book – Continuum – ISBN 0826416152
The genealogy of contemporary music passes through many essential points distant in time and in cultural ambits. Only now, in the time of networked information, we can trace the connections between the things that changed the course of sound production in different sectors, giving unexpected openings to small and large groups of amateurs enlightened by the new creative methods. The impressive ‘line-up’ of theoreticians, musicians and musicologists (from Russolo to John Oswals, from Cage to Attali, from McLuhan to Aphex Twin) described in these pages is not surprising. This is a sort of textual map of the most important theoretical seeds of the musical avant-garde, made of essays and interviews excerpts which are never longer than ten pages. It’s an ultra-thick synthesis aimed at re-planting the many intuitions in the minds of the readers.building an imaginary lush garden of ideas that can generate many transformations. The connections between these ideas and the practices of the last century seem to follow an unavoidable thread that links them, and some writings (especially the older ones) seem to describe the applications that followed, in a dense programme of sounds that have already lived a self-sustained life.