Books 244 Items

In "A Dysfunctional Success" Eric Goulden writes with an acute eye for detail about growing up in the 60s and 70s in suburban South East England, discovering music and girls; life as an art student in the frozen north eastern town of Hull; the formation and dissolution of bands with desperate equipment, a homemade ethos and not much idea; his move to London in 1976 and subsequent recording debut on the newly formed Stiff Record label. This is an honest coming of age story from both sides of instant pop success: bands, squalid flats, menial jobs, making records, the rise to the point of fame and falling off into poverty and alcoholism in Thatcher"s Britain, where Goulden ultimately survived the 1980"s to achieve his own kind of success. Twenty-one years after its original publication, in a time when pop stars telling their own hard stories was a comparative rarity, A Dysfunctional Success rings truer than ever, reminding readers how we all come from somewhere, pay a high price for our dreams, and enjoy modest glories in return for staying the course. "I think I was hoping for insight into the early Stiff Records days, which I didn"t get. What I got was much better, and a great deal more interesting: a shambling, acutely observed, very funny-sad-true-sharp autobiography ..." Neil Gaiman

The definitive history of the iconic ‘90s videogame TV show, written by host Dominik Diamond.

GamesMaster: The Oral History charts the highs and lows of Channel 4’s iconic and anarchic UK videogames entertainment show. First broadcast in 1992 amid a brash youth television takeover, the ambitious and sometimes chaotic production of GamesMaster is as much a story of the 1990s, set against a backdrop of videogame console wars, Britpop and a curious new thing called the World Wide Web. This definitive retrospective is guided by show host Dominik Diamond and features over 40 contributors, including production crew, celebrity guests and the games-playing members of the public who became either playground heroes or defeated outcasts vying for the iconic Golden Joystick prize.

'Any fan of GamesMaster should come away from this book having learned something new, but it would be an interesting read even for those who never saw the show. In any case, we can’t imagine any way to have done it better' Retro Gamer

'Superb' Time Extension

About the Author: Dominik Diamond is a Scottish television and radio presenter and newspaper columnist. He is best known as the original presenter of Channel 4’s video gaming programme GamesMaster, as host of The Dominik Diamond Breakfast Show on XFM Scotland and as a columnist for the Daily Star.

Format:PLC Size:23.0 x 16.0 cm Extent:320 pp Illustrations:100 Publication date:6 October 2022 ISBN:9780500025918

The only comprehensive book on the fascinating life and work of the celebrated architectural designer, John Pawson

This visual biography brings together John Pawson’s architecture, life, clients, travel, photography, design, books, and ideas. Written by Deyan Sudjic, an architectural historian and long-time friend, it explores the full scope of Pawson’s life, from his Yorkshire upbringing and time spent in Japan to the fashion years and the influence of art, and provides a thoughtful and intimate insight into his life, inspirations, and work.

It features wonderfully engaging stories and anecdotes about Pawson's work with such clients as Bruce Chatwin, Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld, Shiro Kuramata, Martha Stewart, and many more. The book features documents, photography and ephemera, including never-seen-before images from Pawson's personal and professional archives – richly illustrated, this is the ultimate book on John Pawson.

About the author: Deyan Sudjic is Director Emeritus of London’s Design Museum, and Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Design Studies at Lancaster University. A co-founder of Blueprint magazine, Sudjic also edited Domus magazine and has been the architecture critic for The Sunday Times, the Guardian and the Observer. He was the director of the Venice Architecture Biennale, and has curated exhibitions in Copenhagen, Istanbul, and Seoul.

Specifications: Format: Hardback Size: 304 × 238 mm (12 × 9 3/8 in) Pages: 296 pp Illustrations: 230 illustrations

The first longterm appraisal of the photography of Daniel Schwartz.

Daniel Schwartz's photographs explore human activities set against an immense range of political geography and cultural history, touching on such monumental themes as imperial warfare, ancient history, environmental collapse and the vanishing cryosphere. Tracings reveals a body of work that is humanistically motivated and anchored in reality, blurring the divide between photojournalism and art.

Positioning Schwartz’s work to date in the wider history of the medium, Tracings draws together themes tackled in five monographs concerned with cultural history, political geography and the environment published by Thames & Hudson between 1986 and 2017. Essays by Beat Wismer, Giovanna Calvenzi and Carolin Emcke examine the ways Schwartz’s documentary photography intersects with the arts; look at photographic affinities and methods in Schwartz’s work, analysing the narrative of his previous books; and study Schwartz’s depiction of the individual at work, and how photographs of human activities are interwoven with photographs of nature.

Tracings is not so much a retrospective as a project tracing and continuing an evolutionary line through all Schwartz’s projects to date.

'Invites the reader to interact with its pages … an intricate and sophisticated volume that rewards the time spent with it' Black + White Photography

About the Author: Daniel Schwartz is a Swiss photographer. He is the author of While the Fires Burn: A Glacier Odyssey (2017), Travelling Through the Eye of History (2009), Delta: The Perils, Profits and Politics of Water in South and Southeast Asia (2004) and The Great Wall of China (2001), all published by Thames & Hudson. Beat Wismer (b. 1953) is an art historian. He has curated numerous exhibitions of historical and contemporary art, on which he has also written and published widely.

Format:Hardback Size:25.4 x 23.8 cm Extent:192 pp Illustrations:150 Publication date:14 September 2023 ISBN:9780500026342

Prince of Grass is the debut poetry collection from Dan Wriggins, songwriter and frontman of the band Friendship. Loving and absurd, Wriggins' poems are overflowing cauldrons of metaphor, always inviting, always in motion. For fans of James Tate, C.D. Wright, David Berman, and pie for breakfast. Dan Wriggins is a writer and musician from Maine. He records and tours solo and with the band Friendship. His debut poetry collection, Prince of Grass, is coming in July of 2024 from Dear Life Records. He lives in Philadelphia with his dog, Roy.

