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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
Journey To A Destination Unknown
2025 stock This is the story of a life's journey to a destination, not only unknown, but wildly unexpected – filled with excitement, achievement and love, but also pain and struggle. Barbara Thompson, the daughter of an eminent lawyer, was born with a restless creative urge that her conventional education in music could not satisfy. It was when she discovered jazz that she found the freedom she had been seeking. But for a woman, the almost entirely male world of the jazz musician was a dangerous…
Bright Lights and Cats with No Mouths
The re-release of the much-sought-after art book by Coil's John Balance—the first ever extensive overview of his drawings, paintings and sketches—in a reformatted and largely redesigned edition. The artworks featured in the book are both finished elaborate hallucinatory pieces as well as quick sketches with a good sprinkling of Balance's often underestimated humour. Homages to idols and inspirations next to idiosyncratic magical dreamscapes executed in a wide variety of styles and mediums. This …
Albion'S Eco-Eerie
In 'Albion's Eco-eerie: TV and Movies of the Haunted Generations' Phil Smith takes us through a selection of weird films and TV shows and uncovers a wholly unexpected ecological and political message. Unlike most approaches to folk horror or hauntology, we are interested here in an alternative reading; one that attends to the unhuman characters, the materials and the edgeland spaces. A hobgoblinology.
"'Albion's Eco-eerie' is a fantastic exploration into culture’s obsession with ‘the other’. Dis…
Alain Pierre – Quitte à me tromper (Book)
A stark and contemplative tribute to composer and intellectual Alain Pierre (1948-2024) by Belgian artist Tim Onderbeke. Published shortly after Pierre's passing, this volume collects 69 black-and-white photographs taken on June 1, 2016, at Pierre's residence and studio, located behind the iconic VRT building in Brussels. Presented without captions and arranged in a purely figurative sequence, the photographs document Pierre in his most natural state—moving through his home, engaging with his ar…
Architecture educates! – Au contact de l'art (Book)
BIlingual Edition (Texts in French and English) An education turned around by art: famous English anthropologist Tim Ingold invites us to consider the arts as the very basis of an education in the 21st-century, an education that might begin to address the profound social and ecological crises we face.
"Under the acronym of STEM, education in the many disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics has been harnessed to the relentless demand of the neoliberal economy for knowled…
Volume ! n° 21 1-2 – Les Fabriques sonores du Sud global (Magazine)
BIlingual Edition (Texts in French and English) Double issue of the journal of popular music studies, with a feature on the sound factories of the global South, and a look back at the 20th anniversary of Volume!. Volume! The French journal of popular music studies is the only peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to the study of contemporary popular music. It is published biannually by the Editions Mélanie Seteun, a publishing association specialized in popular music. The journal is in French…
Aphex Twin (Magazine)
*Czech Language Only* New collaborative zine by Štěpán Adámek & Miloš Hroch. Dive into short essays about Aphex Twin's music, background, ideas, videos and more by The Wire contributor Miloš Hrouch which are accompanied by unique and wild pastel drawings by Štěpán Adámek. Edition of 120 copies. Comes with sun glasses.
Father Yod and the Source: Brotherhood #1
YaHoWa! The 70s commune, The Source Family, were at the very center of the Age of Aquarius, and devoted their ways to music, love, magic, and harmony. Seven chakras open, astral bodies take flight, and Father Yod ushered in a new wave of mysticism. From California restaurant owner and lead musician in Yahowa 13, follow the spiritual path of Father Yod and The Source Family in this psychedelic retelling of their esoteric journey.
Nick Drake: The Life
Experience the definitive biography of one of the greatest singer-songwriters of the twentieth century with this eye-opening book featuring a foreword by Gabrielle Drake and over 75 photos, many rare or previously unseen. In 1968, Nick Drake had everything to live for. The product of a loving, creative family and a privileged background, he was not only a handsome and popular Cambridge undergraduate, but also a new signing to the UK’s hippest record label, Island. Three years later, however—havi…
Saxophone Colossus: A Portrait of Sonny Rollins
Jazz legend Sonny Rollins will celebrate his 80th birthday this fall, and Saxophone Colossus will be published to mark this occasion and honor his incredibly prolific career. This intimate appreciation combines the images of John Abbott, who as Rollins’s photographer of choice for the past 20 years has captured the saxophonist at home and at work, and the essays of Bob Blumenthal, a jazz critic who has chronicled Rollins and his art for nearly four decades. Sonny Rollins has been at the center o…
Roxy Live: Under Exposed: One Fan's Unseen Concert Photos
2022 marks the 50th anniversary of Roxy Music’s eponymous debut album, which the band are celebrating with a North America and UK tour, their first in over a decade. To coincide with this milestone, we are proud to present a one-of-a-kind historical document and celebration of one of the most beloved and enduring bands of our times. Documenting the band from their heyday in 1973 right up to Roxy’s last live performance in 2019 – more often than not from the photographer’s pit – and punctuated by…