S. Alexander Reed - Laurie Anderson’s Big Science
Laurie Anderson pioneered new techniques and aesthetics in performance art, becoming its first and most enduring superstar. In this book, author S. Alexander Reed dives into the wonderfully strange making and meanings of her album Big Science from 1982, and its creator’s long artistic career.
Shimmering in maximal minimalism, joyful bleakness, and bodiless intimacy, Big Science diagnosed crises of meaning, scale, and identity in 1982. Decades later, the strange questions it poses loom even larger: How do we remain human when our identities are digitally distributed? Does technology bring us closer together or further apart? Can we experience the stillness of “now” when time is always moving? How does our experience become memory?
Packed with scrupulous new research, reception history, careful description, and dizzying creativity, this book is an interdisciplinary love letter to a record whose sounds, politics, and expressions of gendered identity grow more relevant each day.
Table of Contents
I. FINDING THE NOW IN BIG SCIENCE
II. TOO BIG TO FAIL
—-
III. DESCRIBING SIDE 1
IV. FLIPPING THE RECORD
V. DESCRIBING SIDE 2
—-
VI. NEW MUSIC vs. NEW WAVE
VII. THE GENDERED MAKING OF UNGENDERED STYLE
VIII. BIGNESS AS USUAL
Acknowledgements
Works Cited
About the author
Dr. S. Alexander Reed, Associate Professor of Music and Integrative Studies at Ithaca College, is a musician and scholar of subculture, pop, and technology. Author of the acclaimed book Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music, he has also published in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 book series, Slate, the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and several more. As a musician, producer, and remixer, he has dozens of recording credits. Reed teaches at Ithaca College, and has previously been on faculty at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music, The University of Florida, and The College of William and Mary.
Paperback, published in 2022, 188 Pages | 17 figures
€20.00

Nick Aikens, Teresa Grandes, Nav Haq, Beatriz Herráez, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez (Eds,) - The Long 1980s
This nicely designed hardcover book assesses the 1980s as a turning point in political action: identity politics, political shifts, start of neoliberalism, R..(read more)
Publisher: Valiz / ISBN: 9789492095497
Medium: Book
Category: Books & Magazines.
Tags: '80s, Activism, Culture Theory, History, Politics.

Kim Bjørn - Inspire the Music: 50 Years of Roland History
Comprehensive story of Roland, one of the most influential music brands in modern history. 50 years of innovation, passion, creativity and the machines that dri..(read more)
Publisher: Bjooks / ISBN: 9788799999560
Author: Kim Bjørn
Medium: Book
Category: Books & Magazines.
Tags: Electronic Music, History, Instrument Builders, Pop Culture, Synth.

Stefanie Schulte Strathaus & Florian Wüst (Ed.) - Wer sagt denn, dass Beton nicht brennt, hast Du’s probiert?
English title: Who says concrete doesn’t burn, have you tried? This bi-lingual book deals with the medium of film and cinema’s position in 1980s West Berlin..(read more)
Publisher: b_books / ISBN 978-3-933557-90-2
Medium: Book
Category: Books & Magazines.
Tags: '80s, Activism, Berlin, Cinema.