The definitive study of the work of Kaws, one of the most influential and much-loved forces in contemporary art and culture

Kaws is one of the most popular and recognizable contemporary artists, whose reach extends far beyond the art world into the realms of fashion, music, and popular culture at large. Beginning his career as a graffiti artist in the 1990s, Kaws has expanded his repertoire into painting, sculpture, drawing, product design, and augmented reality, together forming an artistic vision that unites all of these practices. Kaws has collaborated with some of the most prominent international brands, including Uniqlo, Comme des Garçons, Supreme, Nike, Dior, sacai, General Mills, and many more, and the book includes images of the artist’s studio by Jason Schmidt and a selection of Kaws’s previously unpublished preparatory drawings as well as work spanning his entire career, from his early graffiti days to his highly collectible vinyl toys, complex abstract paintings, and monumental public sculptures. Richly illustrated and featuring the most significant scholarship on his work to date, this book is a definitive study on the life and career of this extraordinary artist.

Specifications:
Format: Paperback Size: 290 × 250 mm (11 3/8 × 9 7/8 in)
Pages: 160 pp
Illustrations: 200 illustrations

Egostrip Book 1 is a beautifully designed collection of Dan Lish’s stunning character illustrations from the world of hip hop and beyond. There are 138 illustrations of pioneering artists from hip hop’s golden era, such as De La Soul, Madlib, DJ Premier, Mobb Deep, Nas, Cypress Hill, J.Period, J Dilla, Kool Keith, MF DOOM, The Roots, Biggie Smalls, A Tribe Called Quest, Biz Markie and The Beastie Boys.

The book is 27.2cm x 29.4cm, and the 160 pages are printed and bound on heavyweight 130gsm paper with a hardback cover.

Welcome to Egostrip Book 1, an illustrated escapade through the visions of Dan Lish.

The Egostrip Book project began on Dan’s daily commute to work, where he chose to draw his favourite musicians in little black books. Created in black fibre tip ink pen, straight to paper, while the train rocked back and forth, commuters knocking his elbow (or vice versa). Back in the studio, the illustrations were brought into the computer and digitally coloured, adding texture and details.

There are also black and white sketches and photos with Dan’s anecdotes, process thoughts and tips and histories of the interconnected characters; their alter-egos and worlds created in glorious analogue and digital techniques, plus an introduction to Dan’s life as a DJ, B-Boy and graffiti artist in the UK and New York.

Within the handcrafted lines are layered micro-narratives and ink pen explorations, celebrating Black music and the journey of human creativity.

“Fast slash, cross hatch, slash, cross patch / every word of mine will be verbally sewn tight to match / data that’ll hit you harder than Caterpillar trucks. In the lab, when we collaborate, all matter will erupt.” Pharoahe Monch – Front Line

As an M.C. I was always trying to implement what I learned in the High School Of Art & Design into my music career. In this specific case, it was the specific style of cross-hatching in which we used for shading in my commercial arts class. It only stands to reason that when I first encountered the amazing artwork of Dan Lish that my mind exploded. How ironic that an artist who obviously had a love for the culture would also implement the things I’d come to know in love. Cross-hatching and hip hop. Upon seeing his work, Dan immediately skyrocketed to the top of my all-time favourite artists. From his LP covers to his broad appreciation for the music, Dan Lish is the gold standard. Pharoahe Monch

Mit den Büchern von Christiane Rösinger, Bernd íBegemann und Carsten Friedrichs starten wir eine Reihe, in der die Texte deutscher Musiker:innen erstmals in Buchform zugänglich gemacht werden. Texte von Musiker:innen, die die hiesige (Sub-)Kultur mit ihren íSongtexten in der Retrospektive ebenso geprägt haben wie die ausschließlich schreibende Zunft. Eine längst íüberfällige Würdigung außergewöhnlicher Songwriter:innen, deren Texte nicht bloße Anhängsel ígroßartiger Musik sind, sondern ebenso auch für sich stehen. Christiane Rösinger, geboren 1961, zog 1985 aus dem íBadischen nach West-Berlin, wo sie mit Almut Klotz und Funny van Dannen die Lassie Singers gründete. Nach deren Auflösung war sie Kopf der Band Britta. Rösinger war zudem eine der Betreiberinnen der legendären Flittchen Bar und betrieb das Label Flittchen Records. Sie veröffentlichte zwei Soloalben, mehrere Bücher und schrieb zahlreiche Theatermusiken. 2019 hatte ihr erstes Musical "Stadt unter Einfluss" Premiere im Hebbel am Ufer. "Was jetzt kommt" ist die Würdigung einer außergewöhnlichen Songwriterin. Ob Lassie Singers, Britta, Solo: das Buch enthält Lyrics aus allen Schaffensphasen, Geschichten und ein exklusives Christiane-Rösinger-Glossar.

Five young men in their early twenties, carrying backpacks and guitars, climbed onto the bus in Mendoza, Argentina, that was to take them over the Andes to Santiago de Chile, where they would play the last show of their South American tour, and then board a plane the day after back to their home country of Germany. In spite of the South American winter, the weather in Mendoza was bright and sunny. The ride was supposed to take six hours, after three of which they would cross the border to Chile at a post called Cristo Redentor, at more than 3000 meters above sea level. Not long after the bus had left the station, the weather started to change for the worse. It started raining, and as the road wound itself higher up the Andes, rain soon turned to snow, and before long, white drifts were growing larger on either side of the road. When they finally reached the border crossing, a long line of trucks and cars was standing ahead of them, not moving an inch... Starting a band is a lot like a romantic relationship. You spend time together, find that common spark, and live through emotions and experiences. You create music together. Songs, lyrics, entire records. You find a name for your band. Each member contributes to creating something uniquely your own. Then there's also the other side of the medal: fights, breakups, broken hearts. The entire emotional bandwidth of a relationship is contained within the complicated inner workings of a band. ‘This Is My Everything’ is about one forgotten screamo band's travels into and out of the worldwide DIY hardcore scene in the late nineties and early noughties, with guest appearances by Against Me!, Shelter, Refused, Ink&Dagger, Yaphet Kotto, Snapcase and many more.

