Books and Magazines

84 Pages6 x 9.5 inchesPaperbackIn Identity Pitches, artists Stine Janvin and Cory Arcangel have composed conceptual music scores based on the knitting patterns for traditional Norwegian sweaters known as Lusekofte. Utilizing three of the most popular designs (Setesdal, Fana, and the eight-petal rose of Selbu) of this ubiquitous garment, Janvin creates scores for both solo and ensemble performers by mapping the knitting patterns onto the harmonic and subharmonic series and integrating the tuning principles of traditional Norwegian instruments. These scores are further manipulated by Arcangel using a custom, “deep-fried” coding script to create a series of image glitches. A foreword and an interview between the two artists provides context for the work, delving into the history of Norwegian folk music tunings and the Lusekofte sweater and their intersection with the cultural identity of the country over the last millennium. Stine Janvin is a vocalist, performer, and sound artist based in Stavanger, Norway. Janvin works with the extensive flexibility of her voice, and the ways in which it can be used to channel physicality of sound. Often drawing from electronic music, folk music, and contemporary media, she creates audio visual works for variable spaces from theaters, to clubs and galleries, and more recently websites and digital platforms. Recent presentations include Performa Telethon, New York; Munch Live and CADS, Munchmuseet, Oslo; Deutschlandradio Kultur, Daadgalerie, and CTM Festival, Berlin; Kunsthall Stavanger, Stavanger; Rokolective, Bucharest; Wiener Festwochen, Vienna; Issue Project Room, New York; and INA GRM,  Paris. Cory Arcangel is an artist based in Stavanger, Norway. Arcangel explores, encodes, and hacks the structural language of video games, software, and machine learning. In 2014, he established the merchandise and publishing imprint Arcangel Surfware, which opened its flagship store in Stavanger, Norway in 2018. His work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Barbican Art Centre, London; Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami.

Identity Pitches - Stine Janvin and Cory Arcangel

From scouring flea markets and eBay to maxing out their credit cards, record collectors will do just about anything to score a long-sought-after album. In Vinyl Freak, music writer, curator, and collector John Corbett burrows deep inside the record fiend’s mind, documenting and reflecting on his decades-long love affair with vinyl. Discussing more than 200 rare and out-of-print LPs, Vinyl Freak is composed in part of Corbett's long-running DownBeat magazine column of the same name, which was devoted to records that had not appeared on CD. In other essays where he combines memoir and criticism, Corbett considers the current vinyl boom, explains why vinyl is his preferred medium, profiles collector subcultures, and recounts his adventures assembling the Alton Abraham Sun Ra Archive, an event so all-consuming that he claims it cured his record-collecting addiction. Perfect for vinyl newbies and veteran crate diggers alike, Vinyl Freak plumbs the motivations that drive Corbett and collectors everywhere.   About the Author:   John Corbett is a music critic, record producer, and curator. He is the author of Microgroove: Forays into Other Music and Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein, both also published by Duke University Press, and A Listener’s Guide to Free Improvisation. His writing has appeared in DownBeat, Bomb, Nka, and numerous other publications. He is the co-owner of Corbett vs. Dempsey, an art gallery in Chicago.

Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium book

Publisher: Strange Attractor Press ISBN: 9781907222825 Number of pages: 364 Dimensions: 194 x 137 mm Paperback bookForeground Music is the result of a lifetime’s passion for gig-going by one of British television’s most individual writers.  From a Cliff Richard gospel concert at the age of 10, to his first rock show aged 14, where The Jam play so loudly he blacks out, to a Joy Division gig which erupts into a full-scale riot. Vivid, insightful and very funny, each chapter covers a different gig, including Primal Scream headlining Glastonbury at the height of Screamadelica, and the troubled reformation of The Velvet Underground. Taking in the first UK headline gig by The Strokes in a room above a pub, and the final arena tour by David Bowie. Along the way Duff experiences pub-crawls with Mark E. Smith of The Fall, convinces Paul Weller to undertake his first acting role and attempts to interview Genesis P. Orridge of Throbbing Gristle whilst tripping on LSD. Foreground Music captures the power of life-changing gigs, whilst tracing the evolution of 40 years of musical movements and subcultures. But more than that, it’s an honest, touching and witty story of friendship, love, creativity and mortality, and a testimony to music’s ability to inspire and heal. Introduction by Mark Gatiss --- Graham Duff is a British TV comedy and drama scriptwriter whose credits include Ideal and The Nightmare Worlds of H.G. Wells. As an actor he has appeared in, among other things, two Harry Potter films, Alan Partridge, and Dr. Who. --- Strange Attractor Press, 2019

