Books of Note

Far be it from me to encourage you to buy any music book this year that isn't called Still In A Dream.... 

But I concede that there are some other interesting music books out there. A couple of which I have blurbed. 

There's ex-Contortion Adele Bertei's No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene. 

About which I offered: 

"Adele Bertei rips up the history of No Wave and starts again, recentering the women: fearless artists and confrontational performers who put body and psyche on the line. Written with feral elegance and a keen cinematic eye, this mash-up of memoir and cultural history feels like time travel: an entire era of the New York underground brought back to vivid life." 

No New York is out now on Faber & Faber,

Here is Bertei being interviewed by The Quietus's Elizabeth Wiet. 

Another is Daniel Dylan Wray's  Groovy, Laidback, & Nasty: A History of Independent Music in Sheffield 

About which I offered:

"From '70s postpunk through '80s synthpop to ‘90s bleep techno and beyond,  Sheffield has long been the U.K.’s unacknowledged capital for futurist pop.  Finally the city finds the champion it deserves in Daniel Dylan Wray. A rich blend of urban history and music chronicle, Groovy, Laidback, & Nasty tells in vivid detail the story of a place, a people, and a succession of innovative sounds that would change pop again and again."  

Groovy, Laidback, & Nasty is out in early May on White Rabbit 

And there is a third book deserving of your attention: Ben Cardew's Space Age Batchelor Pad Music: The Story Of Stereolab In 20 Songs

That's out in late April on Jawbone Press

Here's an extract from Space Age Bachelor Pad Music at The Quietus to whet your appetite. 

Goodness me, I almost forgot - I have a book out that isn't called Still In A Dream, or at least, the paperback edition has just come out    

Older eyes will recognise the graphic design's nod to this best-seller of the 1970s

FUTUROMANÍA / No Tags book

 

Out today via  Caja Negra - the Spanish-language version of Futuromania - or to give its Spanish rendering, FUTUROMANÍA 

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Future-talk also crops up in the conversation I had with Tom Lea and Chal Ravens of No Tags - the podcast / substack now turned book, with the publication of....

.... an attractively designed compendium of their chats with guests, as listed above, plus some all-new essays commissioned from various writers. The convo we had is in there too. More information about the contents here. And you can buy it  here

 

the culture of future

Had a really stimulating conversation with Emilie Friedlander and Andrea Domanick for their podcast The Culture Journalist - chatting about the intersection of music and science fiction, future-pop versus retro-futurism, the eternal returns of phuture-phorward rave styles like gabber and jungle as new generations discover and reinvent them, and much more besides. 

It's also available at Spotify 

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dive into discourse

I had a great chat with Paul Rose - a/k/a Scuba a/k/a the man behind Hotflush Recordings -  for his Not A Diving Podcast. We talked about Futuromania, electronic dance music, back in the day blogging, and much more besides. Immerse. 

Never Mind The Ballards - talking sonic fiction July 17

I'll be making a guest appearance at the Sci-Fi Short Story Club, discussing "The Sound-Sweep" - one of a couple of acutely imaginative tales involving music of the future dreamed up by J.G. Ballard.

The event, hosted by Los Angeles Public Library, is loosely tied to Futuromania - which features a extended essay about the ways in which science fiction writers have grappled with the challenge of imagining the future forms and functions of music.  So in addition to "The Sound-Sweep" and Ballard's work, the discussion will encompass the broader subject of the interface between s.f. + music

The book club meets by Zoom, so I can see no reason why - beyond issues of time zone differences -  someone who doesn't live in LA could attend, if they fancied. 

This free event takes place at 6 pm PDT, on Wednesday July 17th. 

Reading J.G.'s 1960 story in advance is helpful if you wish to participate in the discussion, but not essential. 

Sign up here. 

Futuromania events - Brighton June 20 7pm / Rough Trade West, London June 23 3pm

Two upcoming Futuromania events

Brighton, Thursday 20th June 

Dead Wax Social  - 18 A Bond Street

Hosted by Resident 

Doors open 7pm /  event starts 7.30 pm

In conversation with Fiona Sturges

+ book signing. 

Tickets here 

London, Sunday 23rd June 

Rough Trade West  130 Talbot Rd, W11

Event starts 3pm

In conversation with Günseli Yalcinkaya (Dazed)

+ book signing 

Tickets here

 

Futuromania chat

Had a great in-depth chat with Melbourne's Charlie Miller for his 3RRR FM show Frantic Items, which airs later today (meaning Sunday, since Australia is already in the future - 6pm local time)

Update: the show is archived here. 

^^^^^^^^^^^

Had a really good chat with Günseli Yalcinkaya for Dazed magazine addressing "the anti-humanist tone" versus the quirky all-too-human individuals and desires that animate machine music, and much  much more besides. 

A kind of rehearsal for our conversation at Rough Trade East on Sunday June 23 (6pm)

No Tags

I had a great chat with Chal Ravens and Tom Lea for their new-ish podcast No Tags - talking about Futuromania and touching on topics including science fiction, the rhetorics of temporality, smart drinks, the manifesto mode, speeding up and slowing down music,  "the cartoon continuum", amapiano, my next book, and a favorite film. 

Check out their archive which includes conversations with vibes-ologist Dr Robin James, rap critic Jeff Weiss, and dancehall expert Marvin Sparks talking about Vybz Cartel. 

Futuromania - out today!

The UK edition of Futuromania is out today on White Rabbit ! 

