Bill Furlong (ed.): Audio Arts magazine (1973-2006)

The innovative audio cassette-magazine Audio Arts was established by Bill Furlong in 1973. Edited and produced by Furlong, it comprises an integral element of his art practice.

The idea of Audio Arts arose out of conversations between two young artists, William Furlong and Barry Barker, in the early 1970s. Its publication was a part of the conceptual experimentation taking place within the contemporary art of the time.

Since its inception in 1972, Audio Arts has grown to become the world’s most comprehensive and coherently focused sound archive of artists’ voices as well as sound art. The cassette-magazine has been in continuous and regular publication for thirty-five years, with over twenty-five volumes of four issues each.

A small part of the vast Audio Arts archive is shown for the first time. Four hours of recorded clips can be accessed online, or in Tate gallery via headphones.

Article about Furlong (Randy Kennedy)
Speaking of Art book (contains 50 selected interviews)

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The Wire Magazine #313 (March)

On the cover: Caledonia dreaming: How Glasgow has become the UK’s experimental free folk capital, with Alasdair Roberts, Trembling Bells, The Family Elan and more. By Rob Young. Plus Marina Rosenfeld, The Thirteenth Assembly, The Moodies, Dylan Nyoukis’s Invisible Jukebox, Geiom, Sebastian Lexer, Yabby You, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot in Cross Platform, Alan Moore on John Clare, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard on Adam And The Ants and more…

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XLR8R magazine 130-131 (Nov/Dec 2009-Jan/Feb 2010)

Nov/Dec 2009
Issue 130: XLR8R’s Favorites of 2009

While we where pretty burnt on definitive best-of lists, we couldn’t resist crowning Bristol cover star Joker the 2009 king of bass music. On top of that, in this year-end issue we survey a host of our favorite artists of 2009, including Martyn, Hudson Mohawke, The Field, Holy Ghost!, Nite Jewel, Schlachthofbronx, DJ Koze and tons more. As well, we look at the year’s best technology and videogames, just in time for the holidays.

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Jan/Feb 2010
Issue 131: Revolutions Per Minute: Matias Aguayo

As we head into 2010, the continuum of great music streaming from the tail end of last year just don’t stop. Latin playboy Matías Aguayo takes house in all sorts of new (vocal-driven) directions, while L-Vis 1990 and Bok Bok hold it down with their London club and label Night Slugs. Then over on this side of the pond, Washed Out, Pictureplane, Toro Y Moi, and Neon Indian take electronic music back to the garage, while Beach House blesses Sub Pop with a new seaside stunner. View online at Issuu.

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The Wire Magazine 311-312 (Jan-Feb 2010)

#311 | Rewind 2009 | January 2010

Featuring: Jad Fair, Josephine Foster, Gallon Drunk, Yan Jun, Monolake, Position Normal, Paul Rooney, Janek Schaefer, The Village Orchestra

On The Cover: The Wire’s essential review of the year’s best music, including Top 50 Records of the Year, writers’ and musicians’ reflections, and discussions of the state of the art in sound. Plus: Monolake, Janek Schaefer, Josephine Foster’s Invisible Jukebox, Position Normal, The Village Orchestra, Yan Jun, Paul Rooney in Cross Platform, Jad Fair, Kodwo Eshun on sonic warfare, Cathi Unsworth on Gallon Drunk and more…

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#312 | Wadada Leo Smith | February 2010

Featuring: Raymond Dijkstra, Mark Ernestus, David Grubbs, Mattin, Moon Wiring Club, Pangaea, Eliane Radigue, Wadada Leo Smith

On The Cover: Wadada Leo Smith – Phil Freeman meets a free music cosmopolitan who has explored free space with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Spring Heel Jack and more. Plus Mark Ernestus, Mattin, Eliane Radigue’s Invisible Jukebox, Raymond Dijkstra, Moon Wiring Club, David Grubbs in Cross Platform, Pangaea, Robert Ashley’s Inner Sleeve, Billy Ray Martin, Nicolas Collins on Alvin Lucier and more

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Curtis Roads: Microsound (2004)

Below the level of the musical note lies the realm of microsound, of sound particles lasting less than one-tenth of a second. Recent technological advances allow us to probe and manipulate these pinpoints of sound, dissolving the traditional building blocks of music—notes and their intervals—into a more fluid and supple medium. The sensations of point, pulse (series of points), line (tone), and surface (texture) emerge as particle density increases. Sounds coalesce, evaporate, and mutate into other sounds.

