The New York Years – 1971 to 1994 (Book)
Hardcover, 484 pages! The New York Years: 1971 to 1994 presents a comprehensive photographic chronicle by Eric Kroll, offering an in-depth look at New York City during a period of intense cultural transformation. Known for his influential work in both documentary and fetish photography, Kroll here reveals a lesser-known facet of his practice, with hundreds of mostly unpublished black-and-white and color images.
Taken over more than two decades, these photographs document the city’s vibrant art, …
Domestic (Book)
English edition, hardcover, 292 pages. A relentless and unflinching collection, Domestic assembles the lyrics and texts of Kevin Tomkins-founding member of Sutcliffe Jugend and a key figure in the UK power electronics scene. Raw, brutal, and unapologetically intimate, this book lays bare the psychological terrain of control, submission, and the darkest corners of human desire and detachment.
Divided into six visceral sections, Domestic shatters societal norms, piercing through the polite veneers…
Everybody's Head is Open to Sound – Writings on Tom Wilson
Everybody's Head is Open to Sound is the first publication dedicated to the influential yet often overlooked record producer Tom Wilson (1931–1978). Through newly commissioned essays by music historians Wolfram Knauer and Richie Unterberger, journalist Ignacio Juliá, and essayist Pacôme Thiellement, this volume explores Wilson’s pivotal role in shaping avant-garde jazz, producing key folk-rock recordings of the 1960s, and fostering daring collaborations with major US rock bands.
The book traces …
Afrosonica – Soundscapes
Based on a collective research initiative and exhibition, the book Afrosonica offers a reflection on African and Afro-diasporic sound, published in collaboration with the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva.By bringing together artists, scholars, and musicians, the book deconstructs Western-centric discourses and approaches to museology and ethnomusicology, while exploring inclusive and renegotiated ways to intersect heritage, technology, and futurism.Through in-depth conversations, essays, photogra…
Acusmatica (Book)
*OBS!!! book in Italian language* In questo approfondito lavoro, l’Autore, da lungo tempo attivo sulla scena della ricerca musicale, ripercorre gli sviluppi delle sperimentazioni fonografiche e l’esperienza dei “padri fondatori” della Musica Concreta e della Musica Elettronica – da Pierre Schaeffer e Pierre Henry a Karlheinz Stockhausen e Iannis Xenakis – fino alle tendenze attuali, per la definizione di una nuova arte sonora: l’Acusmatica.
Resonance: Cultural Practice and Performative Analysis of Contemporary (Art) Music
Bilingual Edition English/German This inspiring book, with texts in German and English, reflects on the aesthetic, cultural and performative dimensions of contemporary (art) music. It opens up and challenges new perspectives in musicological and artistic research with a cultural studies orientation. Texts from the last 15 years are divided into two main chapters: Cultural Practice – including analyses of major festivals such as Warsaw Autumn, Festival d’Automne à Paris and Wien Modern, the impor…
Emerging Ecologies: Architecture and the Rise of Environmentalism
How architects and designers helped define America’s ecological movement in the 1960s―featuring Ant Farm, Buckminster Fuller, John C. Lilly and many more
During the 1960s, as Western notions of endless progress and growth gave way to concerns over industrial pollution, resource depletion and ecological limits, attitudes toward the environment became social, political and ideological. Published to accompany the first expansive survey of the history of environmental thinking in architecture, Emerg…
Black Fire! New Spirits!: Images of a Revolution: Radical Jazz in the USA 1960-75
At the start of the 1960s, jazz entered a unique period of revolution as African-American musicians redefined the art form in the context of the Civil Rights Movement, Afro-centric rhythm and thought and an ideology of black economic empowerment.
John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler and others developed a new cosmology of sound that was as revolutionary as the social and political changes that took place in America throughout the decade. From the musical explorat…
Yo! The Early Days of Hip Hop 1982–84: Photography by Sophie Bramly
The birth of hip hop in New York: rare images of the bands, the MCs and DJs, the artists and the fans, from Afrika Bambaataa and Run-DMC to Keith Haring and the Rock Steady Crew.
