Pierre Schaeffer’s In Search of a Concrete Music (À la recherche d’une musique concrète) has long been considered a classic text in electroacoustic music and sound recording. Now Schaeffer’s pioneering work—at once a journal of his experiments in sound composition and a treatise on the raison d’être of “concrete music”—is available for the first time in English translation. Schaeffer’s theories have had a profound influence on composers working with technology. However, they extend beyond the confines of the studio and are applicable to many areas of contemporary musical thought, such as defining an ‘instrument’ and classifying sounds. Schaeffer has also become increasingly relevant to DJs and hip-hop producers as well as sound-based media artists. This unique book is essential for anyone interested in contemporary musicology or media history.

A Quarterly Journal of Post-Rock Cultural Pluralism. In this issue: Todd Abramson, Steve Albini, Alan Bishop, Bree, Rej T. Broth, Joe Carducci, Benoit Chaput, Sharon Cheslow, Byron Coley, Karen Constance, Nigel Cross, Chris D, Georganne Deen, Lili Dwight, Erika Elizabeth, Ray Farrell, Andrea Feldman, Eddie Flowers, Tom Givan, Tom Greenwood, Mats Gustafsson, Lisa Marie Jarlborn, Ira Kaplan, Maria Kozic, Matt Krefting, Tom Lax, Ted Lee, Heather Leigh, Donna Lethal, Owen Maercks, Marc Masters, Hisham Mayet, Phil McMullen, Richard Meltzer, Thurston Moore, Dylan Nyoukis, Gary Panter, Brigid Pearson, Charles Plymell, Tony Rettman, Joanne Robertson, Bruce Russell, Suzy Rust, Savage Pencil, John Sinclair, Chris Stigliano, Brian Turner, Tesco Vee, Naomi Yang. 80 pages, black & white 8.5" x 11".

The much-revered avant-garde guitarist John Fahey (1939–2001) incorporated influences ranging from folk, blues, and bluegrass to classical music, musique concrete, and noise in his primarily acoustic guitar-based compositions. Considered a legend by many, Fahey released upward of three dozen LPs in his lifetime. Relatively late in life, Fahey extended his so-called American Primitive approach beyond music, and into the creation of a substantial body of paintings created in makeshift studios in and around Salem, Oregon. Painting on found poster board and discarded spiral notebook paper, working with tempera, acrylic, spray paint, and magic marker, Fahey’s intuitive approach echoes the action painters and abstract expressionists. The same alluring and tranquilizing aesthetics that defines much of Fahey’s musical output are equally present in his paintings. The first publication focusing on his visual output, John Fahey: Paintings, edited in collaboration with Audio Visual Arts (AVA), is illustrated with 92 plates and is accompanied by essays from Keith Connolly, founding member of No-Neck Blues Band, and the critic Bob Nickas.

Originally published in France in 2002, Jacqueline Caux’s Presque Rien avec Luc Ferrari is the first book to offer a comprehensive and insightful look into the work and career of one the most pioneering music composers of the second half of the 20th century. Errant Bodies Press is pleased to release the English edition translated by Jérôme Hansen.  True to the genre-defying career of Luc Ferrari, who passed away in 2005 at the age of 76, the book skilfully assembles original interviews conducted by the author with previously unpublished texts in which the composer reflects on some of his key works. The interviews are also interspersed with fourteen short "imaginary autobiographies", written from 1971 to 1997, and ranging from semi-factual accounts to more poetic, fictional, or even science-fictional pieces.  In her illuminating introduction, Jacqueline Caux starts by recounting some of the main achievements of this most libertarian, anti-dogmatic of artists, before identifying three constants throughout Ferrari’s tumultuous career: his passionate attention to the sounds of everyday life, his compositional use of chance and his emphasis on themes of intimacy and sensuality. In the first and more substantial chapter (History), musicologist François Delalande, composer Daniel Terrugi and musicologist Evelyne Gayou join the author to take Ferrari through his musical life, starting with his early years studying piano at the Conservatoire de Paris, where his teachers included Arthur Honegger and Olivier Messiaen. Tracing back his first encounter with fellow musique concrète pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, with which he would found the influential Groupe de Recherche Musicale (GRM), Ferrari offers a personal and richly evocative account of one of the most effervescent periods in modern music, culminating in the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair and the official recognition of a new generation of experimental composers: Varèse, Cage, Xenakis, Stockhausen. Another major shift in his career occurs with his discovery of the use of unprocessed everyday sounds, leading to what is perhaps his most famous work, Presque Rien (1969). This compositional strategy, for which he coined the characteristically understated term "anecdotal music", allowed him to bring the social into the musical vocabulary – a radical artistic move appropriate for these politically radical times. Chapter Two to Five successively address Ferrari’s involvement in a variety of mediums, from instrumental composition and music theater, to radio art and even installation art. In the final chapter (Concepts), Jacqueline Caux asks the composer to elaborate on some of the key concepts that have guided his work: anecdotal, autobiography, chance, heterogeneity, heterozygote, freedom, narration, tautology, etc. The book concludes with the complete list of his works as well as discography.

