Japan's Tin Drum: (33 1/3)
Zoomicon-zoom-in
Japan's Tin Drum: (33 1/3)

Japan's Tin Drum: (33 1/3)

By
Agata Pyzik (Author)  

Paperback

Available / dispatched within 1 - 2 weeks

Quantity
Tin Drum seeks to provide an outsider look at one of the most mysterious post-punk albums, the 1981 Orientalist and escapist manifesto by the English synth-pop/new wave English band Japan. As an act of cultural appropriation and a meditation on the perils of Western civilisation, seeking solace in a virtual trip to the 'Orient of the self' and Maoist ideology, Tin Drum invites external analysis to be culturally appropriated itself. Agata Pyzik tells how the fruitful encounter between the neurotic Western youngsters and dream of the radically other East produced one of the most dissonant and compelling records of the era, too strange to be appreciated at the time, a big hit at the time but too peculiar to be fully understood. Why, at the break of the 1980s and the final decade of the cold war, do these pale aesthetes dream of Mao's China? At once incredibly English and exotic, futurist and backward-looking, Japan and Tin Drum were a unique exercise in Rimbaudian 'becoming somebody else', fascinated in Chinese communism, anticipating the surge of the interest in Chinese Tiger just as it was shaking off Mao's legacy to become a modern, capitalist economy. Yet the yearning to become 'different' expressed in it, both in terms of class and nationality, makes the album's claim unexpectedly universal.
Agata Pyzik is a Polish writer active in Great Britain since 2010. She's the author of the critically acclaimed Poor but Sexy (2014). Pyzik publishes widely since 2004, covering mostly culture, music and politics. Among her main interests are the Cold War, post-war modernism, post-punk and Soviet history. Currently she's working on a project for Penguin, on the cultural aspects of global political change in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
  • Contributor: Agata Pyzik
  • Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic USA
  • ISBN13: 9781501322228
  • Number of Pages: 144
  • Packaged Dimensions: 121x165mm
  • Format: Paperback
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
  • Release Date: 2020-05-14
  • Series: 33 1/3
  • Binding: Paperback / softback
  • Biography: Agata Pyzik is a Polish writer active in Great Britain since 2010. She's the author of the critically acclaimed Poor but Sexy (2014). Pyzik publishes widely since 2004, covering mostly culture, music and politics. Among her main interests are the Cold War, post-war modernism, post-punk and Soviet history. Currently she's working on a project for Penguin, on the cultural aspects of global political change in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Delivery Options

Home Delivery

Store Delivery

Free Returns

We hope you are delighted with everything you buy from us. However, if you are not, we will refund or replace your order up to 30 days after purchase. Terms and exclusions apply; find out more from our Returns and Refunds Policy.