Writings on Music (Book)
In the mid-1960s, Steve Reich radically renewed the musical landscape with a back-to-basics sound that came to be called Minimalism. These early works, characterized by a relentless pulse and static harmony, focused single-mindedly on the process of gradual rhythmic change. Throughout his career, Reich has continued to reinvigorate the music world, drawing from a wide array of classical, popular, sacred, and non-western idioms. His works reflect the steady evolution of an original musical mind.W…
This Life of Sounds (Book)
This Life of Sounds portrays an important and previously unexplored corner of the history of new music in America: the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts int eh State University of New York at Buffalo. Composers Lukas Foss (the Center's founder), Lejaren Hiller, and Morton Feldman were the music directors over the life of "the Buffalo group," during the years 1964-1980. Based on Foss's plan, the Rockefeller Foundation provided annual fellowships for young composers and virtuoso instrumen…
Rethinking Reich (Book)
Described by music critic Alex Ross as "the most original musical thinker of our time" and having received innumerable accolades in a career spanning over fifty years, composer Steve Reich is considered by many to be America's greatest contemporary composer. His music, however, remains largely underresearched. Rethinking Reich redresses this imbalance, providing a space for prominent and emerging scholars to reassess the composer's contribution to music in the twentieth century. Featuring fourte…
Brian Eno's Ambient 1 (Book)
Brian Eno's seminal album Ambient 1: Music for Airports continues to fascinate and charm audiences, not only as a masterpiece of ambient music, but as a powerful and transformative work of art. Author John T. Lysaker situates this album in the context of twentieth-century art music, where its ambitions and contributions to avant garde music practice become even more apparent. To appreciate the album's multifaceted character, Lysaker advocates for "prismatic listening," an attentiveness that cont…
Live Electronics in the SWR Experimentalstudio (Book)
Two events in music history had revolutionary consequences: the creation of notation and the invention of electronic sound. The initial stages of electronic music brought about new musical instruments like the theremin, the electric guitar and the synthesizer. In the digital age, the computer has itself become a musical instrument, with the invention of live electronics providing traditional instruments, such as the violin or piano, with new, unimagined sonic possibilities. The SWR Experimentals…
Graphème Vol.1 (Book)
Smallest Functional Unit was founded in 2020 by Ute Wassermann, Tony Buck, Mazen Kerbaj, Magda Mayas and Racha Gharbieh with the aim of performing and publishing unconventional, hybrid notational formats and graphic scores by international composers. The publication will appear as Graphème, a series with a thematic focus on experimental notation.
Labyrinthus: hic habitat Musica (Book)
The phenomenon of “graphic” scores has been a subject of fascination, controversy, and a flourishing of artistic talent since its inception in the aftermath of the Second World War. The scores of that age, despite their compelling visual presence, nevertheless remain elusive: the means of performance are obscure, and they resist conventional analysis. This study reconsiders graphic scores from the perspective of Information Theory, derived from studies of “ergodic” texts: the ergodic score requi…
Tape Leaders: A Compendium of Early British Electronic Music Composers
Absolute tip! In the form of a richly illustrated compendium, Tape Leaders is an indispensable reference guide for anyone interested in electronic sound and its origins in Great Britain. For the first time a book sets out information on practically everyone active with experimental electronics and tape recording across the country, revealing the hidden history of early British electronic music. With an individual entry for each composer, starting with Daevid Allen and going through to Peter Zin…
Blank Forms 08: Transmission from the Pleroma (Book)
Jerry Hunt (1943–1993) has been described as a shamanic figure with the look of a Central Texas meat inspector. One of the most compelling composers in the world of late twentieth-century new music, he made work that combined video synthesis, installation art, and early computers with rough-hewn sculptures, scores drawn from celestial alphabets, and homemade electronics activated by his signature wands and impassioned gestures. Hunt lived his entire life in Texas, eventually settling in a house …
Inside Computer Music (Book)
Inside Computer Music is an investigation of how new technological developments have influenced the creative possibilities of composers of computer music in the last 50 years. This book combines detailed research into the development of computer music techniques with nine case studies that analyze key works in the musical and technical development of computer music. The book's companion website offers demonstration videos of the techniques used and downloadable software. There, readers can view …
