No Requiem for Rock

The contemporary independent music business rests on a fiction. That there exists only a small number of worthwhile scenes and artists outside the mainstream landscape, and that these coincide with the same recurring names that outlets keep an eye on for their readers' consumption.

Some strands are represented by plenty of names — just think of the endless proliferation of new indispensable post‑post‑punk taxidermists — while others are represented by just a few, or barely any: prog‑rock is Steven Wilson and his Porcupine Tree, Celtic folk is Lankum, garage rock is Jack White, or at a pinch Ty Segall. Old-school rock, meanwhile, seems to be kept alive by historic figures presented as prophets and welcomed by audiences as keepers of the sacred flame. Everything else — the vast bulk of the world's record output — is treated as background noise.

But a closer, less biased look reveals a very different picture. Far more unruly, far more fascinating. The horizon is teeming with creatively stimulating music: underground currents, unexpected revivals and unpredictable approaches developing far from the main information flows that feed contemporary independent and alternative culture. And with no real chance not so much of climbing the charts, but — in a saturated landscape geared towards the usual suspects — of even being discovered by the many listeners who might be interested. Which leaves those listeners with a challenge to seize as an opportunity: to go looking for this hidden universe themselves, explore it with curious ears, and — depending on their own leanings — discover its richness and, why not, even try to spread the word.

The discreet charm of myopia

The most visible records and artists on the contemporary alternative landscape don't stand out because they're more accomplished, representative or stimulating. Nor because they're more “crossover”, i.e. capable – at least in theory – of reaching different audiences beyond their original niche. Quite the opposite: the expressions that gain the most visibility are often those whose codes are so familiar to their reference audience that they come across as universal. Paradoxically, it's the most static languages, the ones that move within well-established coordinates, that end up perceived as the beating heart of the independent scene. Their recognisability makes them easier to sell: for those who produce content, for those who promote it, for those who consume it. And that very ease of categorisation, rather than being a limitation, becomes their communicative strength: narrow, not particularly fertile territories thus gain enough visibility to completely eclipse the plurality of every other strand, creating the illusion that they're the only places where anything is actually happening. Whatever strays from already-known, proven models has no chance of finding space: more fluid, hybrid languages, hard to pin down within a precise aesthetic, end up on the margins of the conversation — assuming the conversation even tries to include them at all.

The success of post-post-punk or Brexitcore is probably the most emblematic example of this phenomenon. For years now the strand has kept enjoying constant attention, reaffirming structures and imagery that belong to the genetic makeup of indie and alternative rock. For many listeners — and often for critics too — the feeling has taken hold that there's precious little to hold onto outside that perimeter, as if it represented the last bulwark before rock's definitive disappearance, après moi le déluge. Bands like Fontaines D.C., in this context, have become a cornerstone presence: their output forcefully embodies some values historically associated with indie culture, such as expressive authenticity, the refusal of anything watered-down, existential unease, and an independent production ethic. It's understandable that such a strongly marked, familiar musical identity becomes an emotional touchstone, a kind of security blanket for anyone raised within that paradigm.

Similarly, from Nick Cave to Radiohead/Smile, there are plenty of veteran artists who keep releasing records considered excellent. But their most recent work, rarely as groundbreaking as the albums that made their names, is increasingly greeted with an enthusiasm that has more to do with the shared history of their fans than with any real capacity to shift the axis of musical discourse. These are, in effect, records pre-digested for audiences already eager to love them, audiences far larger than those of less established, more frontier-pushing artists. The fact that they're routinely hailed as “untouchable” shows just how tied the cultural scene is to recognisable, reassuring figures, entrusted with the task of guarding a legacy.

As with post-post-punk devotees, the perceived artistic centrality of these artists is, in short, less the result of a careful analysis of the landscape than a response to a widespread need for stable reference points at a time of extreme dispersion and multiplication of output. An understandable reaction, but one that leads people to ignore what's happening at the edges of that comfort zone, where less codified creative currents experiment freely and, precisely because of that, remain invisible to the radar of both media and music fans.

