Books 198 Items

Long-time friends and collaborators, musician Daniel Avery, alongside photographer Keffer are proud to present Techno is Boring, a new book that collects a decade of work chronicling club culture in visceral form.

Techno is Boring also includes short written essays and notes from Avery and fellow DJ, writer and collaborator John Loveless, who also provides an introduction, appearing alongside guest contributions from friends and allies.

The book is 24.5cm x 17cm, and the 148 pages are printed on premium heavyweight paper with Swiss binding.

In 1999, Modest Mouse struck out for Chicago to record their major-label debut for Epic Records. Amid indie circle cries of “sellouts,” a largely untested producer, and a half-built studio, the trio recorded the instrumental basics of The Moon & Antarctica … and then singer/songwriter Isaac Brock got his face smashed by a hooligan in a park.

With barely any vocals recorded, Brock emerged from the hospital with his jaw completely wired shut, and returned to a mostly empty studio. And there, on a diet of painkillers, in a neighborhood that wanted to purge the band from its borders, a creative alchemy took place that would redefine Modest Mouse and indie rock at large.

The fact that the band finished the album at all is surprising. The fact that it is now considered by critics as “hands-down one of the greatest records ever made” (NME) is perhaps an utter miracle.

The Moon & Antarctica is an album so strange and enigmatic, from those sweet opening notes, to the plunging depths of the middle, to the shocking, furious end, that you almost hesitate to listen to it again for fear of it losing its chaotic magic. But then you do, and you discover all-new sounds-a lost harmonic here, a stray percussion element there, a fresh interpretation of a lyric that leaves you thunderstruck.

And that ever-looming question, years on: How the hell did Modest Mouse pull this off?!

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.