Long Strings 1982-2011 (book)
*2022 stock* An account of the production of Dutch composer and visual/sound artist Paul Panhuysens long string installations, which crossed a range of spaces in various ways and were, in fact, sound sculptures that could be played. Over a period of 30 years Panhuysen made more than 250 long string installations in many locations around the world, drawing attention to the perception of our environment and the ways in which its parameters are detected, transformed and analysed by our senses, simu…
The voice of New Music (book)
An anthology of articles on the evolution of minimal music in New York in 1972-1982, which originally appeared in the Village Voice.
A-Z of Record Shop Bags: 1940s to 1990s (Book, slipcase edition)
Tip! ** Exclusive Sleepcase Edition, in process of stocking ** Jonny Trunk and FUEL present A-Z of Record Shop Bags – a publication celebrating the humble record store bag. This exhaustive collection of the record shop bag provides a unique perspective of record shopping in the UK over the last century, bringing together over 500 incredible bags (some possibly the only surviving examples) to document the fascinating story of British high street record shopping. Bags from famous chains such as NE…
The Music Mind Experience (Book)
The Music Mind Experience is all about how we can transform our playing and listening into convincing performances and satisfying meditations every time. No neuroscience here: this book is thoroughly practical, intuitive, chock-full of simple practices and deep, common-sense insights. “A fantastic resource. Karl’s purpose is to reach beyond all intellectual concepts and feel the magic of intuitive playing and listening that we are all born with. Very easy to read and follow“ says the world-renow…
Desastres (Book)
An experimental noise project that synchronises sound with image and takes the form of a durational solo performance as installation (the publication accompanying Marco Fusinato's immersive project for the Australia Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2022).
Sound American no. 28 - The Mapping Issue (Book)
*In process of stocking* The issue presents the ideas musicians and composers whose work is vital and whose voices should be more widely known outside of their native countries. The issue begins with a conversation between curator Smith and SA's Editor-in-chief, Nate Wooley. It then turns to vocalist Eva Salina Primack, who discusses motherhood, rural living, and the influence of Serbian singer Vida Pavlović. The London-based jazz phenom Shabaka Hutchings describes his journey with the shakuhach…
Overtone Singing: Physics and Metaphysics of Harmonics in East and West
In Overtone Singing, ethnomusicologist and singer Mark van Tongeren provides a fascinating insight into the timeless and universal aspects of sound and vibration. Grounded in a decade-long study of Asian music, he draws upon various fieldwork experiences, interviews with eastern and western musicians, in addition to the work of numerous scholars. He presents a multidisciplinary vision on sound that runs from World and contemporary music to the science of acoustics and perception, to music philos…
The Instant Composers Pool and Improvisation Beyond Jazz (Book)
The Instant Composers Pool and Improvisation Beyond Jazz contributes to the expansion and diversification of our understanding of the jazz tradition by describing the history and practice of one of the most important non-American jazz groups: The Instant Composers Pool, founded in Amsterdam in 1967.
