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Simon Reynolds
I think he may well be my favourite longform music writer - Jon Savage is excellent at making you think about context and historical structure and Michael Azerrad really needs to do another scene-based book aside from his biographies (he's co-writing Bob Mould's autobiography, apparently) but Reynolds is the one person who consistently makes me want to delve deeper and get me interested in checking out a lot more names and subgenres.
Anyway, he's got a new book out next month which seems to be a companion piece to Rip It Up And Start Again, a selection of new interviews and overviews of post-punk to New Pop: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Wired-Postpunk-Interviews-Overviews/dp/0571235492