Recent winners of Royal Photographic Society Award for Photographic Publishing. All books 36 pages, printed in England, staple bound, 14cm x 20cm. "..images that convey a formative and unique cultural and jazz related moment. The images of the now globally renowned broadcaster and DJ Gilles Peterson, captured on air at BBC Radio London, are priceless. Peterson’s pre-internet, cult radio show was called Mad On Jazz.. In this photo-story the dynamic IDJ (I Dance Jazz) appear both live, with an array of musicians..."

Limited edition signed by the author.

For millennia, “nirvana” has been a term associated with belief systems of the Indian subcontinent. But in 1988, a band from a small coastal town in Washington state decided to create some new associations with this word . . . through their music.

Active for just six years, Nirvana left an indelible mark on the late twentieth century that remains visible today. Photographer and self-described “music fanatic” Charles Peterson, a fellow twenty-something from the suburbs of Seattle, was present with his camera as a genre took form, and his images have become synonymous with the sounds, styles, movement and attitude known as grunge.

Charles Peterson’s Nirvana, in the tradition of many great documentary photobooks, expands beyond Peterson’s iconic images of the band seen repeatedly over the last thirty years (on album covers, in magazines, and in dozens of compilation books and exhibitions focused on this music and its birth era) to highlight gems never before published. Over a five-year photo edit, Peterson looked at each one of thousands of frames, considering what drew him to Nirvana in the first place—their songs. He honed in on the compositions that stimulated visceral memories of their live performances.

The resulting selection of photographs and their carefully constructed sequence mash up venues and years, suffering and the sublime, to arrive at a visual experience that one cannot help but also feel, and hear.

Book design by Jeff Kleinsmith.

9 x 12.25 inches vertical; ~90 black and white photographs; 168 pages;. Hardcover. Foreword by Krist Novoselic.

Charles Peterson (b.1964, Longview, Washington) is internationally known for his photographs of the Seattle music scene of the late eighties and nineties. He began making photographs while a student at Bothell High School, and then went on to study photography at the University Washington, where he first met as friends many of his future subjects.

Peterson’s distinct visual style and early work for Sub Pop Records became an important signifier of the phenomenon known as grunge.

His photographs have been featured in numerous publications, as well exhibited in group and solo exhibitions around the world. They are included in many private collections, and the permanent collections of the Seattle Art Museum and MoPOP.

Krist Novoselic (b. 1965, Compton, California) is co-founder of Nirvana.

Nirvana originated in Aberdeen, Washington in the late 1980s through the energies of Novoselic and Kurt Cobain. They were joined by drummers including Chad Channing (1988–1990) and David Grohl (1990–1994). Nirvana’s live performances, music videos, and albums Bleach (1989), Nevermind (1991), Incesticide (1992), In Utero (1993) and MTV Unplugged in New York (1994) made their music a defining component of the late twentieth century internationally.

Unfortunately we have to sell a few slightly damaged copies.

For millennia, “nirvana” has been a term associated with belief systems of the Indian subcontinent. But in 1988, a band from a small coastal town in Washington state decided to create some new associations with this word . . . through their music.

Active for just six years, Nirvana left an indelible mark on the late twentieth century that remains visible today. Photographer and self-described “music fanatic” Charles Peterson, a fellow twenty-something from the suburbs of Seattle, was present with his camera as a genre took form, and his images have become synonymous with the sounds, styles, movement and attitude known as grunge.

Charles Peterson’s Nirvana, in the tradition of many great documentary photobooks, expands beyond Peterson’s iconic images of the band seen repeatedly over the last thirty years (on album covers, in magazines, and in dozens of compilation books and exhibitions focused on this music and its birth era) to highlight gems never before published. Over a five-year photo edit, Peterson looked at each one of thousands of frames, considering what drew him to Nirvana in the first place—their songs. He honed in on the compositions that stimulated visceral memories of their live performances.

The resulting selection of photographs and their carefully constructed sequence mash up venues and years, suffering and the sublime, to arrive at a visual experience that one cannot help but also feel, and hear.

Book design by Jeff Kleinsmith.

9 x 12.25 inches vertical; ~90 black and white photographs; 168 pages;. Hardcover. Foreword by Krist Novoselic.

Charles Peterson (b.1964, Longview, Washington) is internationally known for his photographs of the Seattle music scene of the late eighties and nineties. He began making photographs while a student at Bothell High School, and then went on to study photography at the University Washington, where he first met as friends many of his future subjects.

Peterson’s distinct visual style and early work for Sub Pop Records became an important signifier of the phenomenon known as grunge.

His photographs have been featured in numerous publications, as well exhibited in group and solo exhibitions around the world. They are included in many private collections, and the permanent collections of the Seattle Art Museum and MoPOP.

Krist Novoselic (b. 1965, Compton, California) is co-founder of Nirvana.

Nirvana originated in Aberdeen, Washington in the late 1980s through the energies of Novoselic and Kurt Cobain. They were joined by drummers including Chad Channing (1988–1990) and David Grohl (1990–1994). Nirvana’s live performances, music videos, and albums Bleach (1989), Nevermind (1991), Incesticide (1992), In Utero (1993) and MTV Unplugged in New York (1994) made their music a defining component of the late twentieth century internationally.

Charbel Haber is Lebanese musician, performer, visual artist and composer from Beirut. His work has seen him collaborate with artists from a wide range of disciplines - film, video art, visual art, theatre, dance - both in Lebanon and abroad.

