Books 541 Items

Tape Leaders is a richly illustrated A-Z compendium featuring over 100 composers active with tape and electronics in the analogue era. Containing information never previously uncovered, it shines a fresh light on many sound experimenters unacknowledged in the history of British electronic music. First published by Sound On Sound Magazine in 2016, this is the first time it’s been available outside their shop.

Tape Leaders is available as a hardback and the 224 pages are printed and bound on heavyweight 130gsm paper. The specially compiled 15 track CD of mainly unreleased early British tape and synthesizer works is exclusive to the Velocity Press shop.

In the form of a richly illustrated compendium, Tape Leaders: A Compendium Of Early British Electronic Music Composers is an indispensable reference guide for anyone interested in electronic sound and its origins in the UK. For the first time, a book sets out information on practically everyone active with experimental electronics and tape recording across the country to reveal the untold stories and hidden history of early British electronic music.

With an individual entry for each composer, it covers everyone from famous names like William Burroughs, Brian Eno and Joe Meek to the ultra-obscure such as Roy Cooper, Donald Henshilwood and Edgar Vetter. There are sections for EMS and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and amateurs, groups and ensembles that experimented with electronics, including The Beatles, Hawkwind and White Noise. Author Ian Helliwell draws on his experience and extensive research into electronic music. After six years and dozens of interviews, he has amassed information never before brought to light on this fascinating subject.

Included with the book is a specially compiled 15 track CD of mainly unreleased early British tape and synthesizer works (exclusively available to the Velocity Press shop), making this an essential book for anyone interested in electronic music history during the 1950s and 60s.

This hardback book is 22.7cm x 17.7cm, and the 224 pages are printed and bound on heavyweight 130gsm paper.

Quotes:
“Until now, the Radiophonic Workshop has somewhat eclipsed other players in British early electronic music history. The extent of this is laid bare in the revelatory book Tape Leaders – a landmark survey by the composer, film-maker, instrument-builder and researcher Ian Helliwell, who has uncovered hitherto unacknowledged independent electronic music composers.” Fortean Times

“For anyone with an interest in the early years of electronic music, Ian Helliwell’s book takes the reader on an enthralling tour of the pioneering British contributors to this genre.” Sound On Sound

“The work of computer music pioneer Peter Zinovieff, home-build guru FC Judd, UFO-believer and Spitfire pilot Desmond Leslie, and Tristram Cary – have all been reissued. Ian Helliwell’s new book, Tape Leaders, A Compendium of Early British Electronic Music Composers, goes further. It reveals that these figures collectively represent the tip of a hitherto unimaginably vast iceberg submerged for decades. Profiling dozens of composers, amateur and professional, and augmented by a 15 track CD of electronic music… it truly is a portal into a lost world.” Shindig

Family: THE Source Family Scrapbook provides an immersive view into the public and private world of the Southern California occult commune The Brotherhood of the Source. Edited by Isis Aquarian, Charlie Kitchings, and Jodi Wille, this lavishly illustrated book reproduces 200 original scrapbook pages assembled by family historian Isis Aquarian from 1972-1977, documenting the group's dramatic rise and fall, from their time living together in the Hollywood Hills operating their wildly popular Source vegetarian restaurant on the Sunset Strip to their exodus to Hawaii and San Francisco as the group began to unravel. Copious unpublished photographs, newspaper clippings, letters, manifestos, album art and flyers, augmented by descriptive captions, reveal the Source Family's astonishing trajectory, from controversial leader Father Yod's spiritual awakening to the group's wild musical and social experimentations, to the provocations that led to the group's paradise lost. These pages provide a revelatory, firsthand view into the widely misunderstood phenomenon of new religious movements and cults of the 1960s and 70s. This book is a beautiful 200pg full color, cloth bound, and embossed 11"x12" hardcover coffee table book.

