Far be it from me to suggest you buy any other book this summer, but I feel obliged to draw your attention to a flurry of notable books, made by mates, that have come out recently or are about to come out...
For instance, here's the latest from an old friend from down under, Anwen Crawford - a critical study of the film Morvern Callar that comes in this daintily designed edition by Fireflies Press.
I was pleased to offer this endorsement:
There is a film called Morvern Callar and a novel called Morvern Callar. Now a critical study called Morven Callar joins them as an equal. Anwen Crawford’s writing is as tactile, agile and alert as Lynne Ramsay's direction, Alwin H. Küchler’s camera, Samantha Morton's performance. She pushes always for the startling thought, the tartly troubling image. Great critics make compelling work even more compelling than it already is and this is what Crawford achieves here, as she always does."
Anwen made me watch the film again.
From the publisher:
In the 2002 volume of the Decadent Editions, Anwen Crawford delves into Lynne Ramsay’s haunting second feature Morvern Callar, adapted from Alan Warner’s novel, to craft a fiercely lucid and poetic exploration of grief, class, women’s authorship and the place of art in our world today.
It's out on September 22 with pre-orders shipping earlier - indeed shipping now.
Another mate of long vintage is Sean Nye, professor at USC Thornton School of Music and scholar of electronic dance music.
Here is his long-time-a-comin' masterwork on the Teutonic / technotronic interface, The Music-Machines, new from Oxford University Press. For which I was pleased to offer this blurb:
“The Music-Machines works first as a richly researched and wide-ranging material history tracking the transmissions and transmigrations of German electronic innovations across American popular culture over the last half-century. But even more fascinating is Sean Nye’s exploration of how certain ideas about “Germany” and "the Germanic" have been a spur to the creative imagination. These myths and stereotypes about “Teutonic” traits (discipline, a talent for engineering, a steely and chilly posthuman precision) resulted in a kind of exoticism of Mittel Europa, a syndrome that has proved to be particularly seductive and generative for Black American musical subcultures. Teeming with sharp perceptions, fresh discoveries, surprising connections, and amusing details, The Music-Machines is as entertaining as it is intellectually probing.”
Sprockets is actually written about in the book!
What the publisher says:
In The Music-Machines, author Sean Nye traces a fascinating and distinctly American interpretation of 20th century German electronic music . Covering a series of crucial historical moments, Nye provides both a new and alternate history of the extraordinary impact that electronic music from Germany had in the United States, including the receptions of elektronsische Musik, Krautrock, goth-industrial, Eurodance, techno, trance, and minimal.
This first comprehensive history of German-American exchanges in electronic music explores the political and social dimensions of American constructions of Germanness in electronic music. Nye interprets the music in relation to technology, art, and musical style, encouraging readers to delve into what that reveals about its relationship to nation, race, gender, and sexuality. Through such interpretations, The Music-Machines presents a cultural arc of these constructions of Germanness and electronic music.
Nye sets this German-American exchange within larger questions of music and transnationalism, tracing key intersections between German and US cultures while also reflecting on other musical and cultural influences on German electronic music, The Music-Machines also places the evolution of electronic music in its broader historical context, demonstrating the ultimate intertwining of America's popular music with the Cold War history of West Germany and the post-1989 history of the Berlin Republic. In this way, The Music-Machinessets the frame not only for the study of German electronic music, but the ways in which this electronic turn emerged in American perceptions of German identity
From Oxford University Press to Cambridge University Press...
And another dance-music scholar I've known for decades: Hillegonda C. Rietveld, whose friends call her Gonnie and who some know as a former member of Quando Quango. Gonnie recently published a book co-edited with Toby Young (no, not that Toby Young), The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Dance Music.
I have not seen inside it but it looks to be a meaty and essential read - one I should really get hold of as I embark upon teaching a new course this coming semester, Studies in Electronic Music.
What the publisher says:
Electronic dance music is increasingly the focus of a multitude of academic research projects around the world but has been drastically under-represented in accessible core published material. This innovative scholarly collection provides an important 'first stop' for researchers and students wishing to work in this area. It examines the key features of numerous electronic dance music scenes and (sub)genres alongside discussions of the musical, social and aesthetic experiences of participants to consider how these musical practices create purpose and cultural significance for millions around the world. At the same time, it introduces diverse theoretical approaches to the understanding of electronic dance music cultures and addresses the issues and debates in electronic dance music culture studies. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach drawn from both music and cultural studies – including music aesthetics, technologies, venues, and performativity – from a broad geographical perspective, the volume sheds fresh light on electronic dance music cultures.
A more recently acquired friend is Kevin Dettmar, a professor at Pomona College and author of books like the fascinating Is Rock Dead? and his monograph on Gang of Four's Entertainment!, amongst others. Now he comes with a memoir-tinged celebration of punk and New Wave's greatest recordings, Punk In 50 Pieces.
For which I offered this endorsement:
"You think you know all about punk? Kevin Dettmar shows how much there is still to discover about the music and its era. Crackling with startling ideas and unexpected insights, juiced with surprising stories and unknown connections, Punk in 50 Pieces is a sustained feat of zoomed-in listening and zoomed-out contextualizing. As fast and fun as a Buzzcocks singles compilation, this book vaults to the top shelf in the Punk Lit pantheon."
This is a very entertaining read, breathing fresh life into an overtold story. You’ll reach out to high-five the author when his strikes a righteous chord (NY Dolls, Adverts in my case) and enjoy even more squabbling with him in your head.
Come squabble with us on September 13, when Kevin and I will be talking about Punk In 50 Pieces at Book Soup in Los Angeles. The time is 3pm.
The book is out now on HarperCollins
Finally, someone I have known since he was in Hugo Largo, a band who figure in Still In A Dream just as they did in the late Eighties pages of Melody Maker (Joy in fact was the person who first introduced them to those pages).
Before he formed Hugo Largo, Tim Sommer was involved in various bands (including Swans, for just a moment, very early on) but he was primarily a champion of other people's music, via his roles as radio presenter (hosting Noise the Show, on WNYU) and as a prolific music journalist writing for Sounds, Village Voice and Trouser Press (the latter from the age of 16!). And it is Trouser Press Books who have just published his collection of music writings, drawn from 1979 right up almost to the present: Dispatches from the Kingdom of Outsiders.
This is another book that it is fun to argue with - Tim will take a combative stance on some contentious issue or other (Sha Na Na as the most important band at Woodstock, Sandinista as a worthless mess), often starting the piece with a throwdown first line ("R.E.M. were the American Sex Pistols". "There is only one Bob Dylan. And the other one is Mark E. Smith"). Along with the argumentation, there are memoiristic vignettes about his involvements with NYC figures like Beastie Boys and Sonic Youth, real-time eyewitness reports on things like the PiL-incited riot at the Ritz in 1981, interviews, and a lot of pieces about The Beatles. It's a great book for dipping into it.
Another string to Tim's bow - presenter on the alternative music show Post-Modern MTV
He then went on to work for VH1, and then A&R at Atlantic...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comment away