As a solo artist and as a member of post-punk band Scrambled Eggs, he has composed music for directors Khalil Joreige and Joana Hadjithomas, Ghassan Salhab, Mohamad Malas, video artists Lamia Joreige and Akram Zaatari, Maqamat dance company and playwrights Rabih Mroueh and Lina Saneh, to name but a few. His prolific and collaborative career includes free improv group Johnny Kafta Anti-Vegetarian Orchestra, psychedelic Arabic music ensembles Malayeen and Orchestra Omar, cold wave band The Bunny Tylers and minimal ambient duo Good Luck In Death. He is the founder of Those Kids Must Choke and co-founder of Johnny Kafta's Kids Menu - two experimental record labels - and he has recorded and collaborated with notable artists from the fields of free rock and improv such as Oiseaux-Tempête, Radwan Moumneh, Tarek Atoui, Jean Francois Pauvros, The Ex, Michael Zerang, Mats Gustafson, Eddie Prevost, Xavier Charles and Tony Buck.

With a preface by Johan Kugelberg and additional interviews by Emil Karlsson. This lavish coffee table book takes an in-depth visual look back at the amazing art and graphics of the so-called Swedish Gramophone Mission. The book presents the largest collection of Swedish Christian records from the 1960s -1980s ever amassed featuring 777 record covers, many of them extraordinary and surreal private/custom pressings. Jam packed with lots of interviews, liner-notes and previously unpublished photos describing both the success and tribulations of the mission in vivid detail. This collection documents and celebrates the Swedish Jesus Pop movement and is a striking record of its execution, art, and music. “...Praise the lord with blues and jazz and symphony orchestras, with negro spirituals and with Beethoven’s Fifth, with guitars and xylophones, praise him with gramophones and tape recorders...”

Moby Grape are a genuine cult phenomenon. Their story, a mixture of myth and truth, is a cautionary tale, a triumph, and a tragedy all at once. Though they are seen as a symbol of 1960s San Francisco, Moby Grape were never actually a part of the city’s counterculture movement. Yet they were immersed in it, sharing stages with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and many more. Moby Grape’s five members came together from very different backgrounds, bursting onto the San Francisco scene in the fall of 1966. With their diverse pedigree, they were nothing less than musical alchemists, yet they were also rebels. Their blending of genres within a tight songwriting framework contrasted sharply with that of many of their SF peers.

Moby Grape heralded by countless luminaries of rock music and rock criticism, from Robert Plant to Robert Christgau, Tom Waits to Greil Marcus.

Discover the exciting world of Africa's diverse and visually dazzling street art scene.

This visually rich survey – the first of its kind – showcases the work of over 200 artists and celebrates the explosion of street art in Africa over the last decade. Including twelve in-depth interviews with street artists active in Africa today as well as coverage of the continent’s major street art projects, collectives and festivals, it takes the reader on an introductory tour of the many African street art scenes, with a deeper focus on the most prominent players in Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.

Topics and projects covered include the monumental project Murais da Leba in Angola, which saw 6,000 square metres of wall covered by local graffiti and visual artists in the Serra da Leba mountain range; the cultural influences and idiosyncrasies of individual street art scenes, and how they mesh with local communities; and eL Seed’s project ‘Perception’, a huge multi-part mural stretching across more than fifty buildings in Cairo’s Zaraeeb neighbourhood, revealing a message of hope to its marginalized community in the artist’s distinctive ‘calligraffiti’ style.

Text commentaries elaborating on styles and processes, and social and cultural context, are peppered throughout the book, giving the reader further insight into a wealth of striking contemporary visual cultures – and helping make this a must-have for street art fans and practitioners.

About the Author: Cale Waddacor is a South African artist, musician, photographer and documentarian. Skateboarding through his home city, Johannesburg, he developed a passion for urban art and graffiti. He began photographing street artworks to document the country’s rising street art scene and launched the website Graffiti South Africa in 2011, which was made into a book of the same name in 2014.

Format:PLC (no jacket) Size:23.5 x 22.0 cm Extent:272 pp Illustrations:536 Publication date:17 September 2020 ISBN:9780500022825

The first and only monograph on the extraordinary work of multidisciplinary and experiential Dutch artist duo Drift

Drift was established in Amsterdam in 2007 by Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta. In their installations and interactive sculptures, environmental issues, human nature, and technology intersect in an intriguing way.

Over the course of more than a decade, Drift's immersive, encompassing, and often site-specific projects have been exhibited all over the world, offering a meditative and poetic experience and addressing themes such as the relationship between the individual and the collective and the impact of technology in our society. This is the first book to explore their extraordinary world in depth.

About the author: Bjarke Ingels is a Danish architect.

Beatrice Leanza is the Director of the Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology in Lisbon.

William Myers is a design historian and author of Bio Design (2012).

Specifications: Format: Hardback Size: 290 × 214 mm (11 3/8 × 8 3/8 in) Pages: 240 pp Illustrations: 200 illustrations

Bill Direen is a legend of the New Zealand underground. He has given us poetry, novels and a catalog of important and challenging underground music. Weaned on a garage band youth in the late '60s, Direen started producing 7" records in the early '80s, all of them total stunners. These releases—Six Impossible Things, Die Bilder, Soloman's Ball and High Thirties Piano—were self-financed and distributed through Flying Nun. 100 Years Of Darkness, his latest book, is a homage to a century of films and film music. The front cover boxes represent film aspect ratios (1.17:1 up to 2.35:1) as used worldwide between 1888 and the present. The films are drawn from many countries, such as Japan, U.S.A., France, Germany, Russia/Ukraine, Vietnam, Sweden, Italy, Spain, New Zealand, Lebanon. Since some of the films may not have been commercially distributed in all countries, the chosen films are carefully listed in a detailed index of sources at the close, which corresponds to the order of the poems as listed in the contents. This makes it easy for film and music lovers to find the films' directors and years of first appearance, and eventually see them for themselves. It is very limited in an edition of 200 and beautifully printed with textured jackets in the spirit of vintage Black Sparrow Press books.

