Books 221 Items

Let the Music Play: How R&B Fell in Love with 80s Synths is the overlooked story of how R&B, disco and funk were transformed by the explosion of music tech in the era of ghetto blasters and Ronald Reagan. It traces how pioneers like Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock inspired a new generation of black musicians and producers to reinvent music with a whole new set of rules.

From superstars like Prince and Sade to production geniuses like Kashif and Jam & Lewis, it tells the fascinating stories of the artists involved and how they made some of the best-loved records of the era – creating a blueprint for music today.

A unique visual reinterpretation of Stuart Murdoch’s favourite Belle and Sebastian songs.

Belle and Sebastian frontman and lyricist Stuart Murdoch invites Black Isle artist Pamela Tait to reinterpret twenty songs visually. Tait’s gentle and dreamlike characters evolve from the worlds of Murdoch’s songwriting, coming to life on the page in a creative exchange between two curious minds.

Track Listing If You’re Feeling Sinister The Boy Done Wrong Again The Rollercoaster Ride Simple Things Slow Graffiti You Made Me Forget My Dreams Beautiful Piazza, New York Catcher I’m a Cuckoo Another Sunny Day The Ghost Of Rockschool God Help the Girl Nobody’s Empire The Cat with the Cream Ever Had a Little Faith? Today (This Army’s for Peace) I’ll Be Your Pilot There Is an Everlasting Song This Letter Do It for Your Country

About the Author: Stuart Murdoch is a Scottish musician, writer and filmmaker. He is the founding member, lead singer and songwriter for Belle and Sebastian. Pamela Tait is a Scottish artist who lives on the Black Isle. She expresses her own folklore through illustration, seeing patterns and faces in her surroundings.

Format:PLC Size:22.0 x 15.0 cm Extent:128 pp Publication date:25 August 2022 ISBN:9780500296851

Daniel Miller created Mute Records to release his debut single (‘Warm Leatherette’/’T.V.O.D’), a pioneering electronic sound with a defiantly DIY attitude. Mute quickly established a reputation for releasing cutting-edge, chart-topping music and through the music of its community of artists – ranging from Fad Gadget, Moby, Can, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds and Einstürzende Neubauten to Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Erasure, Laibach, Goldfrapp, Liars and Ben Frost – it has had an incalculable impact on popular music for four decades.

Mute: A Visual Document is packed with stunning artwork and photography – much of it previously unseen – from the Mute Archives and Daniel Miller’s personal archives, including photography and video stills from legendary photographers, conceptual artworks, rare ephemera and equipment.

Comprehensive discographies, a family tree of Mute artists, an extensive introduction and commentary by Daniel Miller, who has curated the materials for the book, plus anecdotal and photographic contributions from key figures in the label’s story, including Moby, Alison Goldfrapp, Anton Corbijn, Bleddyn Butcher, Brian Griffin, Jon Spencer, Barry Adamson, Ivan Novak, Angus Andrew, Adrian Shaughnessy, Tom Hingston, make this book the definitive chronicle of the label.

'The Book of the Year has arrived. Quite the treat … If there’s one book you need on the old Christmas list this year, make it this one'
Electronic Sound

'A beautifully crafted celebration of “the accidental label”'
Uncut

'Packed with artwork and photography – much of it previously unseen'
M magazine

'Visually stunning'
Buzz magazine

'Beautifully bound, this book is as iconic and dynamic as Mute’s musical past'
Rough Trade

'Highlights the unsung heroes – the artists, designers and photographers whose talent is often overlooked – and places them firmly in the spotlight'
Classic Pop

'Packed full of great imagery'
Sonicstate.com

About the Author:
Terry Burrows is an author, musician and producer. Best known as a cult performer under the alias Yukio Yung, Burrows has recorded with The Chrysanthemums, Asmus Tietchens and the duo Push-Button Pleasure. He is also a prolific author of more than 80 books relating to music history, tuition and technology, popular psychology and history.

»Here In, Absence« is the result of the dialogue between the Finnish photographer Mikael Siirilä and ambient artists The Humble Bee & Offthesky. Mikael Siirilä describes himself as a darkroom artist based in Helsinki, Finland. »My small individual photographs examine the themes of absence, presence and outsiderhood. My characters appear immersed in their inner worlds and moments of being: simultaneously absent and intensely present.«

If you're interested in the Microphones box set but maybe you don't actually enjoy music (or maybe you have the records, or maybe it's sold out), here you can buy just the book.

