arc08: "MINING MEMORY" - NUN and the 'stylised nostalgia' debate (Crawlspace, 2014)
+++on a new retrofuturism: an edited essay from 2014
Various events over recent months conspired to have me thinking about some forgotten underground music trend controversies of the 2010s. With a little space from the decade, it reveals an absence in how music is being talked about lately (few would discuss, out in the open at least, newly forming networks of sound), and in a time when online discourse is said to be at its most toxic, reminded me of the gnarliness of the mid-2010s comment section! The following, a discussion of NUN’s first LP, was a partial response to a bizarrely angry comments thread on Crawlspace in 2014, musing on the originality and relevance of Melbourne band NUN. When I found this essay I was embarrassed by how shithouse my writing was, so I’ve edited substantially and worked in some found notes on ‘retrofuturism’ that never made their way into a culled Barely Human episode to make it slightly less shit. Regardless, my position remains: NUN rules ok?
When NUN plays live, an array of cables spew forth from tables of analog equipment, watched over blankly by Steven Harris, Tom Hardisty and Hugh Young. One cable leads to the microphone of Jenny Branaghan, who in front of it all, contorts herself under thickets of smoke and a projected dome of white noise. In the right light, it can look like Branagan is being controlled by the strings of unfeeling puppeteers. At others, like she’s thrashing against cabled restraints. Her warbling vocal accompanies music which recalls distant memories of a horror or sci-fi flick. It builds an eerie image in the mind’s eye, because NUN’s music is deliberately otherworldly.
Branagan’s vocals are chilling throughout their first LP, opening with the grinding shouts of “let me piss on your rich mother’s lips” on ‘Immersion II,’ closing with an inaudible mantra on ‘In Blood.’ The album art comprises grainy, nondescript images shot in monochrome, while the song titles referencing David Cronenberg and Uri Geller recall cultural oddities of decades passed rather than anything in the present. Occasionally it looks abjectly to the future: “Going to the cinema in the future is really grim” is emblazoned on the inner-sleeve and spat alongside references to replicants on ‘Kino’. It’s a record that’s inspired by imagery and phenomena that are simple enough to identify: from seventies/eighties cinema based on fifties/sixties sci-fi, to all the preeminent synth-punks. And though its references can be easily placed, it’s thrilling nonetheless.
But while all of these components have meant that NUN elicit something in me that few other contemporary bands can, for the very same reasons they’ve been swiftly dismissed by others.
Recently, in an unusually fiery comments thread on Crawlspace, the phrase “stylized nostalgia” was used to describe the first NUN single. While it was intended as criticism, I don’t think that referencing the past in an intentionally stylistic manner makes music unimportant, forgettable, or as another commenter put it: “as relevant as Jet.” I’d even say that ‘stylised nostalgia’ is bordering on a really good (and sorely missing) genre descriptor!
In the case of NUN, half of their appeal is their capacity to tap wells of distant cultural references in order to synthesise something uniquely evocative in the present. Maybe this is a generational symptom (born in 1988, I didn’t experience the eighties) or a result of personal philosophy, but I think those who appreciate NUN’s work would agree that there’s a freshly defined context to current Australian underground music that transcends the influences it may contain.
Here, the idea of a band being just another loop in a chain of recycled ideas isn’t necessarily something to be denigreated and dismissed. I’m not inclined to dwell on perceived similarities between, for example, NUN and Suicide, because it seems almost inappropriate. Instead, I feel like the comparison between a 2014 four-piece from Melbourne and a 1977 duo from New York is a distraction, and ignores a more informative local context.
The music of this contemporary Australian underground exists in its own referential bubble (in space and time), operating in a context that can be defined by the bands around them with a similar ethos. On listening to NUN I think of their like-minded contemporaries like Chrome Dome, M.O.B. or Multiple Man much more than their place on a 50+ year continuum. And so, to oppose the comments dismissing NUN further, I feel that ignoring the band for reusing ideas of the past comes from a lack of appreciation for context rather than an acknowledgement of a greater one.
When it comes to bands that dabble well in these nostalgic sounds, much of the appeal comes from the subconscious evocations that can be felt on listening; their influences identify a kind of source code to what they deliver in the present. These bands and the relatively recent rise in their popularity among a new generation of listener (in varying ways, see also Angel Eyes, Primitive Motion, or Lace Curtain, all of whom are reminiscent of ‘something’) results in a form of extra-sensory nostalgia. The benefit of exposure to NUN’s influences comes not from an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of electronic music, but of sub-conscious infiltration via the influences that flowed on from that. This includes anything from film scores to the primitive sounds of 8/16/32-bit video game soundtracks. For a band participating in ‘stylised nostalgia’, I feel like their effect sits in toying with the memories that sit right at the edge of my subconscious.
