Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II


Book Description

Extravagantly opaque, willfully vaporous - Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II, released by the estimable British label Warp Records in 1994, rejuvenated ambient music for the Internet Age that was just dawning. In the United States, it was Richard D. James's first full length on Sire Records (home to Madonna and Depeche Mode) under the moniker Aphex Twin; Sire helped usher him in as a major force in music, electronic or otherwise. Faithful to Brian Eno's definition of ambient music, Selected Ambient Works Volume II was intentionally functional: it furnished chill out rooms, the sanctuaries amid intense raves. Choreographers and film directors began to employ it to their own ends, and in the intervening decades this background music came to the fore, adapted by classical composers who reverse-engineered its fragile textures for performance on acoustic instruments. Simultaneously, “ambient” has moved from esoteric sound art to central tenet of online culture. This book contends that despite a reputation for being beatless, the album exudes percussive curiosity, providing a sonic metaphor for our technologically mediated era of countless synchronized nanosecond metronomes.




The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning


Book Description

The rapid pace of technological change over the last decade, particularly the rise of social media, has deeply affected the ways in which we interact as individuals, in groups, and among institutions to the point that it is difficult to grasp what it would be like to lose access to this everyday aspect of modern life. The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning investigates the ways in which social media is now firmly engrained in all aspects of music education, providing fascinating insights into the ways in which social media, musical participation, and musical learning are increasingly entwined. In five sections of newly commissioned chapters, a refreshing mix of junior and senior scholars tackle questions concerning the potential for formal and informal musical learning in a networked society. Beginning with an overview of community identity and the new musical self through social media, scholars explore intersections between digital, musical, and social constructs including the vernacular of born-digital performance, musical identity and projection, and the expanding definition of musical empowerment. The fifth section brings this handbook to full practical fruition, featuring firsthand accounts of digital musicians, students, and teachers in the field. The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning opens up an international discussion of what it means to be a musical community member in an age of technologically mediated relationships that break down the limits of geographical, cultural, political, and economic place.




Sigur Rós's ( )


Book Description

Words like "inspiring," "expansive," and "moving" are regularly used to describe Sigur Rós's ( ), and yet the only words heard on the record itself are a handful of meaningless nonsense syllables. The album has no title-or rather, its title is no title: just an empty pair of parentheses. The intention being that listeners will fill in the parentheses with their own title, their own interpretation of the sounds on the record. The CD sleeve consists of twelve pages that are essentially blank, lacking song titles, liner notes or production credits. Instead, it contains only semi-translucent frosted images of abstract natural scenes (tree branches, clouds, etc.), on which the listener is free to inscribe their own notes-or no notes at all. And then there are the lyrics, sung in a deliberately unintelligible tongue called "Hopelandic" which the band invites listeners to interpret freely. Ethan Hayden's book doesn't try to fill in the gaps between the album's parentheses, but instead explores the ways in which listeners might attempt to do so. Examining the communicative powers of asemantic language, the book asks whether music can bring sense to nonsense. What happens to the voice when it stops singing conventional language: does it simply become another musical instrument, or is it somehow more "human"? What role does space play on ( )? And how do we interpret music that we cannot possibly understand, but feel very deeply that we do?




Drawn in Stereo


Book Description

Inspired by experience in the music industry and origins as an aspiring pop star, British artist Michael Gillette delivers his greatest hits, demos, and rare cuts of the past three decades in DRAWN IN STEREO. Showcasing pieces produced for Beastie Boys, Paul McCartney, MGMT, and Beck--among many others--DRAWN IN STEREO focuses on Gillette's ability to channel music into compelling visual art. Gillette shares a curated collection of artistic approaches, including installations, fashion sketches, music video animation stills, and magazine contributions for SpinandThe New Yorker. Filled with selections from more than 20 years of work created in Britain and America, DRAWN IN STEREO encompasses a wide spectrum of visual directions and celebrates many key projects. Featuring a foreword by Fred Deakin and interview by Elastica's Justine Frischmann, DRAWN IN STEREO reveals an inspired life, ranging from Britpop London and rooming with the Aphex Twin to a decade of creativity in San Francisco. "Life needs a backbeat, and that rhythm needs some visuals. So, I'll keep sharpening the pencils, listening for the muse to sing me a new song." --Michael Gillette




Brian Eno's Another Green World


Book Description

The serene, delicate songs on Another Green World sound practically meditative, but the album itself was an experiment fueled by adrenaline, panic, and pure faith. It was the first Brian Eno album to be composed almost completely in the confines of a recording studio, over a scant few months in the summer of 1975. The album was a proof of concept for Eno's budding ideas of "the studio as musical instrument," and a signpost for a bold new way of thinking about music. In this book, Geeta Dayal unravels Another Green World's abundant mysteries, venturing into its dense thickets of sound. How was an album this cohesive and refined formed in such a seemingly ad hoc way? How were electronics and layers of synthetic treatments used to create an album so redolent of the natural world? How did a deck of cards figure into all of this? Here, through interviews and archival research, she unearths the strange story of how Another Green World formed the link to Eno's future -- foreshadowing his metamorphosis from unlikely glam rocker to sonic painter and producer.




