Various Artists - netBloc Volume 10: Postmodernism is dead. Postmillennialism killed it... sorry Andy :( (BSCOMP0010, 2007)

Not as defined by Protestant Christians

So what does the title of this netBloc mean anyway? What do I consider to be postmillennialism? First off, I don’t define the term the same as some Protestents do. The postmillennialism I’m referring to has little to do with the Second Coming of Christ. It also holds more meaning than just about the arts (although the arts always do play a part in these eras). I am saying that global culture is now in upheaval. No longer are we in the Postmodern era. How long can postmodernism as a cultural label be used anyway? It’s been used to label art and culture since the 1950s, a half a century.

Do we really need yet another label? Yes and no. I personally hate labels, but humanity clearly loves them. For a culture that has so clearly changed since the turn of the millennium, what better “label” than postmillennialism? Postmodernism was about eschewing “modernity” as an end in itself. In the arts it was about mixing mediums, pushing boundaries… the same goes for music. Clearly we have pushed boundaries and mixed mediums and meanings. We have questioned the past’s authority over us. That’s all been said and done, yet here we are… in a world that’s clearly eager to get it’s war on. A world that’s eager to suppress the freedoms of the masses… thanks in no small part to the policies or lack-there-of of the current US administration. How is it that culture has stepped backward, after so many decades of seeming to move forward? If this post-2000 world is not an entirely different cultural entity than the pre-2000 world, I don’t know what is. I think what we have now is a world that has forgotten the lessons of the past due to our global postmodern eagerness to forgo the past’s authority over us.

So, sorry Mr. Warhol… postmodernism is in fact dead… and yes postmillennialism did indeed kill it.

A new era

So here we are in a new era. Not a shiny untarnished one… the tarnish began to show in 2001. Thankfully, it’s not yet all tarnish. The mainstream music industry’s war on file-sharing is backfiring and taking it’s toll on the industry itself. Instead of focusing on innovative ways to embrace the digital era, the industry has focused on first ignoring it and then fighting it. All the while, the new netaudio culture has been growing and gaining a tiny footing where the mainstream once was. If postmillennialism is defined politically by war, maybe some of this era’s backwardness can be redeemed by the forward thinking of the open-source/copyleft movements. I hope when all is said and done, forward thinking wins out during this era.

netBloc Vol. 10

Thanks once again for checking out, this, our latest installment in the netBloc series. 10 more netaudio gems for you to groove to. The first in three that we’ll be releasing in the next month/month and a half. Following this one, will, be the December release and then we’ll kick off the new year with a special release that explores the issues of public domain and open-licensing. For right now, put this one on and enjoy… oh and have fun customizing this release using the alternate package art files.

Peace
Mike Gregoire
Owner/Creator blocSonic.com