Books and Magazines


paperback. 630 pp. feb 2024A fascinating interdisciplinary approach to how everyday Western music works, and why the tones, melodies, and chords combine as they do. Despite the cultural diversity of our globalized world, most Western music is still structured around major and minor scales and chords. Countless thinkers and scientists of the past have struggled to explain the nature and origin of musical structures. In Psychoacoustic Foundations of Major-Minor Tonality, music psychologist Richard Parncutt offers a fresh take, combining music theory—Rameau's fundamental bass, Riemann's harmonic function, Schenker's hierarchic analysis, Forte's pitch-class set theory—with psychology—Bregman's auditory scene, Terhardt's virtual pitch, Krumhansl's tonal hierarchy. Drawing on statistical analyses of notated music corpora, Parncutt charts a middle path between cultural relativism and scientific positivism to bring music theory into meaningful discourse with empirical research. Our musical subjectivity, Parncutt explains, depends on our past musical experience and hence on music history and its social contexts. It also depends on physical sound properties, as investigated in psychoacoustics with auditory experiments and mathematical models. Parncutt's evidence-based theory of major-minor tonality draws on his interdisciplinary background to present a theory that is comprehensive, creative, and critical. Examining concepts of interval, consonance, chord root, leading tone, harmonic progression, and modulation, he asks: • Why are some scale tones and chord progressions more common than others? • What aspects of major-minor tonality are based on human biology or general perceptual principles? What aspects are culturally arbitrary? And what about colonial history? Original and provocative, Psychoacoustic Foundations of Major-Minor Tonality promises to become a foundational text in both music theory and music cognition.

Richard Parncutt – Psychoacoustic Foundations of Major-Minor Tonality

Hardback  366 pages  2021The story of two outsiders and obsessives whose collision prompted an evangelistic alliance on the furthest frontiers of underground music.Steve Davis first met Kavus Torabi - guitarist with Gong, Guapo, Cardiacs and Knifeworld - in the mid-2000's at a gig by French underground rock legends Magma. Over the next few years, this unlikely duo's shared affinity for visionary psychedelic music would become the foundation of not only a firm friendship, but also the most infectiously inclusive broadcasting style since the much-mourned death of John Peel.In their weekly radio shows and a one-of-a-kind live DJ roadshow which included a legendary appearance at Glastonbury, Steve and Kavus mapped out a musical landscape of rare enchantment, where the only passport needed was a pair of open ears. No-one, least of all Davis and Torabi themselves, was expecting the 6-time former World Snooker champion and a British-Iranian underground rock musician to become one of the most trusted brands in British alternative music.As Steve and Kavus were starting to get to grips with the challenge of their newfound status, events took a further unexpected turn. Suddenly they found themselves in a band together. And not just any band ... as two thirds of Britain's (if not the world's) leading harmonium, guitar and analogue synth power-trio (with Michael J.York of Coil)The Utopia Strong, the two friends found themselves plunging into a vortex of spontaneous compositional excitement.How Steve and Kavus pulled this off is just one of the many questions MEDICAL GRADE MUSIC will try to answer. Part sonic memoir, part Socratic dialogue, part gonzo mission to the heart of what makes music truly psychedelic this book is the first work of joint autobiography to ever trace the evolution of a life-changing friendship through the discographies of Gentle Giant and Voivod. From the chip-shops of Plumstead to the the wildest shores of Plymouth's nineties thrash scene. it's a funny and fearless buddy movie of the soul, with a soundtrack that will make your eyes bleed.

