David Rothenberg: Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise (2013)

In the spring of 2013 the cicadas in the Northeastern United States will yet again emerge from their seventeen-year cycle—the longest gestation period of any animal. Those who experience this great sonic invasion compare their sense of wonder to the arrival of a comet or a solar eclipse. This unending rhythmic cycle is just one unique example of how the pulse and noise of insects has taught humans the meaning of rhythm, from the whirr of a cricket’s wings to this unfathomable and exact seventeen-year beat.

In listening to cicadas, as well as other humming, clicking, and thrumming insects, Bug Music is the first book to consider the radical notion that we humans got our idea of rhythm, synchronization, and dance from the world of insect sounds that surrounded our species over the millions of years over which we evolved. Completing the trilogy he began with Why Birds Sing and Thousand Mile Song, David Rothenberg explores a unique part of our relationship with nature and sound—the music of insects that has provided a soundtrack for humanity throughout the history of our species. Bug Music continues Rothenberg’s in-depth research and spirited writing on the relationship between human and animal music, and it follows him as he explores insect influences in classical and modern music, plays his saxophone with crickets and other insects, and confers with researchers and scientists nationwide.

This engaging and thought-provoking book challenges our understanding of our place in nature and our relationship to the creatures surrounding us, and makes a passionate case for the interconnectedness of species.

Publisher St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of Macmillan
ISBN 1250005213, 9781250005212
289 pages

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Nicola Anne Candlish: The Development of Resources for Electronic Music in the UK, with Particular Reference to the bids to establish a National Studio (2012)

This thesis traces the history and development of the facilities for electronic music in the UK. It covers the early attempts to experiment with electronic music and create studios in less than ideal circumstances and the subsequent bids to create a national centre. It also covers some elements of worldwide development of electronic music and sound recording, in particular those which occurred before 1965. The thesis calls upon non-traditional sources and the author was able to access many documents in the personal archives of electronic music pioneers. There is substantial reference to committees and societies for electronic music and their effects on the development of facilities for electronic music in the UK. Some of the early pioneers are studied in detail; these include Daphne Oram, Tristram Cary and Hugh Davies. Unprecedented access to information on Hugh Davies and Daphne Oram was provided by the family estates of these recently deceased composers. This allowed the author to gain valuable insight into the working patterns and methodology of these composers. Many references to later pioneers such as Trevor Wishart are also made but the focus remains on the facilities available to composers rather than the composers and their works.

Doctoral thesis
Music Department, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Durham University, 2012
189 pages

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Hacking Politics: How Geeks, Progressives, The Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists and Suits Teamed Up to Defeat SOPA and Save the Internet (2013)

Hacking Politics is a firsthand account of how a ragtag band of activists and technologists overcame a $90 million lobbying machine to defeat the most serious threat to Internet freedom in memory. The book is a revealing look at how Washington works today – and how citizens successfully fought back.

Written by the core Internet figures – video gamers, Tea Partiers, tech titans, lefty activists and ordinary Americans among them – who defeated a pair of special interest bills called SOPA (“Stop Online Piracy Act”) and PIPA (“Protect IP Act”), Hacking Politics provides the first detailed account of the glorious, grand chaos that led to the demise of that legislation and helped foster an Internet-based network of amateur activists.

Included are more than thirty original contributions from across the political spectrum, featuring writing by Internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz; Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School; novelist Cory Doctorow; Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA.); Jamie Laurie (of the alt-rock/hip-hop group The Flobots); Ron Paul; Mike Masnick, CEO and founder of Techdirt; Kim Dotcom, internet entrepreneur; Tiffiniy Cheng, co-founder and co-director of Fight for the Future; Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit; Nicole Powers of Suicide Girls; Josh Levy, Internet Campaign Director at Free Press, and many more.

Edited by David Moon, Patrick Ruffini, and David Segal
Publisher OR Books, May 2013
ISBN 9781939293046
316 pages
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Owen Hatherley: A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys through Urban Britain (2012)

The urban state of the nation—from Olympic dreams to broken Britain.

This is what austerity looks like: a nation surviving on the results of what conservatives privately call “the progressive nonsense” of the Big Society agenda.

In a journey that begins and ends in the capital, but takes in Belfast, Aberdeen, Plymouth and Brighton, Hatherley explores modern Britain’s urban landscape and finds a short-sighted disarray of empty buildings, malls and glass towers. Yet while A New Kind of Bleak anatomizes “broken Britain,” Hatherley also looks to a hopeful future and discovers fragments of what it might look like.

Illustrated by Laura Oldfield Ford, author and artist of Savage Messiah.

Publisher Verso Books, 2012
ISBN 1844679098, 9781844679096
640 pages

review (Andy Beckett, The Guardian)
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Wang Hui: The End of the Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity (2009)

A compelling examination of the future of Chinese modernity by the leading member of China’s “New Left.”

Challenging both the bureaucratic one-party regime and the Western neoliberal paradigm, China’s leading critic shatters the myth of progress and reflects upon the inheritance of a revolutionary past. In this original and wide-ranging study, Wang Hui examines the roots of China’s social and political problems, and traces the reforms and struggles that have led to the current state of mass depoliticization.

Arguing that China’s revolutionary history and its current liberalization are part of the same discourse of modernity, Wang Hui calls for alternatives to both its capitalist trajectory and its authoritarian past.

From the May Fourth Movement to Tiananmen Square, The End of the Revolution offers a broad discussion of Chinese intellectual history and society, in the hope of forging a new path for China’s future.

Publisher Verso Books, 2011
ISBN 1844673790, 9781844673797
274 pages

review (Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Los Angeles Times)

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Richard Sennett: The Craftsman (2008)

Craftsmanship, says Richard Sennett, names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. The computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen all engage in a craftsman’s work. In this thought-provoking book, Sennett explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world.

The Craftsman engages the many dimensions of skill—from the technical demands to the obsessive energy required to do good work. Craftsmanship leads Sennett across time and space, from ancient Roman brickmakers to Renaissance goldsmiths to the printing presses of Enlightenment Paris and the factories of industrial London; in the modern world he explores what experiences of good work are shared by computer programmers, nurses and doctors, musicians, glassblowers, and cooks. Unique in the scope of his thinking, Sennett expands previous notions of crafts and craftsmen and apprises us of the surprising extent to which we can learn about ourselves through the labor of making physical things.

Publisher Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2008
ISBN 0300149557, 9780300149555
326 pages

review (Lewis Hyde, The New York Times: Sunday Book Review)
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google books

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Thomas Bey William Bailey: Micro Bionic: Radical Electronic Music & Sound Art in the 21st Century, 2nd ed (2009/2012)

Starting with the guerrilla media tactics of Industrial music in the late 1970s, the author charts an ongoing trend in electronic music: an increasing amount of sonic quality, recorded output and international contact, accomplished with a decreasing amount of tools, personnel, and capital investment. From the use of laptop computers to create massive avalanches of noise, to the establishment of micro-nations populated largely by sound artists, 21st century sound culture is expanding in its scope and popularity even as it shrinks in other respects. Numerous exclusive interviews with leading lights of the field were also conducted for this book: William Bennett (Whitehouse), Peter Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle / Coil), Peter Rehberg (Mego), John Duncan, Francisco López, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Bob Ostertag and many others weigh in with a diversity of thoughts and opinions that underscores the incredible diversity to be found within new electronic music itself.

First published by Creation Books in 2009
Publisher Belsona Books
ISBN 0615736629, 9780615736624
417 pages

author
google books (1st edition)

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