walter-wolfgang sparrer wolke, march, 2020 pp.304 deustch, korean, english large format hardback, 32cm x 30, weight 1.7kgThis book is the first pictorial monograph about the Korean-German composer Isang Yun, who was born in southern Korea in 1917 and died in Berlin in 1995. It was first in Germany, with influence from what around 1960 was then the avant-garde that he developed an individual musical language of his own. A little later Yun was drawn into the field of tension between political advocacy motivated by humanitarian, societal concerns and responding to ideological incitement, between imprisonment, torture, and reparation. It was in his compositional work that he found a place of refuge. His music proceeds from the primacy of melody and the sustained tone, which he found preformed in the traditional music of his native Korea and then succeeded in developing heterophonically and spatially. The resultant works were characterized by unusual intensity and rich tone colors.

Deutsch und Englisch160 S./pp., Fotos, pb., € 28.–, The Hungarian-Swiss pianist Géza Anda (1921-1976), together with Annie Fischer, György Cziffra and György Sebök, is regarded as one of the most important personalities of 20th-century pianism to emerge from the great tradition of the Hungarian school. Anda’s interpretations of the Classical, Romantic and modern repertoire, especially of the piano concertos of Mozart and Bartók, have long been regarded as authoritative. As a teacher, he had a lasting impact on subsequent generations of pianists. The Concours Géza Anda, founded in Zurich in 1979, has achieved worldwide renown while successfully continuing Anda’s legacy as an artist and a pedagogue. This book, published by the Géza Anda Foundation in Zurich to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Géza Anda’s birth, offers a panorama of his life, work and legacy based on many biographical documents, some of which are presented here for the very first time.

author N.Andrew Walsh,  published Wolke, 2021 500pp, photos, paperbackThe phenomenon of “graphic” scores has been a subject of fascination, controversy, and a flourishing of artistic talent since its inception in the aftermath of the Second World War. The scores of that age, despite their compelling visual presence, nevertheless remain elusive: the means of performance are obscure, and they resist conventional analysis. This study reconsiders graphic scores from the perspective of Information Theory, derived from studies of “ergodic” texts: the ergodic score requires non-trivial effort from the participants in its realization, becoming a cybernetic object that challenges our beliefs about what music is, how it works, and where to find its meaning. The sounds of a musical performance are the field in which a larger metamorphosis takes place: like the labyrinth, the journey to the heart of ergodic scores entails both risk and transcendence. This study illuminates ergodic scores from their theoretical foundations: the abstract theory of how they work, the history of exemplary figures from the postwar avant-garde—including such luminaries of the art as Yoko Ono, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Anestis Logothetis, Pauline Oliveros, and John Cage—and concrete analysis of selected repertoire. Using pioneering theoretical insights—and with the benefit of original archival research, interviews with the artists themselves, and decades of experience as a composer and performer of graphic scores—the author establishes one of the great attainments of the twentieth century as a living art.

Omnibus Press, 2024, 432 pp"An oral history of the Scottish indie music scene from 1983 to 1995. By 1983, many of Scotland’s post-punk bands had broken up or moved south to chase the major labels in London. That vacuum was filled by an influx of young musicians who were determined to remake the scene in their own image. In this compelling and dynamic oral history, Grant McPhee chronicles the radical transformation of Scotland’s independent music scene from 1983-1995. Including archival photos and drawing from over 100 interviews with the key players of the time, Grant McPhee allows them to set the scene in their own words; including the Cocteau Twins, Shop Assistants, Teenage Fanclub, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream and many more. Postcards from Scotland is the definitive story of the radicals, misfits and experimentalists who made independent music what it is today." “A truly deep dive. Like the best rock and roll, not everyone will get this. And thank God for that.” John Niven “This is a brilliant account of one of the most fruitful periods of Scotland’s musical heritage. The cast list is longer than Norman Blake’s hair circa 1992. Devour!” Marc Riley

August 2023, English/Portuguese19×31 cm, 216 pages, 43 color and 19 b/w ill., hardcover DESIGNStudio Remco van BladelCOPUBLISHERdocumentaExhibition catalogue of Pedro Neves Marques‘s solo project ‘Vampires in Space’ at the Portuguese Pavilion, 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2022. “In space it’s always night.” A family of vampires travels through space, carrying life to a faraway planet. Alone, they recall their past, offering an open-ended narrative about the role of fiction in our lives, with a special care for transgender experiences. This book includes an interview, film scripts and poetry by Neves Marques, curatorial texts by João Mourão, Luís Silva, alongside visual documentation and other contributions by Manuela Moscoso and Filipa Ramos.

