'The Sound Of Tomorrow' is yesterday

Some time ago, I wrote a piece for The Song Sommelier that was a brief, thirty-three track introduction into how electronic music went from being a novelty genre to becoming the fundamental component of most modern pop music.

I was pretty pleased with it, if I'm honest, despite two nagging concerns: one was that it could have been improved by having more text and the other was that I didn't really have the time to think it through and do a bit more research.

But that was fine: it was just a thing and nobody complained, plus I enjoyed doing it so that should have been that. But then somebody - and I feel bad that I can't remember who* - gave me this book, which I picked up today. I haven't started it yet but I can already feel a blush coming on when I read this properly researched text.

The title did give me pause for thought, though, because the irony here - illustrated by the subtitle: 'How Electronic Music Was Smuggled Into The Mainstream' - is that this is is not a book about the sound of tomorrow - that is a simply a reference to how *some* people once viewed electronic music - it's a book about the past. 

And the weird thing is that a lot of that past overlaps with my life and my interests. When I went to the School of Electronic Music recently, my guide and I were talking about the same things but to him, maybe in his early twenties, they were history while to me they were part of my life. He knew who Gary Numan was but Tubeway Army's 'Are "Friends" Electric?' was the first single I bought.

So, I am anticipating an odd but interesting read and, hopefully, one that won't make me feel embarrassed by my own efforts in covering the same topic.

*unless it was me, of course

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Reading: 'The Sound Of Tomorrow' by Mark Brend