Composers have used theories of microsound in computer music since the 1950s. Distinguished practitioners include Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis. Today, with the increased interest in computer and electronic music, many young composers and software synthesis developers are exploring its advantages. Covering all aspects of composition with sound particles, Microsound offers composition theory, historical accounts, technical overviews, acoustical experiments, descriptions of musical works, and aesthetic reflections.

Publisher MIT Press, 2004
ISBN 0262681544, 9780262681544
Length 409 pages

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Allen S. Weiss (ed.): Experimental Sound & Radio (2000)

Art making and criticism have focused mainly on the visual media. This book, which originally appeared as a special issue of TDR/The Drama Review, explores the myriad aesthetic, cultural, and experimental possibilities of radiophony and sound art. Taking the approach that there is no single entity that constitutes “radio,” but rather a multitude of radios, the essays explore various aspects of its apparatus, practice, forms, and utopias. The approaches include historical, political, popular cultural, archeological, semiotic, and feminist. Topics include the formal properties of radiophony, the disembodiment of the radiophonic voice, aesthetic implications of psychopathology, gender differences in broadcast musical voices and in narrative radio, erotic fantasy, and radio as an electronic memento mori.

The book includes a new piece by Allen Weiss on the origins of sound recording.

Contributors:
John Corbett, Tony Dove, René Farabet, Richard Foreman, Rev. Dwight Frizzell, Mary Louise Hill, G. X. Jupitter-Larsen, Douglas Kahn, Terri Kapsalis, Alexandra L. M. Keller, Lou Mallozzi, Jay Mandeville, Christof Migone, Joe Milutis, Kaye Mortley, Mark S. Roberts, Susan Stone, Allen S. Weiss, Gregory Whitehead, David Williams, Ellen Zweig.

Publisher MIT Press, 2000
ISBN 0262731304, 9780262731300
Length 188 pages

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Leigh Landy: Understanding the Art of Sound Organization (2007)

The art of sound organization, also known as electroacoustic music, uses sounds not available to traditional music making, including pre-recorded, synthesized, and processed sounds. The body of work of such sound-based music (which includes electroacoustic art music, turntable composition, computer games, and acoustic and digital sound installations) has developed more rapidly than its musicology. Understanding the Art of Sound Organization proposes the first general foundational framework for the study of the art of sound organization, defining terms, discussing relevant forms of music, categorizing works, and setting sound-based music in interdisciplinary contexts.

Leigh Landy’s goal in this book is not only to create a theoretical framework but also to make sound-based music more accessible—to give a listener what he terms “something to hold on to,” for example, by connecting elements in a work to everyday experience. Landy considers the difficulties of categorizing works and discusses such types of works as sonic art and electroacoustic music, pointing out where they overlap and how they are distinctive. He proposes a “sound-based music paradigm” that transcends such traditional categories as art and pop music. Landy defines patterns that suggest a general framework and places the study of sound-based music in interdisciplinary contexts, from acoustics to semiotics, proposing a holistic research approach that considers the interconnectedness of a given work’s history, theory, technological aspects, and social impact.

The author’s ElectroAcoustic Resource Site (EARS, www.ears.dmu.ac.uk), the architecture of which parallels this book’s structure, offers updated bibliographic resource abstracts and related information.

Publisher MIT Press, 2007
ISBN 0262122928, 9780262122924
Length 303 pages

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Brandon LaBelle: Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (2006)

The rise of a prominent auditory culture, as seen in the recent plethora of art exhibitions on sound art, in conjunction with academic programs dedicated to “aural culture”, sonic art, and auditory issues now emerging, reveals the degree to which sound art is lending definition to the 21st Century. And yet sound art still lacks related literature to compliment, and expand, the realm of practice.