The complete DIY bible of street art is back in print by popular demand. A rich source of inspiration for anyone interested in do-it-yourself culture. The Street Art Cookbook is a guide to the materials and techniques used within today's most creative and progressive art movement. In hundreds of pictures and illustrations and a dozen of interviews with some of the world's most famous artists, the authors show how street art is made. From stencils and stickers to laser tagging and guerrilla gardening, Street Art Cookbook takes us on a trip around the world in the search of the tricks and trades of street artists. Posters, stickers, screen print, mosaic, sculptures. There is no limit to their imagination. Hundreds of books filled with pictures of street art have been published in the last few years, but this is the one that shows how the artists work. Learn from the best: Street Art Cookbook is filled with tips and examples of how to create your own stencil, sticker, poster or installation. These techniques can be used on all kinds of materials: textiles, glass, metal, concrete or wood and is suitable for everything from scrapbooking and designing clothes with motifs to home decoration and outdoor use. The Street Art Cookbook gives a unique insight into the alternative art world and it's a rich source of inspiration for anyone interested in DIY-culture. Mark Jenkins, Swoon, Gould, WK Interact, Caper, Victor Marx, C215, Poch, Ron English and Knitta Please, are some of the artists featured in this book.

For the biggest artists to the most underground, field recordings have become the vital spark of electronic music. Whether documenting nature, sampling the city or capturing the atmosphere of archaeological sites, musicians are using found sounds to make sense of our world. Ears To The Ground explores the relationship between electronics, landscape and field recordings in the UK, Ireland and around the globe, discovering how producers and artists evoke the natural world, history and folklore through sampled sounds.

From the cacophonous surrounds of London to the sea stacks of Orkney, via the abandoned military facilities of the Suffolk coast and the watery expanses of the Blackwater Estuary in Essex, from the quarries and neolithic sites of Snowdonia and the wide open skies of Norfolk to the hubbub of Nairobi and Berlin, the streets of Kyiv and the windblown wilds of Antarctica – music is everywhere. You just need to know or learn how to listen.

Ears To The Ground: Adventures in Field Recording and Electronic Music explores how electronic music producers and sound artists use field recordings and samples to document their environments. Author Ben Murphy takes you on a journey to discover how field recordings can create context, emotion, atmosphere, humour and meaning – and examine the most pressing topics of our times.

Composed of extensive interviews with music producers, the book will show how field recordings have become a vital way of understanding, celebrating and interrogating the landscape and the places we live. The book features interviews with Leafcutter John, KMRU, Ultramarine, Kate Carr, Erland Cooper, Proc Fiskal, Flora Yin-Wong, Langham Research Centre, Claire Guerin, Toshiya Tsunoda, Lawrence English, Heinali, Oliver Ho, Matthew Herbert, Matmos, Scanner, Felicia Atkinson and many more.

On its journey, the book takes in abandoned military test sites, remote bird colonies, estuaries, cities, coastlines, old quarries, neolithic burial grounds, scientific research centres and docklands, and ventures between Orkney, Edinburgh and Cork to Norfolk, Kent and Snowdonia, before heading to Kenya, Ukraine, Japan and Antarctica

Quotes:
“Recording or celebrating ‘place’ in art and music feels increasingly relevant, as our environment faces more serious threats than ever before, and Ears To The Ground is a timely examination of this development.” Ultramarine

How the work of contemporary architecture practices covers far more than the design and construction of buildings – an important and thought-provoking collection of original projects by unique thinkers in the world of architecture and spatial design, such as Diller + Scofidio, David Adjaye, and Ensamble Studio

Architectural practice today goes far beyond the design and construction of buildings – the most exciting, forward-thinking architecture is also found in digital landscapes, art, apps, films, installations, and virtual reality. This remarkable book features projects – surprising, beautiful, outrageous, and sometimes even frightening - that break rules and shatter boundaries. In this timely book, the work of award-winning architects, designers, artists, photographers, writers, filmmakers, and researchers – all of whom synthesize and reflect our spatial environments – comes together for the first time.

Radical Architecture of the Future's featured architects include Diller Scofidio + Renfro, David Adjaye, Sanaa, Amateur Architecture Studio, and Ensamble Studio. Artists, designers, filmmakers, and writers covered include Julie Mehretu, Wolfgang Tillmans, and John Gerrard.

About the author:
Beatrice Galilee is a London-born, New York based curator, writer, critic, consultant, and lecturer of contemporary architecture and design. Formerly the associate curator of Architecture and Design at The Met in New York, she is currently director of 'The World Around: Architecture's Now, Near & Next', a New York-based architecture summit and cultural platform.

Specifications:
Format: Hardback Size: 270 × 205 mm (10 5/8 × 8 1/8 in)
Pages: 240 pp
Illustrations: 250 illustrations

The Impossible Dream – Smart Books for musical Minds! The Walker Brothers were the US counter-strike to the British invasion of the mid-60s. While The Beatles, the Stones and many others were busy colonising the US charts, three tall, handsome American men went into voluntary exile in a freezing London bedsit and launched their quest for pop stardom.

Not actually brothers, John (Maus), Gary (Leeds) and Scott (Engel) succeeded against the odds, becoming one of world’s biggest bands of 1966/67. With that came hit records – including two British chart-toppers, ‘Make It Easy On Yourself’ and ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ – and all that success entails: screaming girls, package tours, and intense interest in their private lives. The pressure of success eventually caused them to split, and the Walkers went their separate ways. Of the three, Scott is now the most prominent, having embarked on a mysterious solo career that has since become the stuff of myth, but Gary and John have recorded varied and interesting work, too. All three drifted into obscurity before reforming in 1976 and releasing the classic ‘No Regrets’ single. They concluded their recording career with one of the decade’s most influential records, 1978’s Nite Flights, about which Brian Eno recently exclaimed: “We haven’t got any further than this. It’s a disgrace.”

The Impossible Dream is an in-depth biography that traces the career of one of the most successful bands in pop history. In addition to assessing and analysing the talent and appeal of the enigmatic Scott, the author also covers the history and contributions of the other ‘brothers’, John and Gary, and provides a thorough analysis of all three men’s careers both as individual artists and as a group, from 1963 to 1978.

