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David Sylvian spans three decades of image-conscious pop culture. From South London schoolboy in the Seventies to respected composer of the Nineties and beyond, he remains a uniquely fascinating hero. The new edition of Martin Power's acclaimed biography explores every detail of a unique life. The formation of Japan, their signing to Ariola-Hansa in 1977 and a shaky career start. Success with a new glamorous image and two classic albums, Gentlemen Take Polaroids and Tin Drum and the band's break-up and the start of Sylvian's solo career. Including many interviews and reviews of all Japan and Sylvian albums, this unique biography delves into the compelling world of the Lewisham lad who became the Last Romantic.
Spanning a duration of over thirty years, Hypergraphia includes previously unpublished material, as well as conversations with the influential improvisational guitarist and founding member of the group AMM, Keith Rowe and the ever-insightful writer and musicologist Marcus Boon. The volume includes aspects of Sylvian's own photographic work as well as selections by some of the most reputable and innovative artists working today and its design celebrates the longstanding collaboration between Sylvian and acclaimed designer Chris Bigg.
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Steve Jansen has held a long-standing interest in photography. Through A Quiet Window presents a selection of photographs produced in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Jansen was active with the alternative English band, Japan. The book offers a unique glimpse into the world, as seen through the eyes of a critically-acclaimed musician over a career spanning more than four decades. Produced originally as a soft cover smaller book in Japan only this is a new and updated version with many new and unseen images. Hardcover book printed onto star dream, 290x220mm, 240 inner pages, full colour print onto 170gsm white stock. Despite travelling the world, monuments and buildings weren t something I needed to document because they would always be there. What I felt mattered was the relatively short lives that were shining bright in the foreground, naturally projecting themselves out of the everyday. I prefer images that are naturally lit, so that the atmosphere of ambient light is maintained
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David Sylvian may be seen as a philosopher, in accordance with the postmodern spirit, who invalidates identity, preserving it at the level of nosound, in a troubled ego/others relationship. His most recent songs have been analysed, as well as the lyrics and Sylvian’s way of life (Tao).What emerges is the portrait of a character who absorbs elements both from the East and the West, where music is the goal of a path of Self-Realization, which brought Sylvian to conceive a new view of arrangement, increasingly deprived of its frills and capable of magnifying his voice.Sylvian shows everybody that silence may become an integral part of music towards nonsense, or the recovery of existential nudity.
David Bowie: Critical Perspectives examines in detail the many layers of one of the most intriguing and influential icons in popular culture. This interdisciplinary book brings together established and emerging scholars from a wide variety of backgrounds, including musicology, sociology, art history, literary theory, philosophy, politics, film studies and media studies. Bowie’s complexity as a singer, songwriter, producer, performer, actor and artist demands that any critical engagement with his overall work must be interdisciplinary and wide-ranging in its scope. The chapters are organised around the key themes of ‘textualities’, ‘psychologies’, ‘orientalisms’, ‘art and agency’ and ‘performing and influencing’ in Bowie’s work. This comprehensive book contributes a great deal to the study of popular music, performance, gender, religion, popular media and celebrity.
This book is a revelatory guide to hundreds and hundreds of original 7" record cover sleeve designs - visual artefacts found at the heart of the most radical and anarchistic musical movement of the 20th century. Punk Rock 45 Soundsystem! is introduced (and co-compiled) by Jon Savage, author of the acclaimed definitive history of punk, England's Dreaming. As well as the encyclopaedic visual imagery featured inside, the book also includes a number of interviews with celebrated designers involved in creating punk's original iconic imagery. The revolutionary do-it-yourself ethic of punk was applied to the aesthetic of design as much as it was to music, and record sleeves acted as lo-fi signifiers of anarchy, style, fashion, politics and more with an urban and suburban invective courtesy of the 1000s of new bands - punk, post-punk, pre-punk, nearly-punk and more - that emerged at the end of the 1970s. This book is an exhaustive, thorough and exciting celebration of the stunning artwork of punk music - everything from the most celebrated and iconic designs through to the stark beauty of the cheapest do-it-yourself lo-fi obscurities.
Reflections on life and art from the legendary filmmaker-novelist-poet-genius. By the time he published The Difficulty of Being in 1947, Jean Cocteau had produced some of the most respected films and literature of the twentieth century, and had worked with the foremost artists of his time, including Proust, Gide, Picasso and Stravinsky. This memoir tells the inside account of those achievements and of his glittering social circle. Cocteau writes about his childhood, about his development as an artist, and the peculiarity of the artist’s life, about his dreams, friendships, pain, and laughter. He probes his motivations and explains his philosophies, giving intimate details in soaring prose. And sprinkled throughout are anecdotes about the elite and historic people he associated with. Beyond illuminating a truly remarkable life, The Difficulty of Being is an inspiring homage to the belief that art matters.
A genre-bending collection of prose poems from Pulitzer Prize–winner Franz Wright brings us surreal tales of childhood, adolescence, and adult awareness, moving from the gorgeous to the shocking to a sense of peace. Wright’s most intimate thoughts and images appear before us in dramatic and spectral short narratives: mesmerizing poems whose colloquial sound and rhythms announce a new path for this luminous and masterful poet. In these journeys, we hear the constant murmured “yes” of creation—“it will be packing its small suitcase soon; it will leave the keys dangling from the lock and set out at last,” Wright tells us. He introduces us to the powerful presences in his world (th...