The Instant Composers Pool describes the meaning of "instant composition" from both a historical and ethnographic perspective. Historically, it details instant composition’s emergence from the encoun…
VOCAL Adventures Free Improvisation in Sound, Space, Spirit and Song (Book)
“These Vocal Adventures chart a decades-long exploration of soundscapes – ones produced by the outside world but most prominently those created through free improvisation in music. The expedition into this realm of musical experience and expression has taken the author across oceans and continents, with diverse musical encounters providing invaluable sources of inspiration and a wealth of learning and teaching opportunities while enriching her own ideas and approaches along the way. This book as…
A Slightly Curving Place (Book)
Softcover, English, 180 pages, A Slightly Curving Place asks what it means to listen to the past and its absence which remains. It responds to the practice of acoustic archaeologist Umashankar Manthravadi, whose life and work are a history of sound and technology through the second half of the twentieth century. As a self-taught acoustic archaeologist, he has been building ambisonic microphones since the 1990s to measure the acoustic properties of premodern performance spaces. Comprising a range…
We Have Delivered Ourselves From the Tonal - Of, Towards, On, For Julius Eastman
2022 Repress * Softcover, English, 260 pages, B/W*An absolutely stunning achievement, “We Have Delivered Ourselves From the Tonal – Of, Towards, On, For Julius Eastman” - published by Archive Books and SAVVY Contemporary - gathers a collection of essays, librettos, lyrics, memories, photos, personal anecdotes by musicians, visual artists, researchers and archivers that pays homage to the work and life of African-American composer, musician, performer, activist Julius Eastman. Clocking in at 264 …
Black Phoenix: Third World Perspective on Contemporary Art and Culture (Book)
*In process of stocking* Primary Information is pleased to announce the release of Black Phoenix: Third World Perspective on Contemporary Art and Culture. Edited and published by Rasheed Araeen and Mahmood Jamal between 1978 and 1979 in the United Kingdom, Black Phoenix remains a key and radical document of transnational solidarity and cultural production in the visual arts, literature, activism, and beyond. This publication collects all three issues of the journal into a single volume.More than…
Stockhausen on Music (Book)
*2022 stock* If a genius is someone whose ideas survive all attempts at explanation', writes the well-known contemporary musicologist Robin Maconie, 'then by that definition Stockhausen is the nearest thing to Beethoven this century has produced. Reason? His music lasts. With penetrating philosophical and spiritual insights Stockhausen describes, in this collection of lectures and interviews conducted in English, a whole new universe of sounds and events. Stockhausen's uncompromising attitude to…
Improvisation Rites (Book)
*2022 stock* "I used my experience of The Scratch Orchestra (1969 - 72) to work with a younger generation of people. We by working with John Cage's magnum opus 'Song Books'. Then we worked with the improvisation rites in Cornelius Cardew's collective work 'Nature Study Notes'. This book documents that process and its assessment, and afterglow in some details"
Sounding for Harry Smith (Book)
Harry Everett Smith (1923-1991) was a boyhood resident of Anacortes, Washington for ten years of the Great Depression. Sounding for Harry Smith: Early Pacific Northwest Influences is a visually compelling oral history-based biography that immerses the reader in Salish Sea traditions and discord to explore the myths of a countercultural shaman whose strange impacts on art, music and film resound from studies of place to beat improvisation, through brain paintings to a Grammy Award for his folk mu…
The Reflection Issue (Magazine)
Over the course of this bastard year of 2020, Numero will issue nearly 150 digital-only “records.” In previous years we may have attempted to press many of these, but as our world and industry change in light of the ongoing ecological crisis, we know that it’s irresponsible to commit precious resources to every flight of fancy. Our love for the physical hasn’t diminished—we’re still pressing a select number of LPs, box sets, and 45s—but at the end of the day, the music is what’s important, not t…
Draw a Straight Line and Follow It (Book)
* Hardcover Edition * Although La Monte Young is one of the most important composers of the late twentieth century, he is also one of the most elusive. Generally recognized as the patriarch of the minimalist movement—Brian Eno once called him "the daddy of us all"—he nonetheless remains an enigma within the music world. Early in his career Young eschewed almost completely the conventional musical institutions of publishers, record labels, and venues, in order to create compositions completely un…
Sound Commitments (Book)
Featuring new archival research and/or interviews with significant figures of the period in each chapter, Sound Commitments will appeal to researchers and advanced students in the fields of post-war music, cultures of the 1960s, and the avant-garde, as well as to an informed general readership.
Composing Dissent (Book)
The 1960s saw the emergence in the Netherlands of a generation of avant-garde musicians (including figures such as Louis Andriessen, Willem Breuker, Reinbert de Leeuw and Misha Mengelberg) who were to gain international standing and influence as composers, performers and teachers, and who had a defining impact upon Dutch musical life. Fundamental to their activities in the sixties was a pronounced commitment to social and political engagement. The lively culture of activism and dissent on the st…
Terry Riley's in C (Book)
Unquestionably the founding work of minimalism in musical composition, Terry Riley's In C (1964) challenges the standards of imagination, intellect, and musical ingenuity to which "classical" music is held. Only one page of score in length, it contains neither specified instrumentation nor parts. Its fifty-three motives are compact, presented without any counterpoint or evident form. The composer gave only spare instructions and no tempo. And he assigned the work a title that's laconic in the ex…