Flaming Lips' Zaireeka


Book Description

Zaireeka is the anti-headphone and the anti-mp3. It purposely makes the two biggest developments in end-user music in the last 30 years irrelevant. Zaireeka is not mobile. It is not personal. It is not solitary, cannot be easily controlled, and can't easily be consumed in small doses. So another way to think of Zaireeka is as a one-off piece of technology that comes in a highly inconvenient dead-end format. The Flaming Lips' 1997 album Zaireeka is one of the most peculiar albums ever recorded, consisting of four CDs meant to be played simultaneously on four CD players. Approaching this powerful and complex art-rock masterpiece from multiple angles, Mark Richardson's prismatic study of Zaireeka mirrors the structure the work itself. Thoughts on communal listening and the "death of the album" are interspersed with the story of the Zaireeka's creation (with assistance from Wayne Coyne) and an in-depth analysis of the music, leading to a complete picture of a record that proved to be a watershed for both the band and adventurous music fans alike.




Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II


Book Description

Extravagantly opaque, willfully vaporous - Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II, released by the estimable British label Warp Records in 1994, rejuvenated ambient music for the Internet Age that was just dawning. In the United States, it was Richard D. James's first full length on Sire Records (home to Madonna and Depeche Mode) under the moniker Aphex Twin; Sire helped usher him in as a major force in music, electronic or otherwise. Faithful to Brian Eno's definition of ambient music, Selected Ambient Works Volume II was intentionally functional: it furnished chill out rooms, the sanctuaries amid intense raves. Choreographers and film directors began to employ it to their own ends, and in the intervening decades this background music came to the fore, adapted by classical composers who reverse-engineered its fragile textures for performance on acoustic instruments. Simultaneously, “ambient” has moved from esoteric sound art to central tenet of online culture. This book contends that despite a reputation for being beatless, the album exudes percussive curiosity, providing a sonic metaphor for our technologically mediated era of countless synchronized nanosecond metronomes.




Björk's Homogenic


Book Description

In recent years, Björk's artistry has become ever more ambitious and ever more respected. With the release of her conceptual app-album Biophilia in 2011, and a huge retrospective exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art coinciding with her most recent album, Vulnicura, in 2015, her status as artpop auteur has been secured. The album that made all this possible, though is 1997's Homogenic, a turning point in Björk's career and still among her finest musical achievements. Produced under great strain, it moves beyond the stylistic magpie rush of Debut and the urbanophile future-pop of Post, to something darker, stronger and braver, full of dramatic assertions of independence, sharp, stuttering beats, rich strings and raw outbursts of noise. It created, as the Alexander McQueen designed sleeve clearly asserted, a new Björk, one who would never stop hunting.




High School


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES AND NATIONAL BESTSELLER First loves, first songs, and the drugs and reckless high school exploits that fueled them—meet music icons Tegan and Sara as you’ve never known them before in this intimate and raw account of their formative years. High School is the revelatory and unique coming-of-age story of Sara and Tegan Quin, identical twins from Calgary, Alberta, growing up in the height of grunge and rave culture in the ’90s, well before they became the celebrated musicians and global LGBTQ icons we know today. While grappling with their identity and sexuality, often alone, they also faced academic meltdown, their parents’ divorce, and the looming pressure of what might come after high school. Written in alternating chapters from both Tegan’s point of view and Sara’s, the book is a raw account of the drugs, alcohol, love, music, and friendships they explored in their formative years. A transcendent story of first loves and first songs, it captures the tangle of discordant and parallel memories of two sisters who grew up in distinct ways even as they lived just down the hall from one another. This is the origin story of Tegan and Sara.




David Bowie's Low


Book Description

"One day I blew my nose and half my brains came out." Los Angeles, 1976. David Bowie is holed up in his Bel-Air mansion, drifting into drug-induced paranoia and confusion. Obsessed with black magic and the Holy Grail, he's built an altar in the living room and keeps his fingernail clippings in the fridge. There are occasional trips out to visit his friend Iggy Pop in a mental institution. His latest album is the cocaine-fuelled Station To Station (Bowie: "I know it was recorded in LA because I read it was"), which welds R&B rhythms to lyrics that mix the occult with a yearning for Europe, after three mad years in the New World. Bowie has long been haunted by the angst-ridden, emotional work of the Die Brucke movement and the Expressionists. Berlin is their spiritual home, and after a chaotic world tour, Bowie adopts this city as his new sanctuary. Immediately he sets to work on Low, his own expressionist mood-piece.