Writing