The Sonic Fiction of Kodwo Eshun

An interview with the author of More Brilliant Than The Sun, British writer and afrofuturist Kodwo Eshun:

I always thought that Springsteen's power was his strenuous voice. It has muscles in it. The grain of his voice indicates labour and struggle. So his tracks become these epics, these odes to the dignity of labour, a narrative of heavy industry. There is this idea that Americans mistrust the law of least effort, something which Simon Reynolds (author of Energy Flash, a Journey through Rave Music and Dance Culture Eds.) and I talk about a lot. Americans mistrust too much digitisation, too much loss of distinction between effort and output. Think of the sampler that allows the click of a button to produce a massive noise. So they like Springsteen because he restores this equivalence of effort. His voice is struggling, straining and is carrying the burden of everybody's hopes for the duration of his song and his narrative.

[LINK] »Everything was to be done. All the adventures are still there« another interview with Kodwo Eshun