Christoph Cox & Daniel Warner – Audio Culture

"Over the past half-century, a new audio culture has emerged, a culture of musicians, composers, sound artists, scholars, and listeners attentive to sonic substance, the act of listening, and the creative possibilities of sound recording, playback, and transmission. The culture of the ear has become particularly prominent in the last decade." This could serve as a programme note to this almanach packed with essays and writings of such different sources like early modern music pioneers Russolo, Varèse, and Cage next to DJ Spooky and Kim Cascone. The book traces back many cross references in all strains of the musical avant-garde be it experimental, minimal, improvised, electronic or from the DJ culture and ignores the traditional ‘high’ and ‘low’ borders present in too many publications today. This new audio culture is conceived as “a discourse, a loose collection of terms, concepts, and statements gathered from across the cultural field" and to that, the book is the perfect reference guide. There is a very good review here, that says everything.