Eating the Archive by Yousif M. Qasmiyeh offers a stunning portrait of life in the Baddawi refugee camp in Lebanon, where Qasmiyeh was born. The poems examine even the harshest aspects of the camp with tenderness, pondering existential questions about time, family, language and identity. A mother’s blurry photograph, a father’s sharpened knife, blood stirred into watery lentils and other glimpses into Qasmiyeh’s upbringing enrich this raw and profound collection.

Expanded new edition of this 1969 classic. 244 pages, English/German edition. There must be no victors, not even in the arts… This was the credo Dieter Schnebel shared with artists like John Cage and remained faithful to his whole life. The arts and the world, music and everyday life – these were no contrasts to the composer, church minister, musicologist and teacher who had been born in Lahr in Baden. He created a new open concept of work which left boundaries in space and time behind and saw the composer as creative trigger, not as completer of the work. As Schnebel understood the performance situation as a truly democratic event, he brought street noise into the concert hall. In the 1960s, the first performances of his early works, which could only be vaguely described by the notions of concept art and fluxus, were surrounded by scandal. The more Schnebel understood music as almost unconditioned action in experimental and archetypal situations, the more the performer emancipated him- or herself from the composition. No longer did the performer function as servant of an oeuvre completed in itself, but rather the moment when the music was produced became the true content of the work. ‘Not the tones or other acoustic elements make up the musical material but rather the processes of their production,’ Schnebel once outlined his approach. This reading and picture book does not offer literature or eye-catching art for the eyes. Rather, MO-NO is music – a music to read; more precisely: music for one reader. The reading of the book is intended to stimulate music in the listener’s head, so that in being alone in reading – mono –; one becomes the performer of music, makes music for oneself. This book partly contains texts intended to mislead into the hearing and linking  of passing sounds. “Notice what’s coming in from outside – wind, water, rustling trees – rolling traffic, signals –voices, twittering birds, barking dogs – or that? – gradual change from one to the other – at the same time different transitions erratic, gentle – that’s how it sounded some time ago, yes ...” In part, the texts describe sounds that can only be  imagined, that is imaginatively generated by the reader: “A silence – where nothing more can be  heard from outside – maybe the tranquility of vast expanse – above the clouds... ocean...” “a piercing and penetrating sound that smears – with the touch of an English horn (in a sad way). Is it the sound of the dentist’s turbine drill, that drives into you... Let’s leave it and go into the microglissando sound of a crane fly that whirs around your head at night ...” Furthermore, the book contains notes – admittedly not the kind one is used to (which one could play), but rather those which are only revelaed through observation and thus lead to the imagination of unreal sounds. Some notes awaken the illusion of sounds in the room through perspective, others are deformed and distorted; yet others show a certain inner life, as if some of them grew in tones – small sounds, so to speak mini-sounds. On one sheet is a composition (“Umrisse I”) consisting only of composed pauses, whereby composed silence is offered. So the book wants to guide the reading listener (the listening reader) to the music of the sounds that  surrounds us, but also to put her/him on the trail of that imaginary music that is constantly forming within us, namely growing out of real as well as unreal sounds. (Dieter Schnebel)

Softcover, 432pp, Bilingual Edition (German & English) Wolke Verlag, MusikTexteThis volume documents the work of Alvin Lucier, one of the key figures in 20th-century experimental music. Through conversations, essays, interviews, prose scores, and introductory texts, a unique sonic universe unfolds, revolving around themes such as resonance, space, perception, and reduction. From classics such as I am Sitting in a Room and Music for Solo Performer to installations, diary entries, and collaborations with John Cage, the book shows how Lucier repeatedly pushed the boundaries of hearing. Forewords by Pauline Oliveros and James Tenney

n his tragically short life (1928-1964), Eric Dolphy was a titanic force in the development of the sixties avant-garde (or “new thing”) from the hard bop of the late fifties. The searing intensity and sonic exploration of his work on alto sax, clarinets, and flute derived in part from the concurrent innovations of Coltrane, Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and Andrew Hill, among others; previous jazz styles such as New Orleans and bop; various non-Western musics; and modern classical music (e.g., Varese). Dolphy pioneered extended solo jazz compositions, was prominent in the “third stream” movement (led by John Lewis and Gunther Schuller), and remains a major influence on musicians today for the personal, speech-like inflections of his playing. Jazz scholars Simosko and Tepperman examine every aspect of this stunning musical achievement from Dolphy’s early big band work and association with Chico Hamilton to his own last groups in Europe, emphasizing the rich legacy of his recordings. Now completely updated to include the most recent discoveries concerning his life and recordings, this book will long stand as the definitive treatment of Eric Dolphy’s music.