published by Drawing Room, April 2024 Edition of 265, full colour 64 pages 280mm x 217mmThis publication accompanies the exhibition The Time of Our Lives and focuses on the pioneering drawing practices of women artists and their impact on feminist activism from the 1980s until today. It examines drawing’s versatility as a medium and the ways it has been used by women to raise consciousness around social and political issues, such as reproductive justice, sexism, racism and other forms of oppression. The publication features full-colour reproductions of the artworks in the exhibition by participating artists:  Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Kate Davis, Margaret Harrison, Claudette Johnson, Jade de Montserrat, Lizzy Rose, Monica Ross and  Soheila Sokhanvari.

written by Douglas Macintyre & Grant Mcphee with Neil Cooper  Orion Publishing, 2022464pp  Hungry Beat is a definitive oral history of these labels and the Scottish post-punk period. Covering the period 1977-1984, the book begins with the Subway Sect and the Slits performance on the White Riot tour in Edinburgh and takes us through to Bob Last shepherding the Human League from experimental electronic artists on Fast Product to their triumphant number one single in the UK and USA, Don't You Want Me. Largely built on interviews for Grant McPhee's Big Gold Dream film with Last, Hilary Morrison, Paul Morley and members of The Human League, Scars, The Mekons, Fire Engines, Josef K, Aztec Camera, The Go-Betweens and The Bluebells, Hungry Beat offers a comprehensive overview of one of the most important periods of Scottish cultural output and the two labels that changed the landscape of British music.

200 pp Backstage Books, June 2024   “Loving dissection of the band's early years... smart and thorough"In the words of singer Dave Gahan, Depeche Mode were “a new sort of band from a new sort of town”: Basildon, a radical post-war experiment in design and living; a city of the future that serves as a mirror for Depeche Mode’s stark, electronic ultra-pop. Drawing on a wealth of new interviews with friends and lovers, club runners and church elders, pluggers and producers, early bandmates and key industry executives—including fellow Basildonian Alison Moyet and industrial pioneer Genesis P. Orridge—author Simon Spence brings a fresh perspective to the lives of Dave, Martin, Vince, and Fletch, the place they grew up in, and their place in the rock’n’roll firmament.Part musical odyssey, part cultural history, Just Can’t Get Enough traces the story of Depeche Mode from front rooms and school halls to London fetish clubs and legendary Berlin studios; from the Basildon Arts Centre to Top Of The Pops ; and from their earliest recordings to Black Celebration and the cusp of transatlantic superstardom.

A5, Staplebound, November, 2021 feat Bärchen und die Milchbubis, Burka Band, Gudrun Gut, Haru Nemuri, Östro 430, Radamel and SIKSA.A Feminist Fanzine About Composition and Sound Art, based in Cologne

Sound American Publications announces its 27th issue, THE LIFE ISSUE, a reflection upon the smallness—and largeness—of living amidst a tumultuous, globally-shared moment..The Life Issue contributors include claire rousay, who writes about the many cuts accumulated while learning something new; pedal steel superhero Susan Alcorn recounts a battle with injury; composer Jack Langdon offers Sound American’s second fiction offering, a story of how the pandemic affects a fictional musician, presenter, and listener; composer Lea Bertucci interviews improvising vocalist Audrey Chen about identity, commitment to music, and motherhood; bass clarinetist Katie Porter lets us in on a quarantine’s worth of deep-questioning and the looping beauty of banality.Sound American’s ongoing series, “Sites of Formation”, celebrates the piano, featuring writing by pianists Pat Thomas (on Ahmed Abdul-Malik) and Cory Smythe (on Henri Pousseur), as well as Dr. Douglas Rust on the Elliott Carter Piano Sonata and Sound American’s editor, Nate Wooley on the Vangelis’s keyboard-heavy soundtrack to Chariots of Fire. This issue also includes writing by saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos on NYC guerilla concerts during lockdown and a roundtable discussion from members of the Catalytic Sound collective—Ken Vandermark, Luke Stewart, and Bonnie Jones led by Brock Stuessi—on their work to create a streaming platform as an alternative to Spotify.This issue’s Exquisite Corpse is an elegant, nostalgic site-specific work by composer, flutist, vocalist Ka Baird. The Life Issue also features a world-premiere, sixteen-page set of drawings with introduction by Lebanese-born, Berlin-based artist Mazen Kerbaj. The drawings feature his intimate, aching, everyday trek through multiple shutdowns.As we move on from a generation-defining year-and-a-half, The Life Issue allows some of the artists we love to speak intimately as people: people who happen to make art. Without requiring responses to the great traumas of the last eighteen months, the issues allows them to reaffirm their everyday humanity through the small injuries and victories, the days of nothing happening, and the ways that they try to fit in as small parts of a huge world. A unique issue of Sound American, it reaffirms the journal’s mission of making music for everyone in new and unexpected ways.