The Age of Overabundance

It's not a matter of blame. The mechanisms driving musical attention today have to do with the surplus of supply, with the saturation of channels, and with the ever more pressing need to find one's bearings within a landscape in constant quantitative expansion. Productive overabundance and diminishing returns generate a vicious circle: content multiplies, but cognitive resources remain the same, and listening becomes so fragmented that shared recognition becomes almost impossible. The prevailing response to this complexity is simplification: in a gradual process of adaptation, in order to cut a path through the thicket, we prune it back so far that all we see is a barren stretch of land. And we end up mistaking it for the whole horizon.

This holds true for those who promote music, for those who listen to it, but also for those who write about it. Even an outlet like OndaRock — among the most active in the world by number of reviews — ends up caught up in it, not for lack of openness or curiosity, but as the effect of a bigger, systemic dynamic. The list of reviews published in 2025 is revealing: out of hundreds of records covered, very few gather more than one write-up from staff members. And not because they aren't worthwhile — quite the opposite, in many cases they were reviewed with genuine enthusiasm and an explicit will to move beyond the predictable. It's once again a paradox born of abundance: even though every writer maintains an omnivorous outlook, the tendency to dig deeper into different scenes inevitably leads to a growing distance between individual areas of interest. This enriches the outlet's overall coverage, but progressively reduces the overlaps. Needless to say, the overlaps that remain mostly concern names that are already well known and at the centre of the conversation, since they're picked up by circuits with a less far-reaching gaze. So even the releases deemed most exciting end up feeding into the background noise.

Social media further amplify this imbalance. A post dedicated to a lesser-known name, if it gets few clicks in the first minutes after publication, is immediately penalised by the algorithms. It doesn't reach the people who might actually be interested, it doesn't circulate, it dies out. OndaRock has recently chosen to bundle several reviews into a single post, in an attempt to at least partly salvage overall visibility, but the results are often disappointing. Even the most determined attempts to redistribute attention end up running aground. The game is rigged.

The Twilight of Monoculture

Ever since the birth of pop culture, the collective imagination has been shaped by the idea of a well-defined cultural centre, a core of shared reference points capable of unifying discourse and outlining the contours of an era. Whether it was musical scenes, film phenomena or literary trends, there was a belief in currents of cultural aggregation able to speak to a broad audience and represent, in an ecumenical way, the spirit of the times. Today, this notion of a "monoculture" seems to belong to a bygone era. The centre of gravity has scattered, the mainstream has branched out into a myriad of specific tributaries, each with its own dynamics and its own audiences. Long since flanked by underground currents and niche phenomena, the presence of a hard core of universally shared cultural reference points is finally giving way to a scenario in which the fragmentation of horizons becomes a defining feature even of popular culture itself.

The twilight of monoculture was already grasped and anticipated by several voices back in the early 2000s. Chris Anderson, in his book "The Long Tail" (2006), identified digitisation as a force capable of shifting attention away from mass-market products towards a multiplicity of niche offerings. A new paradigm followed: a culture of variety took the place of a unified culture, altering the perception and the very structure of cultural production and consumption. Five years later, the article "Why I Miss The Monoculture", written by Touré for the online magazine Salon, effectively kicked off the debate, expressing a sense of nostalgia for that pop culture capable of generating moments of collective togetherness. In 2019, in a piece for the Guardian, critic Simon Reynolds updated the picture, analysing how streaming had further shattered music listening, diluting the possibility of genuinely shared experiences.

The clearest and most up-to-date picture of this transformation, however, comes from research carried out by MIDiA in 2024. The report "State of the Independent Music Economy: Fragmentation AND Consolidation" describes a system in which seemingly opposite dynamics coexist. On one hand, streaming and social media have torn down barriers to entry, fostering the growth of independent ecosystems all over the world; on the other, the major labels and platforms are strengthening their grip by absorbing smaller players. The result is an unstable balance between disaggregation and concentration: while audiences scatter into micro-scenes, the dominant structures consolidate, retaining control over the main flows.

