★Duke University Press
Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton (Book)
*2023 stock* In Blutopia Graham Lock studies the music and thought of three pioneering twentieth-century musicians: Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton. Providing an alternative to previous analyses of their work, Lock shows how these distinctive artists were each influenced by a common musical and spiritual heritage and participated in self-conscious efforts to create a utopian vision of the future. A century after Ellington's birth, Lock reassesses his use of music as a form of black h…
Microgroove: Forays Into Other Music
* 2021 Stock * A collection of more than 50 essays, interviews, and profiles featuring such musicians as Michael Hurley, P.J. Harvey, Helmut Lachenmann, Steve Lacy, Misha Mengelberg, Milford Graves, Ornette Coleman, Roscoe Mitchell, Koko Taylor, Jaap Blonk, Joe Harriott, and Joe McPhee, poets Nathaniel Mackey and Clark Coolidge, and artists Christopher Wool and Albert Oehlen. There's also an essay written together with Terri Kapsalis about the use of female orgasm sounds in popular music. And in…
Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium
From scouring flea markets and eBay to maxing out their credit cards, record collectors will do just about anything to score a long-sought-after album. In Vinyl Freak, music writer, curator, and collector John Corbett burrows deep inside the record fiend’s mind, documenting and reflecting on his decades-long love affair with vinyl. Discussing more than 200 rare and out-of-print LPs, Vinyl Freak is composed in part of Corbett's long-running DownBeat magazine column of the same name, which was dev…
Henry Cow: The World Is a Problem
In its open improvisations, lapidary lyrics, errant melodies, and relentless pursuit of spontaneity, the British experimental band Henry Cow pushed rock music to its limits.Its rotating personnel, sprung from rock, free jazz, and orchestral worlds, synthesized a distinct sound that troubled genre lines, and with this musical diversity came a mixed politics, including Maoism, communism, feminism, and Italian Marxism.In Henry Cow: The World Is a Problem, Benjamin Piekut tells the band’s story —fro…