The Sound Exploration

Гласс — композитор-минималист, сочиняет музыку, состоящих из простейших элементов (повторяющихся мелодических и гармонических паттернов). Его музыка кажется обманчиво простой: «Возьми один аккорд и повторяй его снова и снова», — цитата, которую Гласс постоянно опровергает. Отношение к его музыке в профессиональном сообществе очень противоречивое, кто-то считает его гением, а кто-то думает, что скважина минимализма, откуда капает музыка Гласса, иссякла еще в 70-х.

Вначале его карьеры у некоторых людей музыка Гласса вызывала непонимание, ощущение однообразности, а нередко даже физическое противостояние. Композитор вспоминал, о том, когда он был на гастролях в Париже, один мужчина подошел к его синтезатору и начал лупить по клавишам, чтобы закончить эту нескончаемую однообразную музыку. Глассу пришлось в прямом смысле ему врезать, чтобы продолжить концерт. И таких противостояний (как физических, таки и интеллектуальных) очень много, хотя сейчас его музыка имеет миллионы поклонников по всему миру.

Его биография вызывает какой-то невероятный восторг. Восторг от изучения его биографии схож с восторгом исследователя, который находит ключ к пониманию его произведений — после «слов без музыки», музыка начинает говорить сама за себя.

Книга написана очень понятным языком, композитор описывает свою жизнь так, как будто мы его давние друзья. Но за этой простотой языка чувствуется громадный опыт и уверенность в каждом своем поступке, что в жизни, что в музыке.

— Under the Universities

"Plain and direct-spoken and with an uncluttered prose style, Lucier easily blends analysis, anecdote and digression into a reader-friendly first-person account of some of the most interesting music to come out of the postwar period."
— Avant Music News

"Just three years after his first memoir, Porcelain, Moby is back with an even more revealing book, tracing his dark journey through fame."
― Entertainment Weekly

Porcelain vividly evokes a certain place and time – specifically, New York in the ’90s. It simultaneously presents a portrait of its author that’s withering in the extreme. At the same time, it offers a perfect freeze-frame of downtown New York in the Dinkins to early Giuliani years, when far more of the cherished stench of ’70s and ’80s city lingered than some may remember.”
— New York Observer

“A lovingly composed new memoir that tracks his journey from living in an abandoned factory in Connecticut to playing the hottest clubs in New York and Europe. … Porcelain reads like an intimate meditation on the various contradictions Moby has resolved over the course of his 50 years: his Christian faith vs. his hedonistic streak; his hunger for stardom vs. his retiring nature; his respect for ambition vs. his deep belief in luck. The book is also a tender ode to a vanished New York City.”
— Los Angeles Times

Joanna Demers is associate professor of musicology at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, where she specializes in post-1945 popular and art music.

Drone and Apocalypse is a sprawling and inventive meditation on the nature of apocalypse in contemporary art and music. It takes the form of an ‘exhibit catalogue’ pertaining to an exhibition staged in 2213 on the essays and artistic ideas of Cynthia Wey.

Wey’s favorite musicians are drone artists like William Basinski, Celer, Thomas Köner, Les Rallizes Dénudés, and Éliane Radigue, and her essays relate their works to moments of ineffability in Herodotus, Aristotle, Plato, Pliny the Elder, Isidore of Seville, Robert Burton, Hegel, and Dostoyevsky.

The book variously focuses on drone music, film, philosophy, cynicism, list making and the apocalypse, which Wey, Demers’ invention and interlocutor, believed was imminent and foreshadowed in contemporary culture.

Jordannah Elizabeth is a musician, entertainment journalist, author, model and the founder of nonprofit Publik / Private. Her work has appeared on VICE, Nerve.com, SF Weekly, MTV Iggy, ​Bitch Magazine, Ms. Magazine and more. Elizabeth is also a civil rights and feminist writer who often offers commentary on racial and gender issues in America. She has interviewed notable writers and musicians such as Talib Kweli, Saul Williams and Ishmael Butler of Shabazz Palaces for SF Weekly, covering topics of race, class and cultural appropriation.

The majority of this book's "40 selected articles, essays, and Q&As" are reviews of albums or live shows, interviews of artists, best-of lists, or columns about whatever musical subject was on Elizabeth's mind that day. But there are also other topics and approaches, showcasing Elizabeth's versatility and her palpable, personal voice.

German acoustician and musicologist Fritz Winckel (1907–2000) was a founding member of the Studio of the Technical University of West Berlin. This translation of Phänomene des Musikalischen Hörens, first published in 1960, has, as its title implies, musical, physical and psychological ingredients.