Non-major labels are increasingly dependent on streaming — often their only substantial source of income — yet they struggle both to break through with their artists (87%) and to keep the public's interest alive (78%). Spotify alone accounts for over half of their revenue, and yet the current model — reduced royalties, volatile attention, punishing barriers to entry — looks unsustainable. 74% are hoping for a new model to emerge: not merely as a possibility, but as a necessity.

And yet, despite the difficulties, the market share of non-major labels is growing, a sign that the system is less centralised than it used to be. Access to audiences and international markets is more open today, but it remains heavily mediated by platforms and visibility mechanisms that tend to reward aggregation. The coexistence of micro-scenes and concentrations of power is not a paradox: it is the structural reality of our cultural present. A present that no longer has a single centre to tell, but rather countless points of emergence to be held together with a plural gaze.

Hidden Fault Lines

So what are these still-vital areas, potentially capable of catching the interest of listeners with a varied background? In which directions are today's liveliest, most cross-cutting trajectories developing — excluded from the mainstream narrative, yet no less significant within their own creative dimension? Even sticking solely to the field of rock, any attempt at being exhaustive would be swamped by the sheer quantity and diversity of possible directions to explore. The routes suggested here are thus only a few among the many available: indicative pointers for anyone who, driven by curiosity, is looking for sounds capable of surprising, stimulating and opening up new connections.

The revival landscape itself is actually a far richer and more diverse phenomenon than one might guess by looking only at the handful of strands deemed "cool" by critics and audiences alike. The revival of historical currents has reached notable expressive heights not only in the endless reiterations of post-punk, but now touches the entire history of pop, becoming an accessible yet often ingenious cultural prêt-à-porter that blends nostalgia, quotation and invention. From yacht rock to shoegaze, from new age to pop-punk of the 1990s, almost every era is now being reread through a contemporary lens, giving rise to projects sometimes able to win over a broad cross-section of listeners, as in the case of Lemon Twigs or Greta Van Fleet.

Alongside these rewrites — often calligraphic in intent, but no less classy or characterful for that — sit more elusive trajectories, and perhaps precisely for this reason all the more creatively stimulating: the updated resurgence of heartland rock (War On Drugs, Bleachers, Sam Fender), the ever more pervasive spread of bedroom rock, which with Girl In Red, Soccer Mommy, Beabadoobee, Yot Club or Joy Again has reached truly considerable listening figures, all without giving up the guitar-driven backbone, the homemade feel of the productions, or an introspective, accessible style of songwriting. The new wave of slacker rock has its heroes too: MJ Lenderman, Car Seat Headrest (who, thanks to the unpredictability of their choices, have earned themselves a significant cult status, even if still under the radar for many), but also the Korean project Asian Glow, with its oblique style and its proximity to the "fifth wave" of emo. A low-profile but unmistakable signal of just how central a receptiveness to anomaly is to the scene.

Leaving behind the currents accused — rightly or wrongly — of merely rehashing the already familiar, it is precisely the post-emo field that has in recent years become the epicentre of waves that make eclecticism their driving force, pushing rock into syncretic territories as never before in recent times. The genre's expressive spectrum has embraced extreme hybridisation, weaving together stylistically heterogeneous elements in a manner that is often nearly progressive: the result is a surprising variety of directions and styles, as shown by bands like Glass Beach, Really From, Origami Angel, Adjy, Topiary Creatures.

An even less explored field is that of xenharmonic rock, a wholly uncharted territory blending microtonality, polyrhythms and jagged textures: bands like Mercury Tree and Horse Lords pursue it with real consistency, though its most visible flag-bearers are probably King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, who've employed microtonal guitars on some of their records. This drive to radically expand the harmonic spectrum has also proven fertile ground for African and Middle Eastern acts able to fuse experimentation, roots and raw sonic impact: Turkey's Altın Gün, Aylar, Gaye Su Akyol and Lalalar, Israel's El Khat and Şatellites, Morocco's Bab L'Buz, and France's Al-Qasar.

