John Peffer

Tip! *250 copies limited edition* Nothing to Commit Records presents Notes on Cuts, a vinyl record+book project that researches the complexity of music censorship in South Africa during apartheid by exploring records that were physically cut by state broadcasters to prevent them from being heard. Notes on Cuts delves into the histories of listening by directly confronting their censored and controlled forms. The censors' scratches and cuts are held up for visual analysis, and then listened to, in order to find what secrets they may reveal. These are literal scars into the black plastic that hold the sounds and notes of songs meant to be enjoyed, celebrated, and danced to, but once forbidden.

Written and recorded by art historian and scholar John Peffer, the project offers creative and critical understandings into the history of South Africa’s radio broadcast services, and listens closely to the bureaucracy of censorship under the apartheid regime. Peffer’s reflective notes provide insight into governmental decisions to censure as a means of control by a close looking and listening to a selection of songs and albums.