Graham Duff – Foreground Music: A Life in Fifteen Gigs

Published by The Grass is Green in the Fields for You 130mm x 195mm, 228pp, perfect bound, hand stamped cover, oversize A6 risograph printed tip-in flyer, open edition.‘Dude, you wrote an essay!’ he told me, ‘how do you expect us to sell it in one sentence if you can’t even describe it in one page?’ I was horrified, embarrassed, immediately offered to write a new one and send it. ‘No,’ he explained, ‘you’re being taught a lesson. Do better with the next release.’ I was too surprised to be angry. I also didn’t learn my lesson, and they didn’t carry the next record we put out either. The lesson I did learn, maybe not for a long time, is that I only really care about the records that take pages to describe. The Grass is Green in the Fields for You is overjoyed to present a project which has been in the making—and mind—for some time: Fix The Mirrors by Ethan Swan. This collection, which starts itself in the year of 2000, collects writings on music and DIY activity from Swan’s back-catalogue. Musically it is broad, we begin with Meltdown moving to Shudder To Think; singular considerations on tracks by Tracey Thorn, Unrest and Jane’s Addiction. Further focuses on Saturday Looks Good to Me, Roy Harper, Panax, Slick Rick. There are documentary works and interviews covering Felix Kubin, The Homosexuals, Graham Lambkin & Spencer C. Yeah, Cass McCombs, and Bridget Cross. An expansive amount of ground is covered in this single collection, and this isn't the start of the wealth Swan has created. The writing is immediate, thoughtful, touching and honest—just like Ethan. Meticulously crafted, the painstaking layout is accompanied by photographs by Lisa Anne Auerbach documenting 1980’s Chicago punk shows.

Ethan Swan – Fix The Mirrors

Tracklisting: 1 - Country Dustbin [52:52] --- BOOK VERSION 72 page paperback featuring ALL of the lyrics to the longest song in history. Essential companion piece to the musik. Also an unputdownable piece of standalone verse. Dan Haywood's practice exists in the liminal space between folk, pop and outer-musics. Indebted to troubadour cultures as much as natural history, psychogeography and centuries of British poetry and prose, his work takes singer-songwriter culture to the edge of the cliff, tip-toeing off the precipice, occasionally flying freely over uncharted territory. For this new one-track album Dan uses the aesthetic language of American music (the cyclical dirge of blues and rock'n'roll, the organ funk of r'n'b, the rhythmic syntax of hip-hop) and folds them into a subjective template for his 'Country Dustbin': a song that attempts to come to terms with the clutter of a life in the 20th & 21st century. He utilises the Country Dustbin, in his own words, as “a bottomless pit when you need to dispose of a traumatic episode, a confession booth, a time capsule… an alembic to distil experience, a torch to illuminate a mystery, an arena for a reckoning.” From Los Angeles to Peckham, from Armenia to Perry Barr, switching between autobiographical scenes and stolen observations of the lives of British people, Haywood conjures poetry that walks a tightrope across the joyful, the sad, the wondrous, the banal. Unburdened by dogmatism or linearity, there are glints of Ted Hughes, J.H. Prynne, Robert Burton and Bob Dylan, whipping his observations to allegorical and metaphysical heights. Each syllable is wedded to the band’s hypnotic beat as organic sounds unfurl throughout the 53-minute duration of the piece.Following a slew of ambitious projects, beginning in public with his star-gazing New Hawks triple LP in 2010, and more recently a series from his high gain outfit Pill Fangs, 'Country Dustbin' finds an uncompromising artist playfully pushing songcraft to new places. -- “The best songwriter you’ve probably never heard of has delivered another diamond” Record Collector  “Very far out” David Berman

Dan Haywood – Country Dustbin