Alongside these are artists who flirt with hyperpop without disowning their rock roots: Jane Remover, Underscores, 100 gecs. Often non-binary in their own lives too, these are figures capable of letting chaos and design, deconstruction and immediacy coexist, exploring hybrid aesthetics that slip past all the usual reference points. Another fault line on the move, running along somewhat parallel lines, cuts through the new strains of chillwave and hypnagogic pop, territories that are by nature omnivorous and centrifugal, as open to excess as to detail. George Clanton, Magdalena Bay and Clarence Clarity are singular, elusive figures within it, capable of combining sensory overload with real melodic care. And in this liquid landscape there's even room for an atypical guitar hero like Mk.gee, whose "impossible" sound has thrown forums and YouTube channels into an uproar, caught between reverse engineering and attempts at technological emulation. This too is a telling sign: something is stirring, even while most eyes are fixed elsewhere.

The accessibility trap

Despite the difficulties brought on by the fragmentation of listening and the saturation of digital space, the present offers artists unprecedented opportunities. Never before has it been so easy to make and distribute quality music. Likewise, the collapse of technological costs has made it possible even for those without deep pockets to record and release albums with a technical quality often on par with major productions. While hiring symphony orchestras or star session players and producers remains out of reach for a musician working on their own, the ease of connectivity and the spread of digital tools (digital audio workstations and their plugins, MIDI interfaces, etc.) have massively boosted the ability to collaborate remotely, draw on vast libraries of sounds and effects, and put finished tracks together on a home computer without fear of sounding amateurish.

At the same time, listening itself has become extraordinarily accessible: the abundance of free or low-cost platforms, combined with the near-instant global availability of every release, has made virtually every corner of contemporary music production reachable. For the first time, it's genuinely easy to access the hundreds of markets outside the Anglosphere and one's own national circuits: to discover the sounds of other countries, you're no longer limited to a select (and often sanitized) handful of artists and labels releasing music for Western consumption. Today, curiosity can lead straight to the local scenes of every continent, bypassing the cultural homogenization imposed by outside filters and narratives.

This accessibility extends to training as well: anyone with an internet connection and a bit of patience can learn to play, produce, arrange. The resources available – tutorials, video lessons, transcriptions, communities – are unprecedented. The rise of well-trained musicians is among the least discussed phenomena in music today, yet it's striking how common it now is to come across artists who, even outside the mainstream, boast a technical skill and compositional awareness rarely found among newcomers twenty years ago.

Direct funding has also become a viable path: platforms like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo or Patreon let musicians back their own projects through direct fan support, with no middlemen and no compromises. More and more artists are managing to operate essentially on their own terms, releasing albums or launching tours without going through established labels or professional agents: for all its limitations, today's ecosystem opens up possibilities for self-management that were once far more difficult to achieve.

So production isn't really the obstacle. Nor is distribution. What remains genuinely hard is the part in the middle: reaching an audience. Getting noticed amid the flood of releases, earning plays that go beyond your immediate circle, building a following solid enough to sustain a career. The problem, in short, is no longer so much "making music" as it is getting it to circulate. In such a scattered ecosystem, where attention is an ever scarcer, ever more contested resource, visibility itself has become the new privilege. And the tools available aren't enough to secure it: those who start out with an advantage have vastly better odds of success than those left playing catch-up from day one.