This book features more than 150 rarely seen images documenting the rise of hip hop in the early 1980s, taken by French photographer Sophie Bramly. Bramly lived in New York during this period and became firmly embedded in the emergent scene. The book features many stunning, intimate images of a star-studded roll call of…
Electronic: From Kraftwerk to the Chemical Brothers
At more than 120 bpm, electronic music sets the tempo on dancefloors around the globe. Accompanying the exhibition Electronic: From Kraftwerk to The Chemical Brothers, this book offers an insight into the visual culture of electronic music, and how technology, design, art and fashion have contributed to its power. With its roots in Detroit and Chicago in the early 1980s, electronic dance music was popularised across Europe through underground rave parties. Its impact on contemporary culture is s…
Soundings: A Contemporary Score
Soundings: A Contemporary Score investigates the ways in which some of the most innovative contemporary artists are working with sound today. These artists approach sound from a variety of disciplines--visual arts, architecture, performance, computer programming and music--yet they share an interest in working with, rather than against or independent of, a given situation or environment. Their responses include architectural interventions, visualizations of inaudible sound, explorations of sound…
The Farm at Black Mountain College
A record of the rise and fall of the BMC farm that foregrounds the voices of a new cast of characters Black Mountain College (BMC) was a wellspring of 20th-century creative unorthodoxy. From its founding in 1933 and over its celebrated 23-year history, the small liberal arts school in rural North Carolina attracted a remarkable number of famous and soon-to-be famous artists, writers and visionaries including Anni and Josef Albers, Ruth Asawa, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning, Buckm…
We Owe You Nothing, Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews Expanded Edition
Revised and expanded edition of the punk classic (more than 15,000 copies sold), with six new interviews.
“Not just for fans of punk rock―Punk Planet is a fine source of articles about politics, current events, and do-it-yourself culture.” ―Utne Reader“All of the interviews are probing and well thought out, the questions going deeper than most magazines would ever dare; and each has a succinct, informative introduction for readers who are unfamiliar with the subject. Required reading for all mus…
Black Music
The long-awaited reissue of the sequel to Amiri Baraka’s seminal work, Blues People, and latest selection in the AkashiClassics Renegade Reprint Series. This collection of essays by Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones includes a new introduction by the author and Q&A by Calvin Reid.
“Baraka writes with the passion and lyricism that can only come from a jazz critic who is uncompromisingly invested in the social and aesthetic dimensions of the music.” ―WBGO (Newark Public Radio)
In 2007, Akashic Books ushere…
Materialistic Aesthetics And Memory Illusions
An analysis of Mike Kelley's work as a position in materialist philosophy, which appears as the feature that is most at stake in his artistic practice, focusing on the pieces he produced around the issue of memory––his leitmotiv from 1995 onward. Mike Kelley is best known as one of the most influential visual artists of his generation. But he was also an insightful theorist who wrote profusely about his work as well as on aesthetics in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, an epoch marked, in his view, b…
Fusion! – From Alice Coltrane to Moor Mother
The role of jazz as a catalyst in rock, pop, funk, new wave, hip-hop, and techno. From music writer Alex Coles, Fusion! From Alice Coltrane to Moor Mother traces the origins and legacy of blended musical genres by focusing on twelve dynamic collaborations. From Alice Coltrane working with Carlos Santana in 1974 to Moor Mother sharing the mic with Wolf Weston in 2022, the collaborations-cum-chapters reveal how musicians pursue fusion as a process. With sonic fusion always premised on cultural fus…
Derek Jarman
English Language Edition A tribute to Derek Jarman manifold and vital practice. Gathering together newly commissioned essays by international art critics and scholars devoted to specific—and sometimes lesser-known—aspects of the artist's life and work and extensive portfolios spanning his successive bodies of works, this monograph offers an accessible overview of Derek Jarman, one of the legendary cultural figures of the second half of the 20th century. Conceived as a reader, this volume includ…
Yoko Ono. Brucia questo libro dopo averlo letto
Italian Language Edition Yoko Ono è una delle instancabili innovatrici dell’arte contemporanea. Negli anni cinquanta scrisse le “istruzioni”, ovvero delle “partiture per l’arte” interpretabili più e più volte dal pubblico che diventava protagonista attivo. Iniziò così a rifiutare il ruolo dell’artista e il concetto di opera d’arte, considerata esclusivamente come oggetto materiale pronto per il mercato. Il suo percorso si concentrò invece ad abbattere i confini tra musica, performance, poesia e …
Black Music. I maestri del Jazz
Italian Language Edition Il blues e il jazz sono stati l’esperienza fondamentale attraverso la quale si è forgiata l’identità degli ex schiavi negli Stati Uniti: l’esperienza con cui il popolo afroamericano ha espresso il massimo di autonomia culturale rispetto all’America bianca. Da Duke Ellington ad Art Tatum, da Thelonious Monk a John Coltrane, da Sun Ra a Miles Davis, sono molti gli eroi che hanno indicato ai neroamericani la strada per diventare se stessi, qui splendidamente resi dal lirism…
Sonic Faction: Audio Essay as Medium and Method
Explorations of the audio essay as medium and method. With contributors including Justin Barton, Angus Carlyle, Kodwo Eshun, Steve Goodman, Robin Mackay, Paul Nataraj, and Iain Sinclair, Sonic Faction presents extended lines of thought prompted by two Urbanomic events which explored the ways in which sound and voice can produce new sensory terrains and provoke speculative thought.Three recent pieces provide the catalyst for a discussion of the potential of the "audio essay" as medium and method,…