Neon Screams : How Drill, Trap and Bashment Made Music New Again (Paperback)

Examining new genres from the UK and across the Atlantic, including mumble rap, Brooklyn drill, UK drill, trap dancehall and Afrobeats, Neon Screams explores the dystopias and dissociative transcendence offered by this boundary-pushing music.

With a foreword by Simon Reynolds, Neon Screams explores the plethora of new street genres that have emerged at the turn of the 2020s.

Neon Screams is a manifesto, a rallying cry for the new musical futurism. Taking street music’s embrace of Auto-Tune in the late 2000s as his starting point, Kit Mackintosh launches you through a whirlwind tour of the last decade of cutting-edge music, championing the modern genres still uncovering the sonic impossible, from mumble rap to drill to Afrobeats, bashment and beyond. 

Beginning where most future music chronicles end, Mackintosh establishes a new pantheon of pioneers and innovators. Offering dizzying insights into the likes of Future, Young Thug, Migos and Vybz Kartel, Neon Screams is conceptual weaponry to use against all those who say music isn’t what it used to be. 

Part polemic, part synesthetic possession, Neon Screams is essential reading for everyone eager to uncover the new frontiers of future music.

About the Author

Kit Mackintosh is a musician and producer from London who has collaborated with the likes of This Heat’s Charles Hayward and Ben Watson.

Simon Reynolds is the author of Retromania and Rip It Up and Start Again.