Background Noise sets out an historical overview, while at the same time shaping that history according to what sound art reveals – the dynamics of art to operate spatially, through media of reproduction and broadcast, and in relation to the intensities of communication and its contextual framework.

Publisher Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006
ISBN 0826418457, 9780826418456
Length 316 pages

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David Toop: Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds (1995/2001)

Sun Ra, Brian Eno, Lee Perry, Kate Bush, Kraftwerk, Aphex Twin, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Brian Wilson are interviewed in this extraordinary work of sonic history that travels from the rainforests of amazonas to virtual Las Vegas, from David Lynch’s dream house, high in the Hollywood hills to the megalopolis of Tokyo.

Ocean of Sound begins in 1889 at the Paris Exposition when Debussy first heard Javanese music performed. It goes on to comprehensively map a whole century of ambient music and its legacy.

Publisher Serpent’s Tail, 1995
ISBN 185242382X, 9781852423827
Length 306 pages

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Trevor Wishart: On Sonic Art (1985/1996)

In this newly revised book On Sonic Art, Trevor Wishart takes a wide-ranging look at the new developments in music-making and musical aesthetics made possible by the advent of the computer and digital information processing. His emphasis is on musical rather than technical matters. Beginning with a critical analysis of the assumptions underlying the Western musical tradition and the traditional acoustic theories of Pythagoras and Helmholtz, he goes on to look in detail at such topics as the musical organization of complex sound-objects, using and manipulating representational sounds and the various dimensions of human and non-human utterance. In so doing, he seeks to learn lessons from areas (poetry and sound-poetry, film, sound effects and animal communication) not traditionally associated with the field of music.

a new and revised edition edited by Simon Emmerson
Edition 2, illustrated, revised
Publisher Routledge, 1996
ISBN 371865847X, 9783718658473
Length 357 pages

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Nicolas Collins: Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking (2006)

Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking provides a long-needed, practical, and engaging introduction for students of electronic music, installation and sound-art to the craft of making–as well as creatively cannibalizing–electronic circuits for artistic purposes. Designed for practioners and students of electronic art, it provides a guided tour through the world of electronics, encouraging artists to get to know the inner workings of basic electronic devices so they can creatively use them for their own ends. HandmadeElectronic Musicintroduces the basic of practical circuitry while instructing the student in basic electronic principles, always from the practical point of view of an artist. It teaches a style of intuitive and sensual experimentation that has been lost in this day of prefabricated electronic musical instruments whose inner workings are not open to experimentation. It encourages artists to transcend their fear of electronic technology to launchthemselves into the pleasure of working creatively with all kinds of analog circuitry.

Published by CRC Press, 2006
ISBN 0415975921, 9780415975926
245 pages

Key terms: photoresistor, resistor, Nicolas Collins, Circuit Bending, David Tudor, David Behrman, breadboard, Alvin Lucier, Phil Archer, Yasunao Tone, tape head, Schmitt Trigger, Integrated Circuit, electronic music, Stephen Vitiello, volts, soldering iron, Radio Shack, electrical tape, oscillator

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Douglas Kahn: Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts (1999)

This interdisciplinary history and theory of sound in the arts reads the twentieth century by listening to it–to the emphatic and exceptional sounds of modernism and those on the cusp of postmodernism, recorded sound, noise, silence, the fluid sounds of immersion and dripping, and the meat voices of viruses, screams, and bestial cries. Focusing on Europe in the first half of the century and the United States in the postwar years, Douglas Kahn explores aural activities in literature, music, visual arts, theater, and film. Placing aurality at the center of the history of the arts, he revisits key artistic questions, listening to the sounds that drown out the politics and poetics that generated them. Artists discussed include Antonin Artaud, George Brecht, William Burroughs, John Cage, Sergei Eisenstein, Fluxus, Allan Kaprow, Michael McClure, Yoko Ono, Jackson Pollock, Luigi Russolo, and Dziga Vertov.

Published by MIT Press, 1999
ISBN 0262112434, 9780262112437
455 pages

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