NUN’s Jenny Branaghan has spoken previously about how her desire to re-watch Videodrome led her to write the song ‘Cronenberg’, and more generally, the ways in which her songwriting was inspired by the absorption of horror films as a child via her older brothers. This is maybe where some of the evocations I feel on listening to NUN come from, thinking of a cultural experience of a child or teenager as less conscious (the soundtrack to Castlevania playing on loop on their neighbours SEGA) than the delibrate cultural consumption of an adult (choosing to not watch sci-fi films). Hearing aspects of those distant, sub-conscious influences can now elicit a unique response to the music actively sought out as an adult. I think what I’m trying to say, is that acts like NUN elicit the same feelings within me that I used to feel as a kid: an unknown rush that comes from not fully understanding what is going on in Scanners, but watching intently anyway.
There’s probably a broader societal reason that bands of a nostalgic ilk are rising in prominence, and while it’s not limited to electronic music, it’s especially prominent in that realm due to its use of the golden ages of synths. Through turning away from exponential technological progression, they regress fetishistically back to what fell out of vogue in the process. Generationally, a return to what felt like the more honest or relatable cultural touchstones of our youths is exciting. I will never again be mystified by Blade Runner like I was as a thirteen-year-old, but with the volume up and the lights off, NUN’s LP makes me feel pretty close to how that movie did the first time around.
On whether NUN’s LP is sincere or authentic as a result of being created with evocations of the past in mind, I don’t think it’s any less honest than someone who is trying to forge new frontiers through experimentation. The amount of sincerity involved in forcibly trying to ignore elements that artists of the past have addressed (in order to discover the new) would be equal to those who set the boundaries of recalling a certain era. I also don’t think those philosophies need be at war with each other.
My interest in synth-based electronic music has mostly been piqued by Australian artists of the last five years, any of whom may fall into either of those philosophies of intent. NUN, M.O.B., Chrome Dome, Angel Eyes, or any of their contemporaries all seem to fit into something common, via an aesthetic that’s hard for me to place other than that they all dabble to some extent—intentionally or otherwise—in this form of ‘stylised nostalgia’ that I can only experience very hazily. They may not all be setting out to mine sounds of their youth, but it intrigues me because they’re almost always mining mine.
Notes on Retrofuturism.
Several years after this was published I found a copy of Simon Reynolds’ book Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction To Its Own Past (2010) which discussed the notion of ‘retrofuturism.’ Describing the term as ‘nostalgia for the future’—and discussed largely in reference to the synth revival in early 21st century pop music, techno, and electronic music at large—he convincingly explains the ways in which historical images of the future were becoming largely fetishised in cultural production. NUN are a good example of retrofuturism in that sense, though Reynolds’ conclusion is more or less that retrofuturism is a symptom of something that needs to be cured: that electronic music needs to ‘be present’ and avoid looking to the past in order to create its own future. He would want his electronic music to be unique in a way that I think may not be possible. I don’t know if I sit in that space at all, and remember reading Retromania thinking that retrofuturism was (if it’s anything) a good genre signifier for a type of music that was sitting around the edges of the Australian underground throughout the 2010s. Derivative, inspired, influenced, sure, but as long as it communicates a feeling or evokes a sensation that can’t be experienced without it…I mean, who gives a shit? So it comes down to whether that evocation within you is something you welcome or reject; less a matter of your detailed knowledge of electronic music lore, or even a matter of taste, and more about a context of community and the personal that is nigh impossible to define on paper.
+++other updates___
___some additions made in the editing of this article were informed by freya zaknich’s interview with jenny branaghan printed in the 2018 journal TEMPERED II, available for sale here or via email/dm, and with maybe eight copies remaining (ever).
___the next barely human zine & tape dispatch i’m hoping will be finished before the year’s out: a discussion of the motivations and intent behind the antagonistic quadrant of the crucifucks, flipper, no trend and the urinals. it’ll be slightly longer than usual and will tie in a polemic on and for philistinism, which seems to be receiving the right kind of face palm from everyone i’ve mentioned it to so far to make me think it is at least in the spirit of those bands. if you’re a paid subscriber to this substack (or just paypal $50 to max@barelyhuman.info for an annual sub) then you’ll receive a copy of zine and cassette in the post!