Winckel was born in Bregenz and studied acoustics and natural sciences at Berlin Technical University. In the 1930s he worked as an engineer for a studio of experimental music in Berlin before going on to further studies at Berlin University, working on the neo-Bechstein (the first ‘electric’ piano, with radio and record player) and on the related structures of music and language. In 1950 he took a doctorate in engineering and that year joined the Technical University’s faculty, teaching communications science in music and language. In 1953 he founded the Studio for experimental music and composition with Boris Blacher, and in 1968 started a course in experimental music at the university.

O'Dell, one of the few foreigners who got involved in the early punk rock scene in Beijing in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, tells his story in his book Inseparable: The Memoirs of an American and The Story of Chinese Punk Rock.

The book revisits the world of punk rock at a time when the country was just opening up and seeing more clashes between East and West.

"This is a story book," O'Dell says while promoting his book in Beijing. "It is a true story, but it's a very personal story. If you get a chance to glance through it, it's kind of like every foreigner's story. It has a lot of those first experiences of landing in Beijing, taking that first breath. It's something that you tell your friend back home, something still in my lungs today."

Sound can be deployed to produce discomfort, express a threat, or create an ambience of fear or dread—to produce a bad vibe. Sonic weapons of this sort include the “psychoacoustic correction” aimed at Panama strongman Manuel Noriega by the U.S. Army and at the Branch Davidians in Waco by the FBI, sonic booms (or “sound bombs”) over the Gaza Strip, and high-frequency rat repellants used against teenagers in malls. At the same time, artists and musicians generate intense frequencies in the search for new aesthetic experiences and new ways of mobilizing bodies in rhythm. In Sonic Warfare, Steve Goodman explores these uses of acoustic force and how they affect populations.

Traversing philosophy, science, fiction, aesthetics, and popular culture, he maps a (dis)continuum of vibrational force, encompassing police and military research into acoustic means of crowd control, the corporate deployment of sonic branding, and the intense sonic encounters of sound art and music culture.

Goodman concludes with speculations on the not yet heard—the concept of unsound, which relates to both the peripheries of auditory perception and the unactualized nexus of rhythms and frequencies within audible bandwidths.

Pink Noises brings together twenty-four interviews with women in electronic music and sound cultures, including club and radio DJs, remixers, composers, improvisers, instrument builders, and installation and performance artists: Maria Chavez, Beth Coleman (M. Singe), Antye Greie (AGF), Jeannie Hopper, Bevin Kelley (Blevin Blectum), Christina Kubisch, Le Tigre, Annea Lockwood, Giulia Loli (DJ Mutamassik), Rekha Malhotra (DJ Rekha), Riz Maslen (Neotropic), Kaffe Matthews, Susan Morabito, Ikue Mori, Pauline Oliveros, Pamela Z, Chantal Passamonte (Mira Calix), Maggi Payne, Eliane Radigue, Jessica Rylan, Carla Scaletti, Laetitia Sonami, Bev Stanton (Arthur Loves Plastic), Keiko Uenishi (o.blaat).

From Morrissey and Nick Cave to The Streets and Kanye West, this is the book that explores the links between hip-hop and rock. Reynolds has focused on two strands: white alternative rock and black street music. He's identified the strange dance of white bohemian rock and black culture, how they come together at various points and then go their own way. Through interviews he has carried out as a top music journalist for the last twenty years Reynolds is here able to tell a story of musical rivalry which no-one has told before.

Totally Wired features 32 interviews with the post-punk era's most innovative musicians and colourful personalities. From Ari Up, Jah Wobble, David Byrne, Edwyn Collins, it also includes conversations with the most influential of label bosses, managers, record producers, DJs and journalists - such as John Peel and Paul Morley.

Crackling with argument and anecdote, these conversations bring a rich human dimension to post-punk's exceptional characters, from their earliest days to their glorious and sometimes disastrous musical adventures. Along with the interviews, we get 'overviews': further reflections by Simon Reynolds on key icons and crucial scenes, including John Lydon and Public Image Ltd, Ian Curtis and Joy Division, and the lineage of glam grotesquerie running from Siouxsie and the Banshees to the New Romantics to Leigh Bowery.

Marcus’ compelling history covers a specific time period, 1989–1994, and a particular type of music that turned into a larger social movement. The riot grrrl movement was a potent form of female empowerment as well as a postfeminist reaction to sexism and the rising number of sexual assaults against women when expectations for equality were high. A writer and musician, Marcus describes some of the major players on the scene, including individuals (Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail) and bands (Bikini Kill, Heavens to Betsy)—all set against the backdrop of the so-called postfeminist period. She tells colorful anecdotes (such as the origin of the title of Nirvana’s breakthrough single “Smells like Teen Spirit”). She describes the music scene in such important riot grrrl locations as the Pacific Northwest and Washington, D.C., and chronicles the rise of riot grrrl zines and riot grrrl conventions. In all, Marcus has done a commendable job of telling the little-known history of an important social and cultural movement.

