Customer Reviews

Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music

5 star:		(4)
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This is a very comprehensive guide on the different sides of "audio culture". Many of the authors and readings you'll find here are among the most influential on the subject...From Luigi Russolo's futurist musical manifesto to Brian Eno's ambient music, coming across Stockhausen, Steve Reich, Cage, Kim Cascone, etc. Very thought-provoking, it gives an interesting macro view of the world of audio as well as the different currents and inflexion points that have changed the way we perceive music and its context...

I definitely recommend it, but beware: you'll want more!

It is quite a challenge to write a review when just thinking about a book renders one speechless. The very first chapter (an excerpt from Jacques Attali) is more explosive that the opening sequence of a James Bond movie, with insights as penetrating as any I have read about quantum mechanics, astrophysics, economics, or philosophy. And that chapter was only two pages long!

Not all of the book spoke to me, because it covers an extremely wide range of topics, not all of which are of interest to me. But every single chapter that remotely connected with my interest in music, economics, culture, freedom, and sustainability spoke so clearly, so cogently, so powerfully, and so affirmingly YES! that I give the whole work five stars.

I was a reader (and lover) of The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross, and what he did in the way of explaining the evolution of modern musical composition, this book does for modern musical production, as well as the recontextualization of modern music *experience*. Indeed, I will say that this book really does pick up, and deliver, about where Ross's book exhausts itself. And it does so entirely with the words of the great producers, performers, and philosophers of this modern era.

complex, yet easy to understand. informative, yet exciting. i recommend this boook to anyone who feels an intense love for music and the history of sound and noise.

My son is into "Modern Music" and said this was good, so I got it for him for Christmas.