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…
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…
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…
The Last Slogan (Book)
Personal correspondence between Genesis P-Orridge and Jean-Pierre Turmel over a fifteen-year period. This book pays tribute to one of counter-culture's single most iconic figures of the past fifty odd years, someone who has over the course of he/r career influenced countless fellow artists and theorists. Comprised of an exclusive unpublished interview with the artist conducted by Nicolas Ballet in 2016, theoretical texts on he/r work, and archival documents from the personal collection of Jean-P…
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…
Quand L'Oeil Tremble - Le Cinéma De Paolo Gioli (Book)
BIlingual Edition (French and English) Paolo Gioli (1942-2022), a central figure in the Italian experimental cinema of the 70s, developed, from his initial training as a painter, a body of work of over thirty films between 1969 and 2017, that parallel and intersect with his internationally acclaimed photographic work. Gioli's eminently “savage” approach to filmmaking, developed with limited resources, offers us a composite visual universe of fragments, but also “cinema-effects” in their natural…
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.
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…
The Andy Warhol Diaries
The classic, scandalous, and bestselling tell-all-and-then-some from Andy Warhol—now a Netflix series produced by Ryan Murphy. This international literary sensation turns the spotlight on one of the most influential and controversial figures in American culture. Filled with shocking observations about the lives, loves, and careers of the rich, famous, and fabulous, Warhol's journal is endlessly fun and fascinating. Spanning the mid-1970s until just a few days before his death in 1987, The Andy W…
You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico
A new, definitive biography of the iconic and mysterious singer, Warhol superstar, Velvet Underground collaborator: influential solo artist Nico. You Are Beautiful And You Are Alone is a new biography of Nico, the mysterious singer best known for her work with the Velvet Underground and her solo album Chelsea Girl. Her life is tangled in myth–much of it of her own invention. Rock and roll cultural historian Jennifer Bickerdike delivers a definitive book that unravels the story while making a con…