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"I usually dislike contemporary 80s pastiche for sounding overly knowing and forced..."

perfectly stated - i absolutely find myself feeling the same way. There was that point in time when everyone was lopping off teh top ends of their mixes attempting to replicate a kind of faded proto house vibe (lots of 707 drum sounds, shit like that) - it was as a genre intended for the dance floor but it always felt a little 2dimensional and didnt convince me of its "sincerity" to be poetic / summarize / leave out a ton of explanation (next time we get opportunity to dialogue i'd fill this one out more)

never really tried to come up with a succinct phrase to describe my reaction but I think your comment really does strike at the root cause of a feeling i too felt in reaction to these endeavors.