Books and Magazines


The tenth and final anthology from Blank Forms explores the early electronic work of French composer Éliane Radigue, whose radical approach to feedback, analog synthesis, and composition on tape has long evaded historical and technical interpretation. Combining key texts, newly translated primary documents, interviews, and commissioned essays, this compendium interrogates the composer’s idiosyncratic compositional practice, which both embraces and confounds the iterative nature of magnetic tape, the subtleties of amplification, and the very experience of listening. Among these entries is an in-depth overview by cellist Charles Curtis, a close collaborator of Radigue’s, examining the composer’s earliest experiments with feedback techniques and analog synthesis, her eventual shift to composing for unamplified instruments and live performers, and her unique aesthetic configurations of time and presence. A number of detailed conversations between the composer and researchers Georges Haessig, Patrick de Haas, Ian Nagoski, and Bernard Girard provide crucial insights into her working methods at different points throughout her career. Religious studies scholar Dagmar Schwerk reflects upon Radigue’s profound synthesizer work Trilogie de la Mort (1988–93) in the context of Tibetan Buddhist thought and its history, while texts by musicians Daniel Silliman and Madison Greenstone examine, in notably different ways, the technical characteristics of Radigue’s sound practice. Sketches for unrealized work, contemporary reviews, concert programs, and other ephemera mapping the performance history of Radigue’s early work are presented together for the first time. The anthology concludes with a roundtable discussion between Curtis, Greenstone, and Anthony Vine, untangling the knot of paradoxes at the center of Radigue’s artistic practice to trace the thread of her continued “ethos of resistance.”

Blank Forms – Alien Roots: Éliane Radigue

The eternal rhythm is the vital conduit that links music through breath to life itself. Don Cherry certainly lived music. And his music is alive.When he says that music is breath he talks of something much bigger than the blow needed to make the trumpets sound. From his prime instrument, the trumpet, to his beloved ‘ngoni via flutes, piano and melodica Don Cherry’s voice is unique; like the man from which it springs, it is instantly recognisable whatever instrument or angle it is coming from. THE DON CHERRY TAPES laid the foundation in 1979 of the Cherry Archives which preserve the memory of Don and his extended tribal family. The archive began with a series of taped autobiographical interviews and a box of ephemera and mementoes. Now, 30 years after his death, those transcribed conversations are finally being published, illuminated by Don’s own artworks and augmented by the author Graeme Ewens’ tour journals and contemporaneous notes made over three decades of collaboration. The material included here is previously unpublished and is a kind of top- and-tail treatment of one of the Jazz Great’s personal experience, combining autobiographical background alongside his mentor Ornette Coleman with objective reportage from some of his later tours and personal anecdotes that offer a unique perspective from the writer who had become Don’s confidant, travel companion, witness and friend. They hung out together in the 1970s and between 1979 and 1984 were collaborating, collecting and collating material for a multimedia extravaganza that Don called ‘The Project’, which was picked up again in 1994. This would tell his story from the inside and from alongside, aiming to glimpse the essence of a cosmic traveller and multicultural ‘organic’ musician, from the spiritual high spots to the low points of the jazz life. The pages on his later years include personal reflections on his contemporary musical travellers and reveals details of his collaboration with John Coltrane. Special Edition limited to 300 copies 

Graeme Ewens – Don Cherry - Eternal Rhythm

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Limited and hand-stamped collaborative publication between Séance Centre, BlackMass Publishing, and The Strangeness of Dub. Includes a published transcription, collaged booklet of poetry and images by Yusuf Hassan, and cassette. In April 2022, Brandon Hocura huddled in the Séance Centre inventory closet to block out traffic noise and recorded a three hour conversation with Edward George. The exchange was modelled on The Wire magazine’s Invisible Jukebox where artist’s improvise responses to a number of songs, drawing out themes, memories, and critical reflections from their sonic praxis. In this case, the discussion sprung from George’s lauded TheStrangeness of Dub series as well as his longstanding work with Black Audio Film Collective and Hallucinator (Chain Reaction).  From the introduction: “In the 1996 film The Last Angel of History Edward George plays the Data Thief, a sonic archaeologist who travels back in time in search of fragments of Black musical technologies that hold the keys to the future of mankind. In life, as in fiction, he is a theorist of vibration, reading the melodic codes and subaltern tales embedded in sound for clues about the past, present, and future. In The Strangeness of Dub, he uncovers and elevates the discourses encapsulated within dub music — he reads King Tubby, Burning Spear, Don Drummond, and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry alongside Foucault, Benjamin, and Derrida. In this capacious methodology of listening, knowledge is non-hierarchical and non-linear — Jah Shaka is as much a metaphysician as Wittgenstein.” Edward George is a writer and broadcaster. Founder of Black Audio Film Collective, George wrote and presented the ground-breaking science fiction documentary Last Angel of History (1996). George is part of the multimedia duo Flow Motion, and the electronic music group Hallucinator. He hosts Sound of Music (Threads Radio), Kuduro – Electronic Music of Angola (Counterflows). George’s series The Strangeness of Dub (Morley Radio) dives into reggae, dub, versions and versioning, drawing on critical theory, social history, and a deep and wide cross-genre musical selection. Edward George lives and works in London.   

Edward George – Discrepant Echoes - Publications and Cassette