Frans de Waard published Vital, a fanzine for electronic and electroacoustic music, from 1987 to 1995. It was a low-budget, Xeroxed publication, bearing the revolutionary instruction: ‘No Copyright Publication. Reprint Now!’ It featured interviews with Asmus Tietchens, O Yuki Conjugate, Merzbow, P16.D4, Pierre Henry, Jim O’Rourke, Brume, Döc Wor Mirran and many others, hosted discussions on copyright, plagiarism and plunderphonics, house music, ambient music, cassette culture and noise, and included contributions from musicians such as Leigh Landy, Godfried Willem Raes, John Duncan, and GX Jupitter-Larsen. Every issue included reviews of cassette releases, LPs, CDs and books. A total of 44 issues were published. Vital moved online in 1995, where it appeared every week since as Vital Weekly.This book is a reprint of all 44 issues and is a lively record of the heyday of cassette culture and industrial music, but also of developments in the wider field of electronic music.

In late 1983, Frans de Waard published the first edition of De Nederlandse Cassette Catalogus, listing all known, independently released cassettes in The Netherlands up to that point. No images, no descriptions, just a list. In the following years, three more editions were published and then De Waard ceased producing these booklets. This book contains all four catalogues, along with a 100-page selection of ‘source material, articles from Vinyl, Muziekkrant Oor, De Nieuwe Koekrand, the complete one-off K7 fanzine, along with letters, flyers and label information.This book includes an English introduction to the background of the various catalogue editions, as well as translations of the instructions on how to consult the catalogues. Otherwise, the rest is in Dutch. The front cover is an homage to The International Discography Of The New Wave by Martha DeFoe and B. George, which was itself the direct inspiration for me to compile the first edition.

Adam Morris spent more than twenty years at the coal face of the music industry. In 1979, he co-founded the DIY label Malicious Damage Records, releasing post-punk classics by Killing Joke as well as the highly rated John Peel favourite, “Agent Orange” by Ski Patrol.  He worked for two years as an unpaid tour manager for Killing Joke, an experience that later led him to tour manage the reggae legend Lee “Scratch” Perry, who paid him. He moved from the label into distribution, working in imports and exports where he bought and sold thousands of records from labels like Beggar’s Banquet, 4AD and Alternative Tentacles (Dead Kennedys). He distributed On-U Sounds for Adrian Sherwood, called at Dr Alimantado’s house for breakfast and represented Big Black and Sub Pop Records in Europe.  In 1988 he founded Mr Modo Records, which collaborated with many of the new MIDI based electronic music producers evolving on the scene at that time. This included Coldcut, 808 State and A Guy Called Gerald. He formed the alliance WAU! Mr Modo with Youth and Dr LX Paterson and became manager of The Orb when that group formed.  At one point he was known as the “Peter Grant of Ambient House”.  Ambient house (or chill out music) was a highly influential genre of the new electronic dance culture that achieved global domination from the end of the 1980’s.  Chill Out was a forerunner for what is now known as EDM. Adam became the first manager to take a MIDI based act on a coast to coast tour of North America. At the time, the main stream music industry saw no long term future in MIDI. They could not see how you could play EDM live or tour it globally. In doing their sell out American tours, The Orb pioneered the way forward and proved most of the music industry wrong.  In 1994, Adam lost his “job for life” on his 40th birthday and was ostracised by most of the biz. At that point, he began the first draft of “Losing It,” a fictional account of some of his working experiences inspired by the novels “Spinal Tap” and “Trainspotting.” He described his effort as “Spinal Tap for ravers.” He completed that in 1996.  Little did he know then that it would take another twenty six years before his stories made it into print. But it did. Its a trip, a mad ride to oblivion, but also a warning to us all.

From 1984 to 2015, Korm Plastics released cassettes, vinyl and CDs. Following a brief hibernation, Korm Plastics relaunched in 2019 as a book publisher. The first book was a re-issue of Frans de Waard’s memoir of working for Staalplaat, This Is Supposed To Be A Record Label, previously published by Timeless Edition in France but unavailable for several years. The success of the second edition led to the publication of new books, which include reprints of fanzines (Vital, De Nederlandse Cassette Catalogus, BOH, Neumusik, Nul Nul, some with CDs), an English translation of a book about punk in the Netherlands (1976-1982), a book about The Legendary Pink Dots’ first ten years, Adam Morris’ fictionalised account of working for Killing Joke and The Orb, a catalogue of ten years of Modelbau (also with a CD), a collection of letters between Coil’s John Balance and Anthony Blokdijk, and Freek Kinkelaar’s musings on music.Korm Plastics founder Frans de Waard teamed up with designer Alfred Boland for this, their latest publication, The Annual. For a long time both had wanted to publish a magazine, which eventually became what they hope will be a regular yearbook with ‘everything you never knew you were interested in’. They invited their authors (present and future) to contribute an article, which led to a wildly diverse selection. From the history of turntablism, a 1985 interview with Roger and Brian Eno, a report on the Groningen punk scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Truus de Groot about her formative years, Kubus Kasssettes, vinyl hunting in Trinidad, the Perversita festival in 1989, concerts that ended in riots, Willem de Ridder’s Radiola Improvisation Salon, Ultra in Eindhoven, Gary Scott meeting Florian Fricke, Killing Joke/Joy Division, The Slits, contributions by GW Sok and Harold Schellinx and more. Illustrations by Miss.Printed, short interludes by Freek Kinkelaar and Frits Jonker, plus a comic strip by Bertin.