On Late Style examines the work produced by great artists -Beethoven, Thomas Mann, Jean Genet among them - at the end of their lives. Said makes it clear that, rather than the resolution of a lifetime's artistic endeavour, most of the late works discussed are rife with contradiction and almost impenetrable complexity. He helps us see how, though these works often stood in direct contrast to the tastes of society, they were, just as often, announcements of what was to come in the artist's discipline - works of true artistic genius.

This book chronicles how in the late 1950s, the BBC established Britain's own electronic music studio, the Radiophonic Workshop, in opposition to famous academic studios in Continental Europe and America. Rather than compete with these other studios, however, the BBC built a studio initially to provide its own avant‐garde dramatic productions with “special sound,” experimental sounds that were “neither music nor sound effect.” Very quickly, however, from the ashes of highbrow BBC radio drama emerged a popular lowbrow kind of electronic music in the form of quirky tonal jingles, signature tunes such as the one for Doctor Who, and incidental music for hundreds of programs lasting until the studio's closure in 1998. These influential sounds and styles, heard by millions of listeners over decades of operation on television and radio, have served as a primary inspiration for the use of electronic instruments in popular music. This history focuses on engineers, composers, directors, producers, bureaucrats, equipment, and locations to construct a narrative of the shifting perception toward electronic music in British culture. By combining a historical discussion with an analysis of specific works, this book derives new hermeneutical models for understanding how the output of the Radiophonic Workshop fits into the larger history of electronic music.

Comprises scholarly engagements with the various outputs of the prolific Berlin based German artist Ulrike Ottinger born in Constance in 1942 to a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father both of whom were protected from the Nazis by the paternal grandmother. The book consists of thirteen contributors, one commentator and 5 interviews. 20 b&w; illus.

Fusing the personal and the political in high-voltage verse, Amiri Baraka was one of the preeminent literary innovators of the past century. This volume comprises the fullest spectrum of his rousing, revolutionary poems, from his first collection to unpublished pieces composed during his final years. Throughout Baraka’s career as a prolific writer in several genres (also published under the name LeRoi Jones), he was vehemently outspoken against oppression of African American citizens, and he radically altered the discourse surrounding racial inequality. His legacy in world literature is matched by his widespread influence as an activist and cultural leader. Praised for its lyricism and introspection, his early poetry emerged from the Beat generation, while his later writing is marked by the Black Arts Movement's intensely rebellious fervor and subversive ideology. All along, his primary focus was on how to live and love in the present moment despite the enduring difficulties of human history.

Translated by Rodney Livingstone Foreword by Slavoj Žižek Part of the Radical Thinkers Series   148 pages Published: May 2009  ISBN: 9781844673445 Pub: Verso BooksWritten in exile from Germany, this potent study of Europe’s most controversial composer explodes the frontiers of musical and cultural analysis. Measuring key elements of Wagner’s oeuvre with patent musical dexterity, Adorno sheds light on a nineteenth-century bourgeois figure whose operas betray the social gestures and high-culture fantasies that helped plant the seeds of the modern Culture Industry. A foreword by Slavoj Žižek situates Adorno’s reflections within present debates over Wagner’s anti-Semitism and the moral status of his work, proving why this book remains one of the most important character studies of the twentieth century.

'John Cage is probably the most influential composer of the mid-twentieth century...But one doesn't need to think of Cage in the context of history. What matters is that in his autonomous Now, he's a force in our lives which we cannot negate.' The Guardian Why does the letter 'M' stand alone as the title of this book by the author of Silence and For the Birds? The dictionary gives the definition of 'M' as the 13th letter of the alphabet, the symbol for 1000, and if you think they fit, they do. Or you may find clues in Cage's topics, words beginning with M that figure among the author's concerns: including music, mesostics, Marcel Duchamp and making matters worse. From Buckminster Fuller to Chairman Mao, from Merce Cunningham to mushrooms - here are some of the most poetic, visually rich and syntactically free texts that John Cage ever produced. 'M is a visually stunning production. Here is one of the important artistic statements of our time.' The Sunday Times