Between the algorithm and elsewhere

Munimuni, .Feast, Hindia, Yorushika, Inabakumori, Eve, Ado, Zutomayo, Omnipotent Youth Society, Adamlar, Carson Coma, Ziferblat: how familiar are these names? These are artists who, in recent years, haven't just made rock records of real originality, but have also achieved significant success in their respective home markets. With their celestial indie-folk, the Filipino group Munimuni pull in around 1.8 million monthly listeners on Spotify. The success of Indonesia's .Feast, meanwhile, rests on an eclectic synthesis of alternative rock, stoner, nu rave and post-britpop, and today reaches more than nine million monthly listeners (mostly in their home country and in Malaysia). The solo career of their singer, Hindia, has actually surpassed them, with twelve million monthly listeners (for comparison: that's more than the Doors, the Clash, or Iron Maiden – or, sticking to current rock success stories, Ghost, Young The Giant and Big Thief). Yorushika, Inabakumori, Eve, Ado and Zutomayo are leading names in Japan's yakousei scene: a phenomenon barely known in the West, yet one that translates on Spotify into monthly audiences ranging from around 900,000 listeners for Inabakumori to over six million for Ado. Straddling j-pop and j-rock and tightly bound up with anime aesthetics, artists in this vein combine an ultra-melodic bubblegum approach with funky bursts and sharp guitar work, closely related to the math/emo sound of some classic acts from the local alternative rock scene (Ringo Sheena, Ling Tosite Sigure, Tricot, Polkadot Stingray).

Turkish alt-rockers Adamlar have a following of two and a half million monthly listeners on Spotify, almost entirely within Turkey aside from a few fans in neighboring countries and – realistically due to immigration – in Germany. A shame, because their thick yet atmospheric guitar sound, carrying Middle Eastern influences without any postcard exoticism, is sharp and magnetic regardless of nationality. China's Omnipotent Youth Society, on the other hand, enjoy solid cult band status, having crafted with "Inside The Cable Temple" an art/progressive/jazz/folk magnum opus that has drawn the attention of a few connoisseurs elsewhere in the world, but has certainly not reached the wider community of independent music fans.

The fiery indie-rock of Hungary's Carson Coma also struggles to break through beyond its home borders, even though – with its cheeky swagger and sounds not far from post-punk – it has everything it takes to connect with a more cosmopolitan audience. Only the acrobatic prog-pop of Ukraine's Ziferblat, currently sitting at around three hundred thousand monthly listeners, has a realistic shot at wider recognition abroad thanks to their appearance at Eurovision 2025.

And it's not just a matter of geography. Quality is everywhere, but anyone unlucky enough not to be signed to the right label, left out of the playlists that might draw attention, and without a boost from the major music outlets of the Anglosphere is condemned – even in this age of total accessibility – to effective invisibility, regardless of all the rhetoric about inclusion.

Bubbles, niches, shortcuts

Social media, mobile devices and streaming platforms have opened up a boundless horizon for musicians and listeners alike, one in which musical discovery and sharing are possible anywhere, at any moment. But hyperconnection hasn't always produced genuine exchange. More often, it has led to a disjointed coexistence. Audiences and listening communities are no longer connected vessels: rarely does a stylistic shift, or even a new technological possibility, manage to filter from one sphere into another. It's a direct consequence of the sheer abundance and immeasurability of the landscape, which favors personal paths that grow ever more detailed and deep, yet ever less shared. This is the age of micro-niches, of spiraling listening habits, of centrifugal trajectories.

Plurality can generate dizzying discoveries, but it often folds back in on itself. Platforms like RateYourMusic, which make decentralized exploration and personal deep-dives possible, also tend to create their own forms of internal homogenization: the aggregate charts built by combining user ratings become a self-referential benchmark, which, besides offering a showcase for the "usual suspects", tends to generate "local deities" — recognized and rewarded only within that specific community. Other artists, at least as interesting, once again remain on the margins. A similar phenomenon occurs on Reddit, another powerful tool for aggregation and comparison: musically speaking, its strength lies in the communities that bloom around thematic subreddits, small goldmines of ideas and aesthetics — which, however, after an initial expansive phase, often end up closing in on themselves, dwelling on a restricted circle of artists that eventually exhausts their own momentum.

