Ben Murphy

Carl Loben

Renegade Snares is the definitive book on drum & bass music. Pieced together using original interviews conducted with all the scene's main players, it traces the history of jungle/drum & bass from its early roots in sound system culture and rave music right through to the present day. With its hyper-speed breakbeats, warping bass pressure, and vast spectrum of sounds, drum & bass quick spawned a whole new movement in youth culture. What began as an outlaw street reverberation from the inner cities of Britain developed into a Mercury-winning, chart-topping, world-conquering genre in just a few short years. The frontier-breaking sorcery that emanated from its foundational producers and DJs pushed new levels of sonic science into the music world, and it has influenced all other electronic music genres in assorted ways. From the shock of the new to a global phenomenon, drum & bass has morphed from frowned-upon marginalisation to establishment approval--and back again. A multicultural triumph, it is a story of resistance and resilience that takes in pioneers such as Goldie, Roni Size, Kemistry & Storm, Photek, Fabio & Grooverider, and many more renegade mavericks--even, at one point, David Bowie. With vivid descriptions of key tracks and a detailed lineage of the scene's development, Renegade Snares traces the genre's gestation while also examining its musical twists and turns, worldwide spread, and enduring popularity. And, ultimately, it asks: surely a genre of music with such a significant grounding in black music culture, developed by so many black pioneers in its formative years, could never be 'whitewashed' . . . could it?

The Resistance and Resilience of Drum and Bass

Renegade Snares

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.

Adventures in Field Recording and Electronic Music

Ears To The Ground

Aaron Betsky

When it was completed in 1952 along New York's East River, the United Nations Building stood as a symbol of world humanitarianism, a beacon of unity after the Second World War. More than 50 years on, the 39-story building is regarded as one of the pinnacles of mid-century modernism. Its magnificent public spaces and assembly halls, as well as its impressive collection of art by Chagall, Henry Moore and many others make it one of the most visited sites in New York. On the celebration of the United Nations' 60th anniversary, and before a long period of renovation, this book presents a portrait of this fascinating building. Specially commissioned photography and an illuminating text bring alive the spaces which have played host to the historic speeches, debates and gatherings that have been central to the world's development since 1945.

Ben Murphy

Books

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