Simon Reynolds
Reynolds in 2011
Born	(1963-06-19)19 June 1963 (age 62) London, England
Occupation	Music critic author
Alma mater	Brasenose College, Oxford
Period	1986–present
Spouse	Joy Press
Website
blissout.blogspot.com

Simon Reynolds (born 19 June 1963) is an Englishmusic journalist and author who began his career atMelody Maker in the mid-1980s. He subsequently worked as afreelancer and published a number of books on music and popular culture.^[1]

Reynolds has contributed toSpin,Rolling Stone,The New York Times,The Village Voice,The Guardian,The Wire,Pitchfork and others.

Reynolds was born inLondon in 1963^[2] and grew up inBerkhamsted.^[3] Inspired by his younger brother Tim, he became interested in rock and specifically punk in 1978.^[4] In the early 1980s, he attendedBrasenose College, OxfordUniversity. After graduating, in 1984 he co-founded the Oxford-based pop culture journalMonitor with his friends and futureMelody Maker colleagues Paul Oldfield andDavid Stubbs along with Hilary Little and Chris Scott.^[2]

In 1986, Reynolds joined the staff ofMelody Maker, where his writing was marked by enthusiasm for a wave ofneo-psychedelic rock andhip hop artists that emerged in the mid-1980s (includingA.R. Kane,My Bloody Valentine,Public Enemy,Throwing Muses andthe Young Gods). During this period, Reynolds and hisMelody Maker colleagues set themselves in opposition to what they characterized as the conservativehumanism of the era'sindie rock,soul, andpop music, as well as the unadventurous style and approach of most music criticism.^[5] Pieces from this late Eighties era would form the remixed collectionBlissed Out: The Raptures of Rock, published in 1990.^[1]

In 1990, Reynolds left the staff ofMelody Maker (although he would continue to contribute to the magazine until 1996) and became afreelance writer, splitting his time between London and New York. In the early 1990s, he became involved inrave culture and theelectronic dance music scene, particularly that of the UK, and became awriter on the development of what he would later conceptualise as the "hardcore continuum" along with its surrounding culture such as pirate radio.^[1] Much of this writing was later published inEnergy Flash: a Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture (1998), a history of thebreakbeat,house,techno and later rave genres likejungle music andgabber. The book was published that same year in America in abridged form, with the titleGeneration Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture.

During this time, he also theorized the concept of "post-rock", using the term first in aMelody Maker 1993 feature aboutInsides and then in a more developed form in a May 1994 thinkpiece forThe Wire and in a review ofBark Psychosis' albumHex, published in the March 1994 issue ofMojo magazine.^[6] In late 1994, Reynolds moved to theEast Village inManhattan. In 1995, with his wife,Joy Press, Reynolds co-authoredThe Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock 'n' Roll, a critical analysis of gender in rock. In 1998 Reynolds became a senior editor atSpin magazine in the US. In 1999, he returned to freelance work.

In 2013, a second expanded update ofEnergy Flash was published, with new material on the rise ofdubstep to worldwide popularity and the EDM orElectronic Dance Music explosion in America.

In 2005, Reynolds releasedRip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984, a history of thepost-punk era.^[7] In 2007, Reynolds publishedBring the Noise: 20 Years of Writing about Hip Rock and Hip Hop in the UK, a collection of his writing themed around the relationship between white bohemian rock and black street music. In 2008, an updated edition ofEnergy Flash was published, with new chapters on the decade of dance music following the appearance of the first edition. In 2009, a companion volume toRip It Up and Start Again was published,Totally Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews, containing interview transcripts and new essays.