Simon Reynolds:
Ghosts Of My Life confirms that Mark Fisher is our most penetrating explorer of the connections between pop culture, politics, and personal life under the affective regime of digital capitalism. The most admirable qualities of Fisher’s work are its lucidity, reflecting the urgency of his commitment to communicating ideas; his high expectations of popular art’s power to challenge, enlighten, and heal; and his adamant refusal to settle for less.

"Noise" isn't the book about Sonic Youth, is a compilation of stories inspired by the band, each story prompted by the title of a song chosen from thier extensive catalog.

Contributors: Hiag Akmakjian, Christopher Coake, Katherine Dunn, Mary Gaitskill, Rebecca Godfrey, Laird Hunt, Shelley Jackson, J. Robert Lennon, Samuel Ligon, Emily Maguire, Tom McCarthy, Scott Mebus, Eileen Myles, Catherine O'Flynn, Emily Carter Roiphe, Kevin Sampsell, Steven Sherrill, Matt Thorne, Rachel Trezise, Jess Walter, Peter Wild.

In "Girl in a Band" Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth and role model for a generation of women, tells her story. She writes frankly about her route from girl to woman and pioneering icon within the music and art scene of New York City in the 1980s and 90s as well as marriage, motherhood, and independence.

Ross, the classical music critic for the New Yorker, leads a whirlwind tour from the Viennese premiere of Richard Strauss's Salome in 1906 to minimalist Steve Reich's downtown Manhattan apartment. The wide-ranging historical material is organized in thematic essays grounded in personalities and places, in a disarmingly comprehensive style reminiscent of historian Otto Friedrich. Thus, composers who led dramatic lives—such as Shostakovich's struggles under the Soviet regime—make for gripping reading, but Ross treats each composer with equal gravitas. The real strength of this study, however, lies in his detailed musical analysis, teasing out—in precise but readily accessible language—the notes that link Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story to Arnold Schoenberg's avant-garde compositions or hint at a connection between Sibelius and John Coltrane. Among the many notable passages, a close reading of Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes stands out for its masterful blend of artistic and biographical insight. Readers new to classical music will quickly seek out the recordings Ross recommends, especially the works by less prominent composers, and even avid fans will find themselves hearing familiar favorites with new ears.
© Reed Business Information

Twenty-five years since acid house and Ecstasy revolutionized pop culture, Simon Reynolds's landmark rave history Energy Flash has been expanded and updated to cover twenty-first-century developments like dubstep and EDM's recent takeover of America.

Author of the acclaimed postpunk history Rip It Up and Start Again, Reynolds became a rave convert in the early nineties. He experienced first-hand the scene's drug-fuelled rollercoaster of euphoria and darkness. He danced at Castlemorton, the illegal 1992 mega-rave that sent spasms of anxiety through the Establishment and resulted in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill. Mixing personal reminiscence with interviews and ultra-vivid description of the underground's ever-changing sounds as they mutated under the influence of MDMA and other drugs, Energy Flash is the definitive chronicle of electronic dance culture.

From rave's origins in Chicago house and Detroit techno, through Ibiza, Madchester and the anarchic free-party scene, to the pirate-radio underworld of jungle and UK garage, and then onto 2000s-shaping genres such as grime and electro, Reynolds documents with authority, insight and infectious enthusiasm the tracks, DJs, producers and promoters that soundtracked a generation. A substantial final section, added for this new Faber edition, brings the book right up to date, covering dubstep's explosive rise to mass popularity and America's recent but ardent embrace of rave. Packed with interviews with participants and charismatic innovators like Derrick May, Goldie and Aphex Twin, Energy Flash is an infinitely entertaining and essential history of dance music.

Стюарт Исакофф доступно и увлекательно рассказывает о спорах и конфликтах вокруг различных систем настроек музыкальных инструментов, помещает их в контекст истории искусства, философии, религии, политики и науки.

Изобретение используемой и по сей день системы настройки музыкальных инструментов, известной как равномерная темперация, поставило под сомнение прежние представления и вызвало большие споры, но именно оно привело к появлению великой музыки Бетховена, Шуберта, Шопена, Дебюсси и других композиторов.

Oregano Rathbone: "Adam Harper’s thorough, considered and cogent attempt to suggest a means of taking music forward by liberating it from restrictive modes of perception and regressive, habitual practices is an admirably high-minded undertaking. Musical variables, dimensions in music space and music criticism are among the myriad facets tackled in a treatise which reveals the bigger picture by delving into the minutiae at a sub-atomic level... [He] makes for a wise and informed guide. He’s hot on the distinction between acknowledging the work of Cage, Stockhausen et al, and noting that it quickly became its own orthodoxy: furthermore, the weight of his argument encourages a holistic viewpoint whereby music can be seen as a fully integrated aspect of life, not an end in itself".