S. Alexander Reed's Books

Laurie Anderson's Big Science

By: S. Alexander Reed

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Shimmering in maximal minimalism, joyful bleakness, and bodiless intimacy, Laurie Anderson's Big Science diagnosed crises of meaning, scale, and identity in 1982. Decades later, the challenging and strange questions it poses loom even larger: How do we remain human when our identities are digitally distributed? Does technology bring us closer together or further apart? Can we experience the stillness of "now" when time is always moving? How do experiences become memories? This book attends closely to Anderson's artistic voice, detailing its unique capacities for ambiguity and revelation. It traces the sonic histories etched in the record's grooves, from the Cold War to a burning future, from the Manhattan skyline to the empty desert, from the opera house to the pop charts. Ultimately in Big Science, one can hear an invitation to rise above the dualities of parts and wholes, images and essences, the lone individual and the megasystem. The first and most enduring superstar of performance art, Laurie Anderson is recognized here for pioneering philosophically rich techniques within the medium, but is also taken seriously as a musician and composer. Packed with scrupulous new research, reception history, careful description, and dizzying creativity, this book is an interdisciplinary love letter to a record whose sounds, politics, and expressions of gendered identity grow more relevant each day"--

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Page Count

193

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Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0190926015

ISBN 13

9780190926014

They Might Be Giants' Flood

By: S. Alexander Reed,Elizabeth Sandifer

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They Might Be Giants' Flood

By: S. Alexander Reed,Elizabeth Sandifer

For a few decades now, They Might Be Giants' album Flood has been a beacon (or at least a nightlight) for people who might rather read than rock out, who care more about science fiction than Slayer, who are more often called clever than cool. Neither the band's hip origins in the Lower East Side scene nor Flood's platinum certification can cover up the record's singular importance at the geek fringes of culture. Flood's significance to this audience helps us understand a certain way of being: it shows that geek identity doesn't depend on references to Hobbits or Spock ears, but can instead be a set of creative and interpretive practices marked by playful excess-a flood of ideas. The album also clarifies an historical moment. The brainy sort of kids who listened to They Might Be Giants saw their own cultural options grow explosively during the late 1980s and early 1990s amid the early tech boom and America's advancing leftist social tides. Whether or not it was the band's intention, Flood's jubilant proclamation of an identity unconcerned with coolness found an ideal audience at an ideal turning point. This book tells the story.

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Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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ISBN 10

1623568293

ISBN 13

9781623568290

Assimilate

A Critical History of Industrial Music

By: S. Alexander Reed

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A Critical History of Industrial Music

By: S. Alexander Reed

More extreme than punk, industrial music revolted against the very ideas of order and reason. This book traces industrial music's attitudes and practices from their earliest articulations-a hundred years ago-through the genre's mid-1970s formation and beyond.

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Page Count

377

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Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199832609

ISBN 13

9780199832606

Book's by S. Alexander Reed

Laurie Anderson's Big Science

Laurie Anderson's Big Science

They Might Be Giants' Flood

They Might Be Giants' Flood

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