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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Contemporary popular music > Rock & pop
What happens in our unconscious minds when we listen to, produce or
perform popular music? The Unconscious - a much misunderstood
concept from philosophy and psychology - works through human
subjects as we produce music and can be traced through the music we
engage with. Through a new collaboration between music theorist and
philosopher, Smith and Overy present the long history of the
unconscious and its related concepts, working systematically
through philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche,
psychoanalysts such as Freud and Lacan, to theorists such as
Deleuze and Kristeva. The theories offered are vital to follow the
psychological complexity of popular music, demonstrated through
close readings of individual songs, albums, artists, genres, and
popular music practices. Among countless artists, Listening to the
Unconscious draws from Prince to Sufjan Stevens, from Robyn to Xiu
Xiu, from Joanna Newsom to Arcade Fire, from PJ Harvey to LCD Sound
System, each of whom offer exciting inroads into the fascinating
worlds of our unconscious musical minds. And in return, theories of
the unconscious can perhaps takes us deeper into the heart of
popular music.
Released in 2008, J-pop trio Perfume's GAME shot to the top of
Japanese music charts and turned the Hiroshima trio into a
household name across the country. It was also a high point for
techno-pop, the genre's biggest album since the heyday of Yellow
Magic Orchestra. This collection of maximalist but emotional
electronic pop stands as one of the style's finest moments, with
its influence still echoing from artists both in Japan and from
beyond. This book examines Perfume's underdog story as a group long
struggling for success, the making of GAME, and the history of
techno-pop that shaped it. 33 1/3 Global, a series related to but
independent from 33 1/3, takes the format of the original series of
short, music-basedbooks and brings the focus to music throughout
the world. With initial volumes focusing on Japanese and Brazilian
music, the series will also include volumes on the popular music of
Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more.
Elvis Presley stands tall as perhaps the supreme icon of
20th-century U.S. culture. But he was perceived to be deeply
un-American in his early years as his controversial adaptation of
rhythm and blues music and gyrating on-stage performances sent
shockwaves through Eisenhower's conservative America and far
beyond. This book explores Elvis Presley's global transformation
from a teenage rebel figure into one of the U.S.'s major
pop-cultural embodiments from a historical perspective. It shows
how Elvis's rise was part of an emerging transnational youth
culture whose political impact was heavily conditioned by the Cold
War. As well as this, the book analyses Elvis's stint as G.I.
soldier in West Germany, where he acted as an informal ambassador
for the so-called American way of life and was turned into a deeply
patriotic figure almost overnight. Yet, it also suggests that
Elvis's increasingly synonymous identity with U.S. culture
ultimately proved to be a double-edged sword, as the excesses of
his superstardom and personal decline seemingly vindicated
long-held stereotypes about the allegedly materialistic nature of
U.S. society. Tracing Elvis's story from his unlikely rise in the
1950s right up to his tragic death in August 1977, this book offers
a riveting account of changing U.S. identities during the Cold War,
shedding fresh light on the powerful role of popular music and
consumerism in shaping images of the United States during the
cultural struggle between East and West.
For centuries many have pondered the prospect of an afterlife and
feared what came to be known as 'hell'. In the near future, we map
the elusive 'dark matter' around us, only to find out that it is
hell itself, and it is very real... As the satanic President Razour
attempts to bring forward Armageddon to prevent humanity repenting,
the fate of us all rests in the hands of Cleric20, a hedonistic
loner with a chequered past, and his robot sidekick, GiX. An
action-packed literary shock to the senses that mixes flights of
comic fantasy with bouts of brutal violence. Mankind's only hope
seems to be having a very bad day. Can Cleric20 halt Razour's
devilish plans after an experimental bioweapon deployed to kill him
accidentally gives him superpowers? Has the Devil inadvertently
created a hero who could actually stop him? See why this was voted
as one of Den of Geek UK's Top Books of 2019. Little can prepare
you for this spiritually-charged, cyber-noir thrill ride.
Smith examines the different ways in which gay men use pop music,
both as producers and consumers, and how, in turn, pop uses gay
men. He asks what role culture plays in shaping identity and why
pop continues to thrill gay men. These 40 essays and interviews
look at how performers, from The Kinks' Ray Davies to Gene's Martin
Rossiter, have used pop as a platform to explore and articulate,
conform to or contest notions of sexuality and gender. A defence of
cultural differences and an attack on cultural elitism, Seduced and
Abandoned is as passionate and provocative as pop itself.
Through a transnational, comparative and multi-level approach to
the relationship between youth, migration, and music, the aesthetic
intersections between the local and the global, and between agency
and identity, are presented through case studies in this book.
Transglobal Sounds contemplates migrant youth and the impact of
music in diaspora settings and on the lives of individuals and
collectives, engaging with broader questions of how new modes of
identification are born out of the social, cultural, historical and
political interfaces between youth, migration and music. Thus,
through acts of mobility and environments lived in and in-between,
this volume seeks to articulate between musical transnationalism
and sense of place in exploring the complex relationship between
music and young migrants and migrant descendant's everyday lives.
As one of the people who defined punk's protest art in the 1970s
and 1980s, Gee Vaucher (b. 1945) deserves to be much better-known.
She produced confrontational album covers for the legendary
anarchist band Crass and later went on to do the same for Northern
indie legends the Charlatans, among others. More recently, her work
was recognised the day after Donald Trump's 2016 election victory,
when the front page of the Daily Mirror ran her 1989 painting Oh
America, which shows the Statue of Liberty, head in hands. This is
the first book to critically assess an extensive range of Vaucher's
work. It examines her unique position connecting avant-garde art
movements, counterculture, punk and even contemporary street art.
While Vaucher rejects all 'isms', her work offers a unique take on
the history of feminist art. -- .
Although David Bowie has famously characterized himself as a "leper
messiah," a more appropriate moniker might be "rock god" someone
whose influence has crossed numerous sub-genres of popular and
classical music and can at times seem ubiquitous. By looking at key
moments in his career (1972, 1977-79, 1980-83, and 1995-97) through
several lenses--theories of sub-culture, gender/sexuality studies,
theories of sound, post-colonial theory, and performance studies
Waldrep will examine Bowie's work in terms not only of his auditory
output but his many reinterpretations of it via music videos,
concert tours, television appearances, and occasional movie roles.
Future Nostalgia will look at all aspects of Bowie's
career--musical recordings, live concerts, music videos, film
performances, and television appearance--in an attempt to trace
Bowie's contribution to the performative paradigms that constitute
contemporary rock music.
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