Customer Reviews

Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear (Technologies of Lived Abstraction)

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This book was published under the name of Steve Goodman (a lecturer in Music Culture at the School of Sciences, Media, and Cultural Studies at the University of East London), not of Kode9. So it is not a tutorial on how to make wobbly bass in Massive. True, because of its subject matter it can be at times heavy on the SAT phraseology, but I seriously doubt the usefulness of writing a vibrational ontology for kindergarteners, especially if that ontology is explicitly developed in the context of Leibniz, Deleuze and Guattari.

If you are looking for a fresh perspective on sonic weaponry, piracy, pop music as torture, sound systems, earworms, crowd control, and the Big Bang then this is the book for you.

If you are looking for "a pretty interesting philosophical read", try Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Wait, maybe that too is "over-written", "quickly filling and hard to digest", so better try Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Crafts: An A-to-Z Guide with Detailed Instructions and Endless Inspiration.

And if you are looking to practice your reviewing skills without having to read anything, go to Youtube and join the pissing contest coming up with the next lackluster metaphor for face-metling griminess when commenting on the latest Datsik track.



PS. Read the editorial reviews. If you feel like you don't understand them, save your money and buy instead Kode9's Memories of the Future.

... yes, unless you are doing researches in the interplay between sound/modern music and social behaviour. As not a researcher in that field, I found hard to follow the book. To bo honnest to myself, kode9's book writting style is not as effective as his music writting's. The former is too rich, whereas the latter is fluid with "breaks" that allow one's to breathe.

I'm gonna start off by saying I freaking love Kode9 and HyperDub. The guy just beams out incredible well designed sound. So when I heard he was coming out with a book regarding affecting with sound, I bought it expecting to have a pretty interesting philosophical read and perhaps come away with some fresh perspective. But Sonic Warfare as a meal is quickly filling and hard to digest. The whole thing is over-written like someone who was trying to make even the simplest statement horribly difficult to grasp. I can easily read several pages and still only have a whisper of an idea of wtf he's talking about. So unfortunately I can't recommend it.