In 2011, Reynolds publishedRetromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past, a critical investigation into what he perceives as the current situation of chronic retrogression in pop music, with a focus on the effects of the internet and digital culture on music consumption and musical creativity.^[8]

Reynolds's eighth book, a history of theglam rock era,Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, was published in October 2016.^[9]

In addition to writing books, Reynolds has continued freelancing for magazines, giving lectures, writing liner notes, and appearing in music documentaries. He resides inLos Angeles.^[10]

Reynolds' writing has blendedcultural criticism with music journalism.^[11] He has written extensively ongender,class,race, andsexuality in relation to music and culture. Early in his career, Reynolds often made use ofcritical theory andphilosophy in his analysis of music, deriving particular influence from thinkers such asRoland Barthes,Georges Bataille,Julia Kristeva,Michel Foucault, andGilles Deleuze andFélix Guattari.^[1] He has on occasion used theMarxist concepts ofcommodity fetishism andfalse consciousness to describe attitudes prevalent inhip hop music.^[12] In discussing the relationship between class and music, Reynolds coined the termliminal class, defined as the upper-working class and lower-middle-class, a group he credits with "a lot of music energy".^[13] Reynolds has also written aboutdrug culture and its relationship to various musical developments and movements.^[14] In the 2000s, in tandem with fellow critic and bloggerMark Fisher, Reynolds made use ofJacques Derrida's concept ofhauntology to describe astrain of music and popular art preoccupied with the disjointed temporality and "lost futures" of contemporary culture.^[15]

Reynolds has voted in a number of year-end critics' polls, most often forThe Wire'sRewind and forThe Village Voice'sPazz & Jop. Since 2011, whenThe Wire renamed its year-end poll from Records of the Year to Releases of the Year, Reynolds has cast several votes for songs rather than album-length releases. Reynold's full voting ballots and year-end commentaries for a variety of magazines, going back to the late 1980s, can be found at Reynolds's Faves/Unfaves blog.

• Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock. London:Serpent's Tail (Aug. 1990).ISBN 1852421991.
• The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock 'N' Roll, with Joy Press. London:Serpent's Tail (Jan. 1995).ISBN 1852422548.
• Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture. United Kingdom:Palgrave Macmillan (2008).ISBN 978-0330454209.
  • Hardcover ed. (abridged).Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture. Boston:Little, Brown (1998).ISBN 0316741116.
  • Softcover ed.: London:Routledge (1999).ISBN 0415923735.
• Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. London:Faber & Faber (Apr. 2005).ISBN 0571215696.
  • U.S. ed.:Penguin (Feb 2006).ISBN 0143036726.Full text.
• Bring The Noise: 20 Years of Writing About Hip Rock and Hip-Hop. London:Faber & Faber (May 2007).ISBN 978-0571232079.
• Totally Wired: Post-Punk Interviews and Overviews. London:Faber & Faber (Feb 2009).ISBN 978-0571235490.
  • U.S. ed.:Soft Skull Press (Sep 2010).ISBN 1593762860.
• Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past. London:Faber & Faber (Jun. 2011).ISBN 978-0571232086.
• Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, from the Seventies to the Twenty-First Century. London:Faber & Faber (Oct. 2016).ISBN 978-0571301713.
• Futuromania: Electronic Dreams from Moroder to Migos.Minimum fax (Nov. 2020).ISBN 978-8833890920.

Book contributions

• "Ecstasy is a Science: Techno-romanticism." In:Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth. Edited by Karen Kelly and Evelyn McDonnell.New York University Press in collaboration with Dia Center for the Arts (1999).ISBN 0814747264.

• Energy Flash (1998)^[40]
• Rip It Up and Start Again (2006)^[41]

• Blissblog - Reynolds' main blog
• Rock's Back Pages – biography and list of articles by Reynolds

• 1963 births
• Living people
• Alumni of Brasenose College, Oxford
• English male bloggers
• California Institute of the Arts faculty
• English bloggers
• English expatriates in the United States
• English music critics
• English music journalists
• Journalists from London
• Melody Maker writers
• People from Berkhamsted
• People from the East Village, Manhattan
• Rock critics
• Rolling Stone people
• The Village Voice people
• The Wire (magazine) writers

• Pages containing links to subscription-only content
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from January 2018