It's pretty fancy on its own. 12.5" x 12.5", 107 pages, perfect bound with huge french flaps, packed with beautiful photos and artwork, notebook spreads, studio track sheets, show posters, etc. These were made at the sustainability-award-winning Hemlock Printers in Burnaby, B.C., a splurge.

It works as either a semi-abstract aesthetic art thing or as an abundantly packed collection of background materials that should satisfy even the most curious Microphones music listener.

For fans, Boxer is a profound personal meditation. Life decisions have been based on it. Relationships have been created and dissolved by it. For the band that recorded it, Boxer symbolizes a do-or-die moment; a final, give-it-everything-you've-got effort to make it work.

Released in May 2007, The National's fourth full-length is the album that saved them. It's where the Ohio-via-Brooklyn five-piece found the sound, success, and spiritual growth to become one of the most critically acclaimed bands of their time. Obsessively researched and featuring intimate interviews with the fighters who were there in the ring, Ryan Pinkard captures a transformative chapter in The National's story, revealing how their breakthrough album is deeply intertwined with their personal lives, the New York indie rock renaissance of the early aughts, and a generational experience in America.

Credited as one of the pioneers of ‘harsh noise wall’; influential artist Sam McKinlay (b. 1974, CA) has been operating under the alias The Rita for over 25 years. Having performed extensively and credited with over 200 releases, the project has grown into a laser focused multidisciplinary venture and is celebrated for pushing the boundaries of ‘harsh noise’.

Accompanying The Rita’s singular and often unpredictable sonic output is an inseparable and distinct visual language. By combining McKinlay’s fine arts education, research, experimentation, and collaboration; the project visually and texturally unites the artist’s interests in minimalist design, noise, ballet, sharks, choreography, and film.

‘Correlations’ presents some of the images and documents McKinlay finds most definitive in his practice The monograph is designed to provide a cohesive understanding of the artist’s creative trajectory, as well as illuminate The Rita’s uncanny process that visually, conceptually, and historically ‘connects’ seemingly unrelated subjects.

Published by Amaya Productions; the monograph includes essays by the author and Centre Pompidou art historian Nicolas Ballet (‘Shock Factory: The Visual Culture of Industrial Music’), associate Professor and harsh noise artist Lexi Turner (Cornell University), and author, writer, producer Kier-La Janisse (‘House of Psychotic Women’).

The Secret DJ’s first two books lifted the lid on what really happens behind the decks in the sometimes hilarious, sometimes harrowing world of the superstar DJ. Now they’ve reached out to dozens of DJs from around the world – and from every scene and genre – for their own true stories of the DJ life.

Tales From the Booth raises the BPM, rounding up an all-star cast of Secret DJs to tell their anonymous stories of what it’s really like to rock dancefloors for a living. From strange encounters on tour to side-splitting debauchery and afterparty excess to the seamy and even dangerous side of the industry, this is your access-all-areas backstage pass. You’ll never look at a DJ quite the same again.

The Shadow Ring (1992-2002) presents a comprehensive overview of the work produced by British musiciansGraham Lambkin, Darren Harris, and later Tim Goss over the course of a decade. Throughout theirlegendary ten-year run, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of teenagers in the port townFolkestone, were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. The group have leftbehind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7-inches, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zineappearances on both sides of the Atlantic. In aggregate, this significant collection not only plums the depths of theband and its attendant lore, but reveals a vivid minor history of mail-order networks, bedroom recordingsessions, cross-USA couch-surfing, and encounters with fellow travelers such The Dead C, Harry Pussy,Charalambides, Richard Youngs and the No-Neck Blues Band. Where is the connecting thread between RalfWehowsky and Squirrel Nut Zippers? Inquire within.The roughly 200 songs in this set trace the band from its earliest days recording in Lambkin's parents' house(SHP Studios), through its brooding mid-period, garnering word-of-mouth notoriety that peaked with the trioturning down an invitation to tour with Pavement, to a string of increasingly uncompromising experimentswith electronics, voice, and tape. Although the band's sound morphs considerably during this time period,from spartan beginnings using pots and pans as a drum set to their ultra-deconstructed latter-day approach,certain core sensibilities are apparent throughout: brash youthful rawness, wry and m...