Steve Davis & Kavusi Torabi – Medical Grade Music

Historic pictures from Getatchew's private photo album Getatchew passed away on April 4, 2016 at the age of 81 after a musical career of more than 68 years. As a final tribute The Ex has published this photobook. 168 pages. Four sections of pictures; a selection from Getatchew's private album with historical photos and photos by three very different international photographers — Andy Moor, guitarist in The Ex, Matias Corral and Nick Helderman who came on tour in Europe, America and to Addis Abeba — to document this unique collaboration between Getatchew Mekuria & The Ex & Guests.This photobook is the result of what appears to be an unlikely collaboration between Dutch underground band The Ex and Ethiopian saxophone legend Getatchew Mekuria. The Ex fell in love with an old Getatchew cassette from 1972, and in 2004 they wanted to invite him for their 25th Anniversary Festival. They went to Addis to find him and when they met, Getatchew was up for it right away. The result was a fruitful 10-year collaboration with more than a 100 concerts worldwide, plenty of enthusiastic press and two beautiful CD/LPs.In 2014, because of diabetes, he developed serious problems with his legs and couldn't travel any more. The Ex at that point decided to organise a Celebration of Getatchew Mekuria concert series in Ethiopia, including the National Theatre in Addis Abeba. It sold out. 1500 people came and there was a standing ovation. A truly honourable farewell to a great musician. Soon after this, his health began to deteriorate quickly.

Getatchew Mekuria (1935 - 2016)

Paperback, 79pp, A4 smallest functional unit, 2022smallest functional unit and Graphème is an initiative, founded in 2020 by Mazen Kerbaj, Ute Wassermann, Tony Buck, Magda Mayas, and Racha Gharbieh with the aim of performing and publishing unconventional, hybrid notational formats and graphic scores by international composers.  The second instalment of Graphème presents twelve compositions from another set of varied and distinguished artists. These artists share a passionate interest in finding and expressing a personal language and vision beyond the standard systems of western notation, and represent the wide creative spectrum that makes up innovative new music composition today. The twelve pieces explore notions of the score as a result of interdisciplinary collaboration, architectural systems as inspiration, instrument building as composition, printing and materiality as sources for interpretation and performative practice, as well as investigations of personal vocabulary and shared histories. Many of the scores in this edition are graphically beautiful and intriguing, and hold their own as works of visual art. "The heart of the endeavor in publishing these scores and to have them reach a wide audience, is to see that this music, and these ideas and procedures are performed. Graphème is fundamentally a practical collection of pieces to be played. We hope that performers feel free to work on versions of these compositions and find ways to realise them. We invite you to dive in, explore and experience the ideas and creations of some of our most adventurous, curious, imaginative and inventive composers." - smallest functional unit

a publication for experimental music scores – Graphème vol 2.

Contributions by ROSA AIELLO, GERRY BIBBY, COLEMAN COLLINS, AYANNA DOZIER, ANNIE ERNAUX, AMELIA GROOM, MICHÈLE GRAF & SELINA GRÜTER, MONILOLA OLAYEMI ILUPEJU, ELLEN YEON KIM, BITSY KNOX, DAN KWON, ERIKA LANDSTRÖM, ENAD MAROUF, KATRIN MAYER, AISLINN MCNAMARA, KAMILA & JASMINA METWALY, LUZIE MEYER, VERA PALME, THERESA PATZSCHKE, GEORGIA SAGRI, MAHSA SALOOR, ELIF SAYDAM, MARK VON SCHLEGELL, SIMON SPEISER, ELAINE TAM, C.S. TOLAN, MIKHAIL WASSMER, ANNA ZACHAROFFSibyl's Mouths is the most recent in a series of publications by Pure Fiction, a writing and performance group with shifting members active since 2011. From February 12 to March 6, 2022, Pure Fiction presented an exhibition and performance program at the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne titled “Shifting Theater: Sibyl's Mouths”. The starting point was a collective reading of Mary Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man, in which the narrator discovers a collection of scribbled oak leaves scattered in a cave outside Naples. Alleged prophecies of the Cumean Sibyl, the textual fragments inscribed on the leaves foretell the story of an epidemic that ravages the globe in the 2100's—a period where solitude, intimacy, and the perception of time is radically renegotiated. Through a multiplicity of textual genres and writerly approaches, contributors examine the questions and forms that emerge from prophecy: the role of the voice in text, writing and performance; fragmentary heterogeneous narratives. The mouth is consulted, not only as a mouthpiece or as a cavernous instrument for vocalization but as an essential part of the digestive tract. Processes in the gut, such as assimilation, excretion, and regurgitation involve multiple temporal directionalities, and may function as metaphorical gateways to intuitive truths.

a pure fiction publication, edited by Rosa Aiello, Ellen Yeon Kim, Erika Landström, Luzie Meyer, Mark Von Schlegell – Sibyl's Mouths