John Cage (1912-1992) was an American composer, philosopher, poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker and amateur mycologist. He is arguably the most influential composer of the mid-twentieth century. He dedicated himself to the search for new horizons in musical composition. His method of composition: an amalgam of chance operations, latitude in performace, the use of electronic sound and the inclusion of ambient noise. His aim: to increase the territory of his art and to celebrate the richness of life. Silence is a collection of some of the essays and lectures that have made John Cage's name synonymous with all that is unpredictable and exciting in contemporary miusic. Outrageous they may be, but to anyone who is receptive to new ideas, to fresh and original ways of looking at and listening to things, they are a mine of fascinating discovery. And, as Cage fans will expect, the book also contains a wealth of handy information of collecting mushrooms, fishing through ice, as well as many anecdotes and Zen-type stories which illustrate Cage's exuberant artistic pre-occupations. For everywhere in this mighty explosion of ideas can be heard the still, small voice of the poet, telling with fervour his amazement at creation, when 'everything was given away'. 'A lecture by Cage is a musical event in itself, an encounter with Cage through these writings is an adventure.' Spectator

Sinister Resonance begins with the premise that sound is a haunting, a ghost, a presence whose location is ambiguous and whose existence is transitory. The intangibility of sound is uncanny – a phenomenal presence in the head, at its point of source and all around. The close listener is like a medium who draws out substance from that which is not entirely there.The history of listening must be constructed from the narratives of myth and fiction, 'silent' arts such as painting, the resonance of architecture, auditory artefacts and nature. In such contexts, sound often functions as a metaphor for mystical revelation, forbidden desires, formlessness, the unknown, and the unconscious. As if reading a map of hitherto unexplored territory, Sinister Resonance deciphers sounds and silences buried within the ghostly horrors of Arthur Machen, Shirley Jackson, Charles Dickens, M.R. James and Edgar Allen Poe, Dutch genre painting from Rembrandt to Vermeer, artists as diverse as Francis Bacon and Juan Munoz, and the writing of many modernist authors including Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, and James Joyce.

Bass player extraordinaire Charles Mingus, who died in 1979, is one of the essential composers in the history of jazz, and Beneath the Underdog, his celebrated, wild, funny, demonic, anguished, shocking and profoundly moving memoir, is the greatest autobiography ever written by a jazz musician. It tells of his God-haunted childhood in Watts during the 1920s and 1930s; his outcast adolescent years; his apprenticeship, not only with jazzmen but also with pimps, hookers, junkies, and hoodlums; and his golden years in New York City with such legendary figures as Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. Here is Mingus in his own words, from shabby roadhouses to fabulous estates, from the psychiatric wards of Bellevue to worlds of mysticism and solitude, but for all his travels never straying too far, always returning to music.

Published: Seagull BooksAug 2024300 PagesHardbackDelves into Theodor W. Adorno’s lesser-known musical career and successful music criticism.Theodor W. Adorno is recognized as one of the twentieth century’s most prominent social theorists. Though best known for his association with the Frankfurt School of critical theory, Adorno began his career as a composer and successful music critic. Comprehensive and illuminating, Orpheus in the Underworld centers on Adorno’s concrete and immediate engagement with musical compositions and their interpretation in the concert hall and elsewhere. Here, Adorno registers his initial encounters with the compositions of the Second Viennese School, when he had yet to integrate them into a broad aesthetics of music. Complementarily essays on Bela Bartók, Jean Sibelius, and Kurt Weill afford insight into his understanding of composers who did not fit neatly into the dialectical schema propounded in the Philosophy of New Music. Additionally, essays on recording and broadcasting show Adorno engaging with these media in a spirit that is no less productive than polemical and focused as sharply on their potentialities as on their shortcomings. Orpheus in the Underworld offers a captivating exploration of Adorno’s musical compositions, shedding new light on his understanding of influential composers and his critical perspectives on recording and broadcasting.

Publisher :University of Chicago PressLanguage :EnglishPaperback :690 pagesISBN-10 :0226476960ISBN-13 :978-0226476964Dimensions :15.24 x 4.83 x 22.86 cmFounded in 1965 and still active today, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is an American institution with an international reputation. George E. Lewis, who joined the collective as a teenager in 1971, establishes the full importance and vitality of the AACM with this communal history, written with a symphonic sweep that draws on a cross-generational chorus of voices and a rich collection of rare images. Moving from Chicago to New York to Paris, and from founding member Steve McCall's kitchen table to Carnegie Hall, "A Power Stronger Than Itself" uncovers a vibrant, multicultural universe and brings to light a major piece of the history of avant-garde music and art. --- University of Chicago Press, 2009

Published by Pluto Press in Jan 1979 Paperback ISBN: 9780861040322 192 pages 135mm x 215mm A collection of powerful and evocative songs spanning five centuries of the British oral tradition, My Song is My Own takes the reader on a musical journey of courtship, desire and sexual relationships, marriage, motherhood, childhood and work.From ballads and industrial songs of the mine and factory, to the folk revival and children's rhymes from the street and playground, this collection reveals the hidden culture and history of women through song. Its notes and introductions offer rich insights into the songs and their historical context, and musical notation makes it perfect for singers and readers alike.Created during the women's movement of the 1970s, this book remains the definitive collection of women’s songs in the United Kingdom.