Speaking of streaming platforms, Bandcamp — even after its change of ownership — remains an important stronghold for anyone seeking a direct link between artists and listeners, with circuits that escape major-label logic. But searching there is difficult and scattershot: without efficient recommendation tools like Spotify's, the possible paths remain fragmentary. Once you discover an interesting artist, it's hard to find others moving along similar lines, and once again you're left with the feeling that — aside from the names you've already stumbled upon — there's not much else worth finding.

Spotify, on the other hand, offers continuous, immersive listening tools, but tends to confirm tastes already expressed. Navigation within it is largely centered on algorithmic playlists and automatic follow-ups, both built to offer listeners music they "should" like, reinforcing existing preferences and discouraging exploration. The result is a form of soft censorship: one that selects based on the likelihood of a user's click. Music is reduced to engagement and follows its logic: in theory, everything is accessible; in practice, very little is actually shown. And if it isn't shown, it won't be discovered.

No Compass, but Maps to Trade

And yet this fragmented era has considerable merits. The plurality of the landscape is spectacular, intoxicating. It makes it possible, as never before, to get lost in the terrain and build one's own paths of discovery. Musical exploration as the realization and construction of one's own identity, rather than the adoption of a ready-made identity or a badge of belonging to this or that subculture. This excess of production isn't a crisis, but a continuous, decentralized, oblique flourishing. It isn't an impoverished era: it's an era of excess. There's no single line to follow, but countless overlapping, divergent, unpredictable directions.

How do we learn to make the most of this unprecedented potential, to surf this new, uncharted ocean with enthusiasm and awareness? First of all, by stopping the obsessive search for saviors of the nation. Continuing to ask "who's keeping rock alive" or "where's the real scene" only leads back to the names everyone's already talking about — the least interesting ones, for all the reasons already outlined. The point is that, perhaps, we no longer need a musical center of gravity: the sense of disorientation, a legacy of a hierarchical culture of taste, should be, if not embraced, at least exorcised. Today's dispersion isn't a loss, but an expansion.

We should indeed be wary of attempts at centralization, of summary rankings, of definitive histories and playlists. These are counterproductive schemes, brakes on curiosity that — even when driven by the best intentions — always end up mistaking the territory for its cartographic brutalization. The obsession with staying constantly updated on who's the best of the best, with having the full picture in view, is just another way of shutting yourself inside your own micro-niche while believing there's nothing else out there. Listening isn't a chore, it's a journey: it's worth accepting the partiality of your own gaze and aiming to build a fulfilling path, aware of its unrepeatable nature and unlikely to be shared by anyone else.

Yet personal paths can still intersect, and exchange is in fact the most natural way to widen them: a comparison whose purpose isn't to reach agreement, but to put different maps in contact with one another. Not a contest of tastes, but a channel between possible worlds. An online comment, a song heard in a film, a name mentioned in passing, a T-shirt spotted at a concert. Even looking at OndaRock's rankings board differently can help: not by seeking out the albums with the most votes, but the titles that truly captured the enthusiasm of whoever reviewed them. Those are the records with the greatest potential: they don't work for everyone, and perhaps precisely because of that they can leave a deeper mark than all the rest. The risk is that nothing happens. But if something clicks, the jolt is real. And it's worth more than a thousand lukewarm listens.

From Scorecards to Trajectories

Dispersion isn't fought with nostalgia for order, but with the desire to draw new routes. Thematic playlists, cross-cutting paths, unexpected pairings: meaning isn't found, it's built. There's no center to chase, no new pantheon to crown. Waiting for a new "Sgt. Pepper's", another "Nevermind", an "OK Computer" that gives meaning to everything, today, makes no sense. Not because we should resign ourselves to widespread mediocrity, but because that kind of cultural impact doesn't arise in a vacuum: it was the effect of a context that no longer exists, and judging the present through the eyes of the past means misreading it from the very foundations.

