This new paperback from Velocity Press collects together the most thought-provoking writings from Shawn Reynaldo, the founder and editor of First Floor. First Floor is a newsletter about electronic music and the culture / industry that surrounds it - initially distributed to a small number of believers, it now hits thousands of readers a week.
These reflections are in the form of critical essays, driven, as the man himself says, by a genuine passion for electronic music. A jumping off point for many of Reynaldo's essays comes from the thought 'This doesn't make sense' and move on from there. So we get musings on whether club bangers have real staying power, or whether post-pandemic dance feels different, or whether we should we be pulling our music off streaming services like Spotify. It's thought provoking stuff.
It's good stuff too, often funny, always probing and it does what a lot of music writing doesn't do - it questions things (never popular to do that Shawn!). Reynaldo has been around the music journalist merry-go-round, cutting his teeth with some of the big hitters (Pitchfork, Spin, Resident Advisor, etc.) and it shows - this guy can write engagingly and keep you turning the pages.
Great book - when is Volume 2 dropping?
Size: 130 x 197mm (paperback)
Pages: 286
Publisher: Velocity Press