Drawing on decades of archive interviews with the band (some previously unpublished), and many new interviews with backing musicians, record label staff and producers, The Impossible Dream is the definitive telling of The Walker Brothers’ story.

Anthony Reynolds is a musician and a writer. He has released eight critically acclaimed albums, the first of which, contributed essays and critiques to many US and UK magazines, and has published a biography of Jeff Buckley.

Featuring fresh insights from Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ronnie, Unzipped digs deeper than ever before into the Stones’ archives to present a comprehensive collection of Stones artworks, instruments, stage outfits and notebooks alongside key work by some of the legends of rock photography.

For almost 60 years the Rolling Stones have helped shape popular culture around the globe. Unzipped captures the compelling character and dynamic spectacle of the band through distinctive photography and interviews with the Stones themselves, tracing their impact and influence on rock music, art, design, fashion, photography and filmmaking.

Evocative archive photos, artworks, outtakes and memorabilia, together with dazzling images of the band’s instruments and outfits, plunge you into the ever-changing world of the Stones. Many of the instruments and outfits are paired with pertinent archive photos, so you can examine the detail and see the objects in use. Peppered throughout with engrossing and insightful new commentary by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood, the book also features a compelling introduction by Anthony DeCurtis, which chronicles their career, and perceptive articles by some of their most important creative collaborators, including Buddy Guy, Don Was, Anna Sui, John Varvatos, Martin Scorsese, Shepherd Fairey, Patrick Woodroffe and Willie Williams.

Bold, glamorous and captivating – and beautifully bound and finished – Unzipped is the perfect showcase for ‘the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world’.

'An evocative photo-led exploration of the band’s close-on 60-year career' Choice

'This handsome tome has much to offer the Stones fan who thought they knew everything' Record Collector

About the Author: The Rolling Stones - Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood - have all been interviewed specially for the exhibition and accompanying book. Anthony DeCurtis is an author and music critic. He has written for the New York Times, Relix and Rolling Stone, for which he is a contributing editor.

Format:Hardback Size:31.7 x 24.1 cm Extent:288 pp Illustrations:400 Publication date:7 October 2021 ISBN:9780500023853

With a foreword by Anna Wintour.

“[a] gorgeous anthology of fashion images … Leibovitz is nothing less than America’s greatest living photographic portraitist … she has changed fashion photography forever.” – Anna Wintour

Legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz’s surprising account of her encounters with fashion over five decades

‘Looking back at my work, I see that fashion has always been there,’ Annie Leibovitz observes in the preface to Wonderland. ‘Fashion plays a part in the scheme of everything, but photography always comes first for me. The photograph is the most important part. And photography is so big that it can encompass journalism, portraiture, reportage, family photographs, fashion ... My work for Vogue fueled the fire for a kind of photography that I might not otherwise have explored.’

Includes 350 extraordinary images (many of them previously unpublished) featuring a wide and diverse range of subjects: Nicole Kidman, Serena Williams, Pina Bausch, RuPaul, Cate Blanchett, Lady Gaga, Matthew Barney, Kate Moss, Natalia Vodianova, Rihanna, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Karl Lagerfeld, Nancy Pelosi. With a foreword by Anna Wintour.

About the author: Annie Leibovitz is one of the most influential photographers of our time. In 1970, she began creating what became her legendary work for Rolling Stone. Since the early 1980s, she has expanded her repertoire at Vanity Fair and Vogue and in independent projects. She is the recipient of many honors, including the International Center of Photography's Lifetime Achievement Award and the Centenary Medal of the Royal Photographic Society.

Reviews: 'The visually arresting images in Wonderland … may be her strongest work.' – New York Times

'Wonderland showcases Leibovitz's powerful portraits.' – Vanity Fair

'Enchanting ... Gathers [Leibovitz's] most enchanting fashion imagery.' – Vogue

'Leibovitz is not simply among our foremost image-makers. She has essentially created a new form of portraiture for our time.' – Sherri Geldin, Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts

'Whether she's photographing the famous and powerful – or simply the woman next door – Annie always captures something unexpected and deeply personal.' – Oprah Winfrey

'Getting your photograph taken by Annie is one of the great totems of success in America.' – Graydon Carter, former Editor-in-Chief, Vanity Fair

'Annie Leibovitz is one of the most aesthetically gifted photographers alive.' – Guardian

'340 shots capture the fantasy and character that fill every frame [Leibovitz] snaps.' – Globe and Mail

'A compendium of her greatest hits ... Her pictures are big, colorful, beautifully composed, egregiously luxuriant, loaded with detail, and nearly always contain some kind of implied narrative.' – The New York Times Book Review

Specifications: Format: Hardback Size: 290 × 250 mm (11 3/8 × 9 7/8 in) Pages: 440 pp Illustrations: 330 illustrations

Having failed at rapping, what’s next for an endlessly passionate rap nerd? In this sequel to the acclaimed memoir Wiggaz With Attitude, it turns out what’s next is a sometimes controversial career in rap journalism. Write Lines: Adventures in Rap Journalism tells the tale of hip-hop writing from the inside.

From death threats to interviewing Lauryn Hill while she’s in the shower. From calling Jay-Z a c*** to his face, to letting a notorious rapper sleep in his bath, it’s a hilarious, anecdote-studded tale that takes in hip-hop’s first ever magazine and lifts the lid on rivalries, squabbles and how music journalism really works.

Brutally honest, and endlessly opinionated, this story is also a love letter to hip-hop as it changed seismically through the decades. Write Lines charts those changes from the front line through encounters with many of the greats of rap: Chuck D, Missy Elliott, RZA, Eminem, Jazzy Jeff and Gang Starr among them. This is an unfiltered tale of hip-hop that is both heartfelt and scabrously funny.