A Quarterly Journal of Post-Rock Cultural Pluralism. In this issue: Todd Abramson, Steve Albini, Alan Bishop, Bree, Rej T. Broth, Joe Carducci, Lisa Carver, Benoit Chaput, Sharon Cheslow, Byron Coley, Karen Constance, Nigel Cross, Chris D, Irene Dogmatic, Lili Dwight, Ray Farrell, Andrea Feldman, Tom Givan Tom Greenwood, Mats Gustafsson, Angela Jaeger, Elaine Kahn, Ira Kaplan, Maria Kozic, Matt Krefting, Ted Lee, Donna Lethal, Owen Maercks, Marc Masters, Hisham Mayet, Richard Meltzer, Thurston Moore, Dylan Nyoukis, Gary Panter, Tony Rettman, Bruce Russell, Suzy Rust, Andy Schwartz, Chris Stigliano, Brian Turner, Naomi Yang Ω. 50 pages, black & white 8.5" x 11".

Cesura//Acceso is a journal about music and politics. Publishing a mix of commissions and open submissions, the journal asks what it could mean to practice politics through music or think music through politics. Featuring contributions from musicians, writers, artists, theorists, and poets, Cesura//Acceso explores, unfolds and encourages interconnected spaces of experimental thought and practice in politics, music and poetics. Contributors: Sean Bonney, Anne Boyer, Seymour Wright, Stevphen Shukaitis, Howard Slater, Dhanveer Singh Brar, Commune Editions, Alberto Savinio, Kev Nickells, Anthony Iles & Eve Lear, Johanna Isaacson, Matteo Pasquinelli, Martin Glaberman, Emma Robertson, Michael Pickering & Marek Korczynski, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Simon Yuill, Iain Boal.

Beautifully presented hard cover book on 60 independent labels in free jazz and improvisation published by Rune Grammofon. Label Description: Born out of necessity and a love of the music and the records, the aim of this book is to offer a guide to a selection of independent labels and their releases of free jazz, improvisation and generally jazz outside of the mainstream between 1965 and 1985, with 1965 being the year when ESP-Disk' started out as the first independent label dedicated to the music covered in this book, and 1985 being the year that the CD slowly started to take over as the main sound carrier. However, we have stretched the frames a little bit on a few occasions. 60 labels are presented, each with an introduction and a discography, either complete or by the author´s personal choice. There are also 64 sleeve illustrations, including some extremely rare ones, as well as forewords by Swedish sax player and composer Mats Gustafsson and Rune Grammofon founder Rune Kristoffersen. Finally, there is a conversation between Kristoffersen and music writer Rob Young. Author Johannes Rød is working freelance as an art historian and conservator and has written several books on visual art. He is also an avid record collector since the late sixties. The book has 128 pages with layout and design is by Kim Hiorthøy, and it comes in a beautiful hardback Geltex cover.