Thomas Sweertvaegher’s photographs celebrate the unbreakable family of skaters and the thrills, spills and freedom of skating life.

At the age of twenty-nine, Sweertvaegher has spent most of his life on the road with friends, indulging his dual passions of photography and skating. Years of travelling the world – always on the move and often carrying nothing more than a camera and a skateboard – have yielded the photographs collected in this volume, where the skateboard remains a constant symbol of freedom, an extension of one’s identity and an enduring bond between friends.

Rolling on the margins of society, exploring the limits of life and his own young adulthood, Sweertvaegher captures whatever is happening around him during his travels. His shots take the reader on a journey, showing the highs and lows, bruises and stitches of skating and street life, and ultimately celebrating the beauty such a life can bring. While it captures Sweertvaegher’s odyssey from a highly personal perspective, The Journal of a Skateboarder is also a visual documentary of the skating world, and features key figures such as Axel Cruysberghs, Arto Saari, Dylan Rieder and Rodney Mullen.

When Tim from Dagger Zine approached us about his book idea covering long-loved "spaces" held sacred for countless music fans, we knew it was a great project to get behind, Similar in its community effort to our last book release (The White Label Promo Preservation Society), Hinely organized an incredible list of contributors from all stripes of the underground music spectrum, each waxing their own warm recollections of wild nights seeing life-changing bands and/or terrible bathroom experiences. Chock full of photos, original newspaper ads, flyers, and long-lost monthly calendars of the pre-Internet age, Where The Wild Gigs Were illustrates how important these sacred spaces really are, and how much it's noticeable when we can't actually be AT these homes-away-from-home, spread all across the USA. From Stache's in Columbus, OH to Flynn's Ocean 71 in Miami, FL (the 'CBGB's on the beach'), back to The Brewery in Lansing MI (complete with previously unpublished Stooges photos!), to City Gardens in Trenton, NJ (staffed by Comedy Dentral's Jon Stewart) to Peter Aaron's sordid details on the mob-run Jockey Club in Newport, KY, you won't find many dull moments as each page bleeds into the next, oozing with recollections of blurry good times and endless excitement before the world changed, as we know it. Includes a foreword by Byron Coley and an afterword by Tesco VEE. 235 pages, paperback. First edition of 500 copies.

"For A Fleeting Moment" is the result of the dialogue between the Swiss photographer Simone Kappeler and the Japanese musician Tomotsugu Nakamura initiated by Iikki, between March 2023 and May 2024.

Tomotsugu Nakamura is a musician and graphic designer residing in Tokyo, Japan. His primary artistic practice is to compose music with some fragments of minimal acoustic and electronic tones and some field recordings. In Concert, he he has played with various genre of musicians and his works have been released by Kaico, Audiobulb Records, and more recently by the French label Laaps.

Born in 1952 in Frauenfeld (Switzerland) where she lives and works, Simone Kappeler started taking pictures at the age of 11. After studying German literature and art history, she studied photography at the Zurich University of the Arts. During a three-month trip to the United States in 1981, she took her first pictures using cheap cameras, especially the Diana camera. Hasselblad, Leica, Diana, Brownie, Polaroid, disposable camera, expired or infrared films, since 1970, Simone Kappeler has explored all types of photographic techniques. Her work, experimental and poetic, reveals to us the curiously foreign world that surrounds us. Since 1982, ongoing projects in southern France and the Grisons.1982/83, studio in New York, conceptual photography and Super 8 films. 1983/84, theater photographer, Schauspielhaus Zürich. 2009, six-week photographic study of Japan, 2015 studio in New York. Her work was the subject of a first monograph: "Seile. Fluss. Nacht. Fotografien 1964–2011", edited by Hatje Cantz and is regularly exhibited in Galleries and Museum in Europe and United States. For A Fleeting Moment is her first book gathered exclusively a part of her wide polaroid works from 2011 to 2023.

Fine Art Book, Ltd. to 700 copies: Hardcover book printed on Glossy Modern Paper 170g/m2 // 104 pages, 19cm x 22.5cm, 66 photos // Front cover points and back cover logo embossed // Selective UV varnish // Hand-numbered.