Via select record stores, comes with a limited edition freezine of bonus pieces! 

Check out this radio show about Futuromania I pulled together for NTS - also available at Soundcloud and Mixcloud. 

Here's an interview I did with Metal magazine's Lainie Wallace about the book. 

Here's a chat I had with Moonbuilding's Neil Mason. 

And here's a conversation with Bill Proctor for his electro-history podcast Spacelab 

Watch this space for news about more podcast appearances, webzine and radio interviews, and  upcoming events. 

US edition  out May 7 via Hachette

Futuromaniac playlists -  Spotify -   Spotify (long mix) -  Tidal (longest mix)

About the book: 

Futuromania: Electronic Dreams, Desiring Machines & Tomorrow's Music Today is a celebration of music that feels like a taste of tomorrow. Sounds that prefigure pop music’s future - the vanguard genres and heroic innovators whose discoveries eventually get accepted by the wider mass audience.  But it’s also about the way music can stir anticipation for a thrillingly transformed world just around the corner: a future that might be utopian or dystopian, but at least will be radically changed and exhilaratingly other. 

Futuromania shapes over two-dozen essays and interviews into a chronological narrative of machine-music from the 1970s to now. The book explores the interface between pop music and science fiction’s utopian dreams and nightmare visions, always emphasizing the quirky human individuals abusing the technology as much as the era-defining advances in electronic hardware and digital software. 

Futuromania is an enthused listening guide that will propel readers towards adventures in sound. There is a lifetime of electronic listening here.

Futuromania!

My ninth book is out in a couple of weeks time! 

Futuromania: Electronic Dreams, Desiring Machines & Tomorrow's Music Today is a themed collection about music and the future, looking at the intersection between science fiction and pop, and exploring "the rhetorics of temporality."

release rationale:

Futuromania: Electronic Dreams, Desiring Machines & Tomorrow's Music Today is a celebration of music that feels like a taste of tomorrow. Sounds that prefigure pop music’s future - the vanguard genres and heroic innovators whose discoveries eventually get accepted by the wider mass audience.  But it’s also about the way music can stir anticipation for a thrillingly transformed world just around the corner: a future that might be utopian or dystopian, but at least will be radically changed and exhilaratingly other. 

Futuromania shapes over two-dozen essays and interviews into a chronological narrative of machine-music from the 1970s to now. The book explores the interface between pop music and science fiction’s utopian dreams and nightmare visions, always emphasizing the quirky human individuals abusing the technology as much as the era-defining advances in electronic hardware and digital software.  

A tapestry of the scenes and subcultures that have proliferated in that febrile, sexy and contested space where man meets machine, Futuromania is an enthused listening guide that will propel readers towards adventures in sound. There is a lifetime of electronic listening here.

UK edition 11 April 2024 via White Rabbit

Via select record stores, the first five hundred copies come with a freezine with bonus pieces

                              

US edition on Hachette out on May 7.

For a flavor of futuromaniac music, try these playlists

Quick tour of future pop - Spotify

Extended odyssey into the future frontier - Spotify, Tidal

Finally, I've started a blog (yet another blog!) dedicated to the book: Futuromania,  which will initially be a place for news about Futoromania appearances on podcasts and in the media, interviews, and events, and then later will develop into a repository for all the "future music"-related writings I've done over the years that didn't make it into this volume. 

x

Futur choc

 Excited to announce the publication of two books in translation!

       
 

On November 16th, Audimat publish Le choc du glam, the French version of Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, translated by Hervé Loncan. More information here. 

On November 19th, Minimum Fax publish Futuromania, a collection of my writing about electronic music (dance + non-dance), translated into Italian by Michele Piumini. More information here. 

 

some things in Italy

I really enjoyed writing the companion essay to Sandro Moiso's vintage interview with J.G. Ballard, as reproduced in All That Mattered Was Sensation, out now on Krisis Publishing. This attractive and portably petite volume contains the text in both Italian and English.

"Prophet of the Present," the title of my essay, comes out as "Profeta del presente" in Italian - nicely preserving the alliteration.

If you are wondering about the "James Ballard" bit - it seems that J.G.'s books were published under that name in Italy, or even as James G. Ballard. When I saw that, I thought I'd possibly stumbled upon a national quirk of Italian publishing - an aversion to the old-school Anglo-American style of impersonal initials in literary nomenclature, as in E.M. Forster or G.K. Chesterton. But as far as I can tell, D.H. Lawrence is D.H. Lawrence in Italy, not David Herbert Lawrence or Dave Lawrence.

                                                     

Something else in Italy -  out in May, on Minimum Fax, a collection of my electronic music writings:

"Sogni Elettronici," in case you were wondering, means "Electronic Dreams"

German and Japanese editions - slightly different contents - due 2021.

Anglosphere versions - probably not. I have other plans for some of the material. But who knows...


Now I think about it, there's a third thing in Italy happening on the books front. Minimum Fax are publishing the massive Mark Fisher K-Punk anthology in translation. Because texts typically get longer in Italian, they are breaking up the colossus into two volumes. The first installment, Il nostro desiderio è senza nome - which translates as Our Desire is Nameless - has just come out.  This first chunk of the collection also contains my prefazione from the Repeater edition - and this foreword is shortly to be extracted in the newspaper Il Tascabile.

How cool - and circular - that the subtitle of Il Nostro Desiderio is Scritti Polittici.

"Something in Italy" indeed...  in this case it's helping keep Mark's ideas alive