The New Analog

What John Berger did to ways of seeing, well-known indie musician Damon Krukowski does to ways of listening in this lively guide to the transition from analog to digital culture Having made his name in the late 1980s as a founding member of the indie band Galaxie 500, Damon Krukowski has watched cultural life lurch from analog to digital. And as an artist who has weathered the transition, he has challenging, urgent questions for both creators and consumers about what we have thrown away in the shift to a digital society: Are our new streaming services undermining our ability to incubate new talent? Are our digital devices turning us into zombies who are lost in our own headspace even as they put whole catalogues at our fingertips? Rather than rejecting the digital disruption of cultural life, however, Krukowski wants instead to reexamine what we have lost as a technological culture, looking carefully at what was valuable in the analog realm so we can hold onto it. Using a series of processes from the recording studio that have changed since the analog era--headspace, proximity effect, real time, noise, and distortion--as a basis for a broader exploration of contemporary culture, Krukowski gives us a brilliant meditation and guide to keeping our heads amid the digital flux, and for plugging in without tuning out.