400 page hardcover large format book - Includes CD with 10 Japanese Jazz tracks - Compiled by Tony Higgins and Mike Peden - Only 2000 copies printed - Largest picture book on Japanese Jazz ever printed - First and only picture book devoted to Japanese Jazz covers to be produced outside Japan - Extra sections on non-Japanese artists and Blue Note albums produced exclusively for the Japanese market - Includes intro by Terumasa Hino plus articles by Yusuke Ogawa, Mats Gustafsson, Tony Higgins and interview with Tohru Aizawa - DJ J Jazz Top Tens from around the world BBE Music is thrilled to present J Jazz: Free and Modern Jazz From Japan 1954-1988, a remarkable large-format book covering some of the deepest, rarest, and most innovative jazz music released anywhere in the post-war era. Compiled by Tony Higgins and Mike Peden, co-curators of BBE Music's acclaimed J Jazz Masterclass Series, the book also features a foreword by Japanese jazz icon, Terumasa Hino.

This is the first time a book of this type has been published outside of Japan and the first anywhere of this size and scale. It is a unique collection of over 500 albums of free and modern jazz released in Japan during a period of radical transformation and constant reinvention. An era that saw Japan return from the ravages of World War Two to become a global economic power and emerge as both a technological leader and an international cultural force.

Through a unique gallery of albums, J Jazz charts the development of jazz in Japan from the first stirrings of the modern jazz scene in the mid to late 1950s and on through the hard bop and modal jazz of the 1960s. It steers the reader into the radical directions of the 1970s when free jazz, fusion, post-bop, and jazz-funk opened up a growing number of Japanese jazz artists to a new global audience before consolidating in the mid to late 1980s with a musical scene that laid the path for the contemporary jazz generation to follow.

Over 500 full-colour sleeves from many of the leading names in Japanese jazz sit alongside rare and private pressings that tell a story of constant change and musical exploration. J Jazz includes profiles of several leading record labels such as East Wind, Frasco, King Records, and Nippon Columbia as well as critical independents such as Three Blind Mice, ALM, and Aketa’s Disk. J Jazz includes interviews with celebrated jazz photographer Tadayuki Naito, and pianist Tohru Aizawa, bandleader on the totemic spiritual jazz album, Tachibana Vol 1, as well as free-jazz record collector and jazz musician Mats Gustafsson.

The book also features a chapter on albums by non-Japanese artists that only received a Japanese release, with collectible, rare, and obscure releases by figures such as Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Mal Waldron, Steve Lacy, and Art Blakey. J Jazz includes Japanese jazz charts from some of the world's leading jazz DJs including Gilles Peterson, Toshio Matsuura, Paul Murphy, and Shuya and Yoshihiro Okino. Among the specialist content is a feature on obi strips by record dealer and Japanese jazz expert, Yusuke Ogawa, plus a special article on Japanese Blue Note albums.

Across its 300-plus pages, J Jazz includes a detailed introduction contextualising the music, tracing the story of Japan's fascination with jazz back before the war. It also features biographical information on many of the key artists involved in shaping the post- war Japanese jazz scene including Sadao Watanabe, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Masabumi Kikuchi, Masahiko Togashi, Terumasa Hino, Yosuke Yamashita, Fumio Itabashi, Masayuki Takayanagi, Takeo Moriyama, Isao Suzuki, and many more.

As Torch describes it:

In 2015, I decided to fly to NYC again. When I told Robert about it, he responded briefly: „I’m flying with you. I’ve never been to New York. Just book me the same flight as you.“ To my surprise, that’s exactly what happened. Our trip was from April 9th to the 21st, 2015, flying from Zurich to Newark. I had the contacts and knew my way around. He had the camera and captured everything. I was his guide on the ground, and he became my eyes.


Photography: Rob Hak
Texts: Frederik Hahn aka Torch
Authors: Robert Hak & Frederik Hahn


Written in 2024 / 1st Edition 2024
Editing: Adam Silverstein &
Bernd Kammerer / textonaut.de
Cover Design: Rob Hak / www.studiohak.de
Layout: studio hak, Rottweil
Printing: Otto Druck, Oberndorf a.N.
Bookbinding: Spinner, Ottersweier
Paper: Munken Print Cream

»Queen Of Nowhere« is the result of the photographic works by Kourtney Roy and the musician Dayve Samek (Trance Farmers). Samek has recorded his first album in 2014 on Leaving Records (Stones Throw Records). His music ranges between sweaty, garage-born ballads brush shoulders with drifter anthems and gasoline drenched doo wop with at some points some beats close from the past Anticon works. The Canadian photographer Kourtney Roy was born in Northern Ontario in 1981. She conjures an intimate universe pervaded by both wonder and mystery. Her photographer’s eye is drawn to places and settings whose lyrical qualities underscore the sublime banality of everyday life.