(eds.) Sanja Perovic,Rosa Mucignat,Jacob McGuinn, & Cristina Viti, with Dominic J. Jaeckle& Benjamin PickfordTenement Press / No University Press #1978-1-7393851-3-2247pp March, 2024 English/ FrenchAssembled in the Playbook are the last words of Gracchus Babeuf, the leader of the conspiracy and a radical proponent of the abolition of private property, and of his fellow conspirator Augustin Darthé, as they faced the guillotine. We’ve a letter, written in the popular idiom of the sans-culottes, that urges the common soldier to rebel; the score and lyrics of a street song that names the new class enemy: the wealthy bourgeoisie who have profited from the revolution; a first-time English translation of ‘The Last Judgement of All Kings’—an extraordinary one-act play by Sylvain Maréchal, the unofficial poet of the Conspiracy, that was performed to considerable acclaim in Year II of the Revolution (and that the Workshop is in the process of adapting for contemporary audiences). Many of these texts were never published in their own time, and form a part of the testament left behind by Philippe Buonarroti, a leading conspirator who inspired new generations of revolutionaries across Europe over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among the best known works included is the Manifesto of Equals, long considered a founding text of social, communist and anarchist revolutions. The Playbook presents a translation of the Manifesto alongside other key texts by the conspirators, reconstructing the richness and variety of revolutionary communication that informs the editorship, shape, and scope of this volume.

200pp   May, 2024, Goldsmiths Press - Sonic Series   hardbackThe emergence of the popular music industry in the early twentieth century not only drove a wedge between music production and consumption, it also underscored a wider separation of labor from leisure and of the workplace from the domestic sphere. These were changes characteristic of an industrial society where pleasure was to be sought outside of work, but these categories have grown increasingly porous today. As the working day extends into the home or becomes indistinguishable from leisure time, so the role and meaning of music in everyday life changes too. In arguing that the experience of popular music is partly conditioned by its segregation from work and its restriction to the time and space of leisure—the evening, the weekend, the dancehall—Take This Hammer shows how changes to work as it grows increasingly precarious, part-time, and temporary in recent decades, are related to transformations in popular music. Connecting contemporary changes in work and the economy to tendencies in popular music, Take This Hammer shows how song-form has both reflected developments in contemporary capitalism while also intimating a horizon beyond it. From online streaming and the extension of the working day to gentrification, unemployment and the emergence of trap rap, from ecological crisis and field recording to automation and trends in dance music, by exploring the intersections of work and song in the current era, not only do we gain a new understanding of contemporary musical culture, we also see how music might gesture towards a horizon beyond the alienating experience of work in capitalism itself.

Including interviews with Tame Impala, Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO, Roger O'Donnell of The Cure, Gregg Araki, Slowdive, Labrinth, Nancy Whang, Teenage Engineering, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), Geneva Jacuzzi, Mikael Jorgensen of Wilco, Tim Gane of Stereolab, Avey Tare, TV Girl, Jessy Lanza, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Nation of Language, Bibio, The Blaze, Sg Lewis, Bob Baker Music Archives.  The third compilation of Synth History interviews in tangible 'zine form! A 200+ page high quality 'zine featuring a curated compilation of interviews with legendary and modern day pioneers.

Published by Mousse and Podere Trafonti Texts by Marie Kølbæk Iversen, Adam Khalil, Isabella Rjeille, and Yann Chateigné TytelmanDesign by Maximage   2024English / Italian136 pagesHardcover, 19 x 26 cmISBN 978-88-6749-598-6 Histories of Predation traces Marie Kølbæk Iversen's critical reimagining of subjectivity and cultural history, from Mirror Therapy (2015–16) and Io/I (2015–19) to Histories of Predation (2022–) and the performance project Donnimaar (2017–). Interrogating the demographic and aesthetic homogenization of the mid-nineteenth-century Danish nation-state and the ensuing forced forgetting of divergent identities, the book offers a deep-time view on processes of nation building by probing the geopolitical "mythologics" they hinge on.