“With its relatable take on growing up in the 80s, Andrew Emery’s Wiggaz With Attitude marked his card as a vivid memoirist. He might have failed as a wannabe rapper, but the music he loved gained multitudes from his work for Hip-Hop Connection. A pivotal force in the magazine’s 90s/00s heyday, never short of a telling opinion or four, Andrew set a high bar for its other writers to reach. Write Lines is a transportive account of his many travails in that murky world. Packed with eye-watering encounters and witty asides, his compulsive, self-deprecating and brutally honest reflections will resonate widely and change perspectives on rap journalism forever.” - Andy Cowan, HHC Editor & Publisher, author of B-Side: A Flipsided History of Pop.

A gorgeous hardcover time capsule of the emo music scene as it was from 1996 to 2006, featuring never-before-seen photographs and never-before-told stories from key emo musicians, photographers, and icons. While the term emo has become a familiar label, there was a time when that wasn't the case. Many bands of the mid-to-late '90s would never have classified themselves as such - back then, the term was not only inaccurate but often used derogatorily. With the advent of the 2000s, the previously underground emo scene was put on the map, and the term and sound of the genre morphed into something new. A musical renaissance was happening, but bands didn't give much thought to the label in the long term. Nothing mattered, as long as the kids came out to shows. Today, the musical and cultural impact of this movement is alive and well, responsible for some of the biggest and most influential acts of the 21st century, from Jimmy Eat World to My Chemical Romance, and the (...)

This is the sequel to In The Pit, published in 2020 and sold in 3 editions and 1,300 copies so far. This time Alison focuses on Metal/Thrash and Crossover bands she captured in the 80s and early 90. You can find everyone here, from Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax, to bands like Motley Crue, Dio, Motorhead, or Kiss, to acts like Suicidal Tendencies, DRI, Corrosion Of Conformity, Die Kreuzen, The Accüsed,... to everything else between Kreator, Testament and Overkill on one side and Soundgarden, Alice In Chains and Danzig on the other. There are so many bands to mention. Make sure not to miss this!

Looking for a fun and unique way to experience the world of street food? Look no further than the Street Food Coloring Book! From the classic fish and chips in London, döner kebap in Berlin and New York City pizza slices to hotteok in Seoul and tunnbrödsrulle in Stockholm. Street Food Coloring Book is packed with all your favorite street food dishes – and much more! Over 50 pages of intricate designs featuring everything from tacos and hot dogs to noodles and falafel, Street Food Coloring Book will transport you to the bustling streets of some of the world's most vibrant and delicious food destinations. Dream away to distant cities and new taste experiences. Plan your next food trip or the next home-cooked dinner while you relax and color the world's delicious street food. Whether you are a well-traveled foodie or have a newly awakened interest in the delicious world of street food, you will discover new things and be inspired by the Street Food Coloring Book. And make sure to treat yourself and have a snack on hand while coloring! Street Food Coloring Book is printed on marker and grease friendly paper, so your felt-tip pens won't bleed through and don’t worry about spilling some hot sauce on the pages. Street Food Coloring Book is illustrated by Alexander Rosso an acclaimed graphic designer and street food fanatic whose resume includes everything from restaurant designs to running a street food establishment himself. Street Food Coloring Book is perfect for anyone who loves food, travel, or art. It makes a great gift for friends, family, or anyone who needs a little bit of creative inspiration in their life. So why wait? Grab your coloring markers and get ready to embark on a colorful journey through the world of street food.

With a foreword by Osgemeos.

A guide to the art, artists, and culture of graffiti from the 1970s to today, as told by the taggers themselves

This major co-publication with the Museum of Graffiti chronicles the worldwide graffiti movement from its birth in the 1970s, through the street and train painting of the 1980s, to its emergence as an artistic genre admired in museums and sold at auction. With hundreds of never-before-seen photographs of graffiti art from the 1970s to today, many of which have been provided exclusively for this volume by the artists themselves, the book gives an insider’s view through multiple interviews with celebrated graffiti artists, including Roger Smith of Sane Smith, Hotboy Hert, Desa, Shirt King Phade, Rime, MadC, Saber, Aura, and others.

Told through essays, hundreds of images, and interviews with the artists – both the underground outlaws and the writers who went mainstream – The Wide World of Graffiti will become the standard-bearer of the art form’s history and life today, a unique contribution from the first and only museum dedicated to graffiti as an art form.

About the author:
Alan Ket is an artist, graffiti historian, and cofounder of the Museum of Graffiti. Ket has contributed to such publications as the 1990s cult zine Stress, and graffiti, music, and culture magazines Complex and Vibe. He has consulted on product launches embodying street culture and has worked with art institutions to develop programming. Ket has documented street art throughout the world while painting with many of the top graffiti artists.

Specifications:
Format: Hardback Size: 254 × 203 mm (10 × 8 in)
Pages: 360 pp
Illustrations: 350 illustrations

160 Pages Book (Boodk/Auduio Combination sold as "Merch Item"), containing 13 QR codes to download 13 songs.

Aho Ssan debuts on Other People with second solo album and book 'Rhizomes' featuring Nicolás Jaar, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid, clipping., Blackhaine and more

Aho Ssan debuts on Other People with second solo album and book 'Rhizomes' featuring Nicolás Jaar, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid, clipping., Blackhaine and more

Paris based composer Aho Ssan, the artist moniker of Niamké Désiré, presents his new full-length 'Rhizomes' on the Other People label following his debut LP 'Simulacrum' (2020) and collaborative record 'Limen' (2022) with fellow musician Kmru.

'Rhizomes' draws inspiration from a concept coined and developed between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri. The idea of an ever evolving structural model, constantly in motion and spreading out in all directions at once. It has no beginning and no end, but always remains in a middle, through which it grows and overflows.

"The root thought is the one that kills everything around itself while the rhizome is the root that stretches out to meet other roots," Désiré explains considering the works of French writer Édouard Glissant who addresses questions of identity, crossbreeding of cultures and its evolution.

Much like the name it borrows, Aho Ssan's 'Rhizomes' is a multimedia project that embarks on a myriad of disparate, unique musical and artistic partnerships. This piece adapts this concept to explore the influence of sound materials on creation, the appropriation of a sound object, and the collaborative nature of a composition that responds to modernity.