The perfect-bound 80-page coffee table book delves into our two decades of history through in-depth interviews with our founders Friction & K-Tee, as well as a range of artists past and present. Accompanied by beautiful full-colour photography from the archives throughout, this book is an essential for Shogun fans and D&B enthusiasts worldwide.

Hidden Notes Records are proud to announce that in February next year we will be releasing a smorgasbord of new music; creative collaborations born out of the award winning music podcast excuse the mess. Two compilation albums featuring 17 unique voices from contemporary music worlds and beyond…

How does a podcast = two albums worth of music? excuse the mess is a music podcast with a twist - alongside your bread and butter artist interviews each guest takes on the challenge of writing a brand new piece of music on the fly, in the room and with excuse the mess host, Ben Corrigan. They follow three rules (limitations are liberating!): 1. There can be no preplanning, it is spontaneous music making. 2. The track must be finished the same day. 3. Only one instrument can be used as a sound source but there can be electronic manipulations of it.

Our upcoming release is the end result of each of those heart palpating writing sessions featuring Hannah Peel, Gold Panda, Anna Meredith, Galya Bisengalieva, Manu Delago, Robert Ames, Emily Hall, Oliver Coates, Mira Calix, Matt Calvert, Douglas Dare, Laura Jurd, Mark Lockheart, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Anne Nikitin, Alev Lenz and Elliot Galvin. Released as two albums, to mirror the two series of excuse the mess in which they were made.

All the music fizzes with an energy that only fast paced work can invoke and the compositional fingerprint of each guest artist is embedded into the core of each track, whilst intermingling with Ben's own artistic voice. For anyone interested in a further delve they can go back to the podcast episode and witness the composition unfolding bit-by-bit, from the blank page to the finished piece, you are invited on that compositional journey.

After ten years, Deathbeds is finally available again as a paperback with the original cover. Deathbeds was first released in 2007, compiling the lyrical content of Wesley EISOLD’s work in renowned bands American Nightmare, Some Girls and the beginning of his current moniker, Cold Cave. Along with tour journals, poems and prose of early fanzines, Deathbeds is the comprehensive work of an artist in their twenties trying to connect with the outside world and their discontent, confusion and the existential within. The book celebrates the beauty that is the struggle of depression and growth in a poignant and foreword way that is rarely written down or documented coherently. These words came from a place of desperation and isolation but ended up inspiring others with how relatable not being able to relate is. First published in 2007, Heartworm has sold over 10,000 copies of this cult collection between three paperback and three hardcover editions. 3rd edition paperback.

The first monograph on the Japanese streetwear brand Whiz Limited, this book showcases the last 20 years of the brand’s design and collaborations with streetwear’s most iconic players.

Whiz Limited is a Japanese streetwear brand estab-lished in 2000 by Hiroaki Shitano. With a following in Japan as well as Hong Kong and mainland China, Shitano has become something of a cult figure, as one of the new generation of streetwear designers influ-enced by Hiroshi Fujiwara. Consisting originally of handmade, printed tees, the label has since expanded to include a complete range of streetwear infused with an eccentric Japanese flair. Shitano was raised in the entertainment district of Shinjuku, and this is reflected in the clothing’s distinctly downtown urban vibe and predominantly dark color palette. Chronicling the history of the brand, alongside some of Whiz’s most prolific projects to date, this book features beautiful, newly shot photographs of a long list of collaborations with streetwear icons, including Hiroshi Fujiwara/Fragment, Mastermind, Stüssy, A Bathing Ape®, Bristol, Bountyhunter, M&M, Kappa, New Era, Disney, Hello Kitty, G-Shock, Peanuts, Porter, The North Face, Marmot, First Down, and the estate of Keith Haring. This book also features an impressive archive of the brand’s iconic sneaker designs, boasting collabora-tions with heavy hitters like mita sneakers, Adidas, New Balance, Asics, Puma, Reebok, Mizuno, Converse, and Ugg, making it a must-have for sneak-erheads and lovers of streetwear style alike.