Criticism's task is no longer to search for the era-defining record. It's to learn to read connections, open up paths, reveal intersections. The critic isn't a judge: they're a mediator, a cartographer in shifting territories. The history of music isn't a podium, but a story in constant flux. It's not about establishing hierarchies, but about making processes visible, shining a light even on what's growing at the margins. Documenting the hype is no longer enough: you need to follow the underground currents, track down the trajectories that slip past the algorithms — and, when needed, try to take those very mechanisms apart: understand them, decode them, and show their effects on how music is perceived and how it circulates.

And it also requires a change in perspective. Abandoning certain reflexes, overturning the dominant frames. Developing new languages for a landscape that has definitively changed. "Nothing important is happening anymore"? There's too much, and it's wonderful. "There's no scene"? There are a thousand micro-scenes, and each speaks to someone. "Only X are keeping rock alive"? Maybe rock just isn't at the center anymore. And that's fine. "Everything's the same, everything's derivative"? Trajectories are expanding in every direction: the challenge is tracing the threads that connect them. "We need to defend quality"? We need to multiply the criteria, not impose just one.

Chronicling the present no longer means chasing completeness: it means conveying complexity, multiplying points of access, accepting that the map must be read at a variable scale. Criticism today doesn't live in a single format, or in a single voice. From the classic form — the review, the article, the longform piece — we've moved into a multimodal galaxy where different media coexist and complement one another. Relying on just one is crippling. There are YouTubers who put their own listening journey at the center, becoming familiar faces to follow rather than authorities to consult: some with specific expertise (the producer, the harmony expert, the former session musician), others with a personal, recognizable perspective and even communication style. There are podcasts that don't claim to explain everything, but offer partial perspectives that are, precisely because of that, decisive for someone.

There are niche webzines, local platforms, personal blogs (yes, they still exist) that keep shining a light on scenes that are alive but peripheral, and books (a flood of them!) that, each in their own small way, are essential for building, adding depth, and systematizing, within their own limited scope. And then there are curated — not algorithmic — playlists, often anonymous, but capable of guiding anyone looking for alternative points of access.

There are visual maps compiled collectively on Reddit, encyclopedic architectures on RateYourMusic, wiki pages created to map the details of a micro-genre, threads where criticism becomes conversation and archive. In this space, very different approaches coexist: those who take tracks apart to explain how they're built, those who lay bare their own idiosyncrasies, those who think in longreads, and those who strive to create ultra-compressed clips for the hyper-fragmented attention of feeds. None of these approaches is sufficient on its own. But all together they form a 1:1 map — or perhaps even something more: an infinite zoom capable of revealing what once seemed indistinct. And even of creating meaning and connections that don't exist yet, but might soon come to life. A way of reading the landscape not just as it is, but as it could become.

Rock isn't dead. But maybe you are

Anyone straining to find the heirs to the rock heroes of the past is missing out on the whole party. They end up complaining that no one is able to do exactly that thing anymore. As if history had stopped, as if everything happening elsewhere didn't count, or was just noise.

It's not about forcing yourself to like everything that's new, nor about uncritically embracing every novelty just to feel up to date. It's not about putting on a show of open-mindedness, keeping pace with the hype, or showing off some token youthfulness. It's a matter of perspective. Of the ability to put your own points of reference back into play, letting them grow through contact with whatever throws them off balance. Following the pull of your own taste, without mistaking it for a law of nature.

Anyone who gives up their old maps finds an immense territory ahead of them. It's a landscape with no center and no clear borders, one that's hard to navigate — but that's exactly what makes it exciting. Where anything can happen, and often does. Where the paths aren't marked out, but have to be traced anew each time. It's an age that demands to be crossed, not decoded from on high. It doesn't need gatekeepers of taste, but curious travelers.

The change has already happened. And it's already bearing fruit — far from the spotlight, perhaps, but no less significant for that. Music isn't dead. It's more alive than ever. But if you go looking for it where it no longer is, if you keep using demagnetized compasses, if you keep insisting that every record be "the new X," then yes: the problem isn't the music. The problem is you.

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