From a Los Angeles hospital bed, equipped with little more than a laptop and a stack of records, James “J Dilla” Yancey crafted a set of tracks that would forever change the way beatmakers viewed their artform. The songs on Donuts are not hip hop music as “hip hop music” is typically defined; they careen and crash into each other, in one moment noisy and abrasive, gorgeous and heartbreaking the next. The samples and melodies tell the story of a man coming to terms with his declining health, a final love letter to the family and friends he was leaving behind. As a prolific producer with a voracious appetite for the history and mechanics of the music he loved, J Dilla knew the records that went into constructing Donuts inside and out. He could have taken them all and made a much different, more accessible album. If the widely accepted view is that his final work is a record about dying, the question becomes why did he make this record about dying?

Drawing from philosophy, critical theory and musicology, as well as Dilla’s own musical catalogue, Jordan Ferguson shows that the contradictory, irascible and confrontational music found on Donuts is as much a result of an artist’s declining health as it is an example of what scholars call “late style,” placing the album in a musical tradition that stretches back centuries.

152 pages.

The definitive book on the creations, career, and legacy of one of the world’s greatest sneaker designers.

Often called the father of modern running and basketball sneakers, Jacques Chassaing has shaped and influenced sports and street fashion like few designers ever will. For the first time, Chassaing reveals the story behind the forty-year career of a pioneering designer who has continually pushed boundaries and led the creation of many of the world’s most beloved sneakers. Chassaing thrills and provokes readers with his life experiences, taking them on a journey of continual evolution and revolution. We learn about those who have inspired him and meet those he has inspired. We discover what drove his design philosophy and the process behind some of the greatest sneakers and sports technology ever created: the Forum, Rivalry, Lendl, Edberg, ZX series, Predator, EQT line, Torsion, and his Porsche Design collabs, to name but a few. And we see how Chassaing’s designs have impacted modern culture and won a place on the feet and in the hearts of millions of people. This book features stories about and contributions from athletes, celebrities, and designers who have worked with and been influenced by Chassaing and his work, including Michael Jordan, Stefan Edberg, Patrick Ewing, Run DMC, Gary Aspden, Paul Gaudio, and many more. Art directed by Peter Moore, designer of the Nike Air Jordan 1 and creator of the adidas Originals line, From Soul to Sole is a story, a statement, an experience, and a celebration of a life and career that is still impacting how we think about sneakers and street fashion design today.

George Michael was an extravagantly gifted, openhearted soul singer whose work was both pained and smolderingly erotic. He was a songwriter of true craft and substance, and his music swept the world, starting in the mid-1980s. His fabricated image—that of a hypermacho sex god—loomed large in the pop culture of his day. It also hid—for a time—the secret he fought against revealing: Michael was gay. Soon his obsession with fame would start to backfire. As one of the industry’s most privileged yet tortured men began.

In 2021, the „Week-End Fest“ looked back on 10 years of encounters between over 100 international musicians. Since its beginning in 2011, the curators‘ own fanhood has been a central element – thus the idea arose to have the artists tell stories about musicians, places or encounters that have shaped them. In ‚I feel everything you say, I feel everything you hear.‘ (the title is borrowed from the song „I’m so Green“ by Can) they tell of decisive moments and memories that still resonate today and have shaped their own artistic identity. As with the festival program, the book succeeds in highlighting diverse lines and connections among them. Dub producers Adrian Sherwood and Scientist talk about their deep admiration for the two inventors of dub Lee „Scratch“ Perry and King Tubby. Electronic pioneer Suzanne Ciani talks about her first steps as a musician and her encounter with Don Buchla, to whom she owes her first job and her first synthesizer. The British avant-garde guitarist Fred Frith describes his first bizarre encounter with the Sun Ra Arkestra in New York in 1979, of which Marshall Allen is a member. The latter tells how today, at the age of 97, he creatively carries on the musical legacy of his master Sun Ra with pride and reverence. By focusing on the fan perspective of the participating artists, the book connects to the curatorial concept of the festival itself. And through their stories and anecdotes, building blocks of a new or different oral history of recent music history emerge at the best moments.