"Rhizome represents an underground stem system that fosters connections between various organisms and allows them to flourish collectively. It's an album that celebrates collaboration and brings together a diverse group of talented artists," Désiré continues.

Aho Ssan collaborated with a comprehensive cast of artists to create a musical rhizome including Nyokabi Kariuki, Josefa Ntjam, Blackhaine, Nicolás Jaar, Resina, R?n C?p ?uôi, Richie Culver, clipping., Lafawndah, 9T Antiope, James Ginzburg, Exzald S, Valentina Magaletti, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid and Mondkopf. Cooperation and community are at the root of this project and the lens through which all the compositions can be understood through.

Aho Ssan will present 'Rhizomes' AV show together with visual artist Sevi Iko Dømochevsky at Berlin Atonal 2023. 'Rhizomes' received a Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica 2023 Digital Music

In conjunction with the album, 'Rhizomes' comes complete with a set of illustrations by Kim Grano in a book release. The drawings become a hybrid language, each an emotional response to the musical half. The book contains an extended version of the album with 3 additional songs and 2 longer versions of the album songs. It also includes a sample pack by Aho Ssan and a collection of solo tracks by Elliot Blaise, Kmru, Lamin Fofana, Brodinski & Se?bastien Forrester, Valence Drake, 9T Antiope, Exzald S and Valentina Magaletti. The extended version package is only accessible through the QR codes in the book.

The King Of Covers' is the concluding part of the month long Lemi Ghariokwu exhibition that ran at the Rush Hour store 1-28 november 2023. The thirty sleeves that were at display are now nicely bundled into this full colour 70 page booklet. Each sleeve comes with a story by Saffa Khalil, who analysed the covers, listened to the music and talked to Lemi. Saffa mentions: "As you flip through each page, listen to the album(s) and fully immerse yourselves in the history(ies) and stories narrated visually and sonically. I hope you uncover more about Afrobeat's influence and the richness that African musical history offers us. "

The booklet is preceded by an essay from 2013, first published in Granta entitled 'A Dynasty Of Album Cover Art' which talks about Lemi's friendship with Fela Kuti, the social and political situation of Nigeria at the time the cover art was created and off course.. giving a closer look to some of the landmark covers from the Fela catalogue that come from Lemi's hand.

Book design is by Atelier Estiva. Graphic design by Mauricio Kuhlmann.

70 pages, 20x20 CM - edition of 250

Isbn: 9789090380254

Five years in the making, an in-depth survey of Pentagram from its beginnings in 1970s London to its current status as one of the powerhouses of international design.

Pentagram: Living by Design (two volumes) is the definitive statement on 50 years of Pentagram. This is an in-depth survey of the group from its beginnings in 1970s London to its current status as one of the powerhouses of international design.

Book one, The Biography, offers a comprehensive analysis of the group, its partners, its achievements, its multidisciplinary approach, and its unique business model. This is accompanied by a plethora of images (some never published), a visual essay of Pentagram’s work across four main sectors, a selection of partners writings, a Pentagram family tree, and much more.

Book two, The Directory, has profiles of 50 partners, past and present, accompanied by extensive coverage of their work. It’s a stellar roll call: from the five famous founders to some of the most celebrated names in contemporary design. It also includes a list of everyone who worked in the firm’s various offices.

Both books are designed by Tony Brook and the Spin design team and use a range of paper stocks and special colours.

'If you want an in-depth look at some of the best work created by some of the best designers in the past fifty years, this book is for you' Creative Bloq

About the Author: Adrian Shaughnessy is a graphic designer, writer and senior tutor at the Royal College of Art, London. He has written numerous books, including a recently published compendium of his design journalism, Scratching the Surface, and monographs devoted to legendary designers Herb Lubalin and Ken Garland. He regularly contributes to design publications and blogs such as Design Observer, Eye, Creative Review and Design Week. In 1988, Shaughnessy co-founded design studio Intro; today he runs ShaughnessyWorks, a consultancy combining art direction, writing, editing and lecturing, and is a co-director of Unit Editions. He is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. Tony Brook is primarily a designer, but also a publisher, collector and curator. Brook founded Spin, his south London-based studio, in 1992, and is a co-director of Unit Editions. He is currently a visiting professor in Graphic Design at the University for the Arts, a specialist arts university in the South East of England.

Format:Hardback Size:27.1 x 21.7 cm Extent:1392 pp Illustrations:3500 Publication date:12 October 2023 ISBN:9780500027462

Music from the punk era transformed the world of music. If you could play three chords, you could make records. You didn’t even need a record label. You could start your own. The same thing happened in graphic design. All you needed were a few sheets of Letraset and access to a photocopier, and you could make your own record covers. And lots of people did just that. Action Time Vision: Punk & Post-Punk 7” Record Sleeves is a celebration of DIY graphics from the punk and post-punk eras. You might call it outsider graphic design. With a few exceptions, trained designers rarely did 7” singles covers for this notoriously shouty and aggressive music. Apart from a few covers done by Barney Bubbles and Peter Saville, most punk and post-punk covers were designed by band members, label owners or friends. Few of the sleeves showcased here are beautiful in the normal sense of the word. But they all have an urgency and an exhilarating disregard for design conventions that makes them exceptional. They are all clarion calls for independence and freedom from pop industry norms. The work in this book is culled from the record collections of designer (and Unit Editions co-founder) Tony Brook, and leading punk scholar Russ Bestley. As one of the world’s leading authorities on punk and post-punk music, Russ has contributed an insightful essay to the book. The book also features interviews with designer Malcolm Garrett, Mute founder Daniel Miller and Sniffin’ Glue editor and musician Mark Perry.

A retrospective of Third Earth Visual Arts and the career of AbuQadim Haqq who as many of you know created art for Transmat, Drexciya and Underground Resistance.
The book covers his early life in Detroit to his last project for Third Earth Visual Arts in 2023.

Over 100 pages of art.
Over 100 pages of photos.
258 pages