounds, futurist imagery and pop forms could register the tensions of a period shaped by technological optimism alongside the possibility of nuclear catastrophe.

The chapter sits within the book’s broader interest in the connections between technology, politics, culture and the imagination of the future. It has been fascinating to see how these themes emerge differently across the contributions in the collection.

Many thanks to Geoff, Nabeel and Holly for bringing the volume together and for creating the space for these different perspectives on synth-pop. It is great to finally see the project represented on the Bloomsbury site and to have a first look at the finished cover. I’m very much looking forward to seeing the book published and to reading the other contributions in full. For the complete playlist of bangers the editors have compiled a YouTube Playlist from Contributors.