The Measuring Of Time (Book)
Published on the occasion of her long-deserved retrospective organized by Muzeum Susch from June to December 2021, this book testifies to the singularity and innovative vision of Italian artist Laura Grisi within contemporary art history. Although her work has mostly been “reduced” to Italian Pop art—if not entirely overlooked—from the outset Grisi worked beyond that category, pertinently intercepting various lines of international artistic research (Conceptual art, Optical art and Kinetic-Progr…
The Hub: Pioneers of Network Music (Book)
The US ensemble The Hub is one of the pioneers of network music and live coding. The formation consisting of Tim Perkis, Scot Gresham-Lancaster, Chris Brown, John Bischoff, Phil Stone, and Mark Trayle emerged from the League of Automatic Music Composers in 1986. They revolutionized electronic music with democratically organized composition and performance processes operating in networks and received the Giga-Hertz Prize from the ZKM | Hertz-Lab. The publication depicts the collective’s work in a…
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[re]visiting Moers Festival (Book)
The festival, which is now 50 years old, was designed from the start to be an alternative concept, one that would refuse to be part of the mainstream. Instead, it wanted to be understood as a major (social) experiment in which the dialogue between musicians and audience formed part of the programme. Perhaps that’s exactly how the book should be written: as a dialogue between musicians and audience, without an omniscient author.
[re]visiting Moers Festival is not a meta-account. [re]visiting Moer…
Star Star Star (Book)
First publication of new pieces by composer and musician Mica Levi titled ‘star star star’. The collection debuts 7 new works developed over the recent months by Mica and a working group of performers during a residency at Oto. Using written text instructions, speech rhythm techniques and visual cues these pieces are open to players with no previous musical experience, and incorporate elements such as spoken word, light and movement. ‘star star star’ puts the emphasis on the player and the group…
The Destructive Character (Book)
The Destructive Character by the Dutch composer, multimedia artist and theorist Dick Raaijmakers (1930) treats of a subject which, when considered from the aspect of the constant media coverage on destruction -- whether ecological, military, or economical -- should still be our very present and pressing concern. The Destructive Character is a commentary on an essay form 1931 by Walter Benjamin bearing the same title and included in this publication. In his reaction, Raaijmakers focuses on the fa…
Composing Listening, Resonances, Ghosts In The Machine (3xBook )
All the 3 issues of Spectres in bundle at special discounted price
Reflections (Book)
528 pages. English Edition. Collection of Interviews, Scores and Writings by American composer Alvin Lucier during the years 1965–1994, offering a wonderfully complete look at Lucier's musical activities through the years. Alvin Lucier (1931-2021) was an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included…
Sound American no. 27 - The Life Issue (Book)
Sound American Publications' 27th issue, The Life Issue, proposes a reflection upon the smallness—and largeness—of living amidst a tumultuous, globally-shared moment. The Life Issue contributors include Claire Rousay, who writes about the many cuts accumulated while learning something new; pedal steel superhero Susan Alcorn recounts a battle with injury; composer Jack Langdon offers Sound American's second fiction offering, a story of how the pandemic affects a fictional musician, presenter, and…
Nahma : A Gulf Polyphony
**31,3 x 31,3 cm 240 pages ** Flee's new project focuses on the music of the pearl fishermen of the Persian Gulf and aims to honor the memory of the divers, their culture and their music. The pearls of the Gulf have stoked the imagination and desire of people around the world for centuries, their magnificence matched only by the courage of the divers who found them. This project aims to honor the memory of these valiant free-divers, their culture and their music by the means of a 2XLP compilatio…
Ghosts In The Machine (Book)
* 236 pp., thread-sewn softcover * The third issue of the annual publication dedicated to sound and music experimentation, co-published by Shelter Press and Ina GRM – Groupe de Recherches Musicales, around the topic of artificial intelligence. Contributions by Keith Fullerton Whitman, Émilie Gillet, Steve Goodman, Florian Hecker, James Hoff, Roland Kayn, Ada Lovelace, Robin Mackay, Bill Orcutt, Matthias Puech, Akira Rabelais, Lucy Railton, Jean-Claude Risset, Sébastien Roux, Peter Zinovieff. The…