Publisher :University of Chicago PressLanguage :EnglishHardcover :256 pagesISBN-10 :022618076XISBN-13 :978-0226180762Dimensions :23.11 x 15.24 x 2.79 cmMiles Davis's Bitches Brew is one of the most iconic albums in American music, the preeminent landmark and fertile seedbed of jazz-fusion. Fans have been fortunate in the past few years to gain access to Davis's live recordings from this time, when he was working with an ensemble that has come to be known as the Lost Quintet. In this book, jazz historian and musician Bob Gluck explores the performances of this revolutionary group-Davis's first electric band-to illuminate the thinking of one of our rarest geniuses and, by extension, the extraordinary transition in American music that he and his fellow players ushered in. Gluck listens deeply to the uneasy tension between this group's driving rhythmic groove and the sonic and structural openness, surprise, and experimentation they were always pushing toward. There he hears-and outlines-a fascinating web of musical interconnection that brings Davis's funk-inflected sensibilities into conversation with the avant-garde worlds that players like Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane were developing. Going on to analyze the little-known experimental groups Circle and the Revolutionary Ensemble, Gluck traces deep resonances across a commercial gap between the celebrity Miles Davis and his less famous but profoundly innovative peers. The result is a deeply attuned look at a pivotal moment when once-disparate worlds of American music came together in explosively creative combinations. --- University of Chicago Press, 2016

Take my hand. Trace the lines on my palm with your fingers. What size and shape are they? Take note of their form: are they forked, tasselled, wavy, chained, broken? Now examine my fingers. Tell me my disposition; tell me what beholds me. Mapping the hand as cosmos as clinic as history as biography, hand reading is a technique suspended between medical and mystical judgement, empirical diagnosis and speculative divination. This book weaves the lives and work of the ‘reader’ and the ‘read’ together in an intricate fabric. The central ‘reader’ is Charlotte Wolff (1897–1986), a friend of Walter Benjamin, Helen Grund, and Ernst Schoen, who after fleeing from Germany’s new regime in 1933, took up hand reading in Paris to make ends meet. The ‘read’ are anonymous acrobats, dancers, and department-store managers, and members of the avant-gardes of Paris and London, from Antonin Artaud to Romola Nijinsky, Marcel Duchamp to Virginia Woolf. Arranged as an index, this book is both a guide to the techniques of hand reading and a critical theory of its history and practice, mixed with Wolff’s later work as a theorist of gender and sexuality. ‘Hand That Touch This Fortune Will is a study devoted to friendship, refracted through the portal of the upturned palm. Charlotte Wolff met the world by examining what was written on the hands of the times.  What did she read in the landscapes of this intimate organ of touch, and what, through reading, was she fatally unable to see?  Through a gentle fragmentation reminiscent of The Arcades Project, Dolbear acts as a thoughtful guide through fascinating and nearly forgotten passages in the European history of palmistry under late capitalism—along with all the political uncertainties and faggy gestures that formed its nimbus.  With extraordinary attention to the peculiar experiments in living that have scarcely left a trace in the archive, Hand That Touch gathers the reader around those bars, clinics, and drawn curtains, where, under the shadow of fascist diagnosis, the occult comes palm to palm with the queer past.’ – > M. Ty Each book holds a very lovely insert of a hand reading chart, designed by Ana Cecilia Breña and Sam Dolbear. Printed on tracing paper, it allows the reader to read their hand as they read the book. Sam Dolbear was a Fellow at the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin from 2020 to 2024. His research addresses the life and work of Walter Benjamin and those around him. He has taught and published widely, including, with Esther Leslie, Dissonant Waves: Ernst Schoen and Experimental Sound in the 20th Century (2023). He is a co-founder of the sound and radio collective MayDay Radio. 224 pages120 mm x 190 mm60 mm French flaps (cover) Format: Paperback ISBN     978-1-910055-99-1 £15.00 WE HAVE A FEW SIGNED COPIES AT THE MOMENT   Add to Cart Next Book ->