all those innovative artists in the 70s and 80s were funded by government art grants, or just flat out living on welfare. as the market wouldn't support them, they needed state investment to exist and be creative, and they needed a system that was focused on not just allowing them to exist outside of market conditions but nurturing them outside of them in order to develop.

despite the propaganda to the contrary, when they took that away in the neo-liberal counter-revolution, the innovation dried up entirely. and, we've been in total cultural stasis since the mid-90s, as a result.

if we want innovation in art, we're going to need to get back to funding it via government grants. and, the same is true for science.

what markets do is enforce a regression to the mean, a dumbing down, a great saming. and, they have to, because you're forced to conform to market demand to produce a product in order to exist. it's inherently contradictory to the function and purpose of both art and science to try and coerce them into meeting demand like this, and both will necessarily suffer in the end, for it. 

if we want people to think freely and move us forward with those free thoughts, we have to emancipate them from both government censorship (which is the problem they have in asia, although it's increasingly setting in here) and market forces in order to do it. we had the right balance, before we undid it. we'll have to find it, again.

in the mean time, we're just going to keep recycling ideas to meet market demand, in utter stasis and stagnation.

listen, i know better than to look for something innovative. you're not going to find innovation in late capitalism - there's no funding for research. the market won't innovate without investment, and the investment's completely dried up.

but, we can still hope for execution in this sad state of affairs.

and, i have a responsibility to point towards the actual innovators, even as they're dead or dying.

this is very much a throwback to the space that peter gabriel & kate bush were working in in the early 80s, and i'd suspect this person is a gigantic tony levin fan. it's so easy - and common - to water this down to the point that it's boring and where this seems a bit better is that it doesn't commit that error. while derivative and backwards-looking, it's also legitimately interesting and that's rare in the genre, nowadays.

https://katenv.bandcamp.com/album/room-for-the-moon