Sean O'Hagan makes some mix tapes and laments the lost art of the sleeve note.
"The iPod," Hagan says, "is the single most iconic emblem of our brave new world of music consumption, a pure and wonderful object that makes more music of all kinds more easily available to more people than at any time in history. ... It may be late in the day, then, to consider what is being lost in this heady moment of what postmodernists call accelerated culture. Has, for instance, the huge shift in the way we consume music altered the way we hear music? Has it changed the nature of our emotional engagement with, and investment in, music? Does music no longer occupy the space in our increasingly overcrowded lives that it once did despite - or because of - the fact that it is easily attainable, ubiquitous? Is it possible that, in the near future, new music will exist solely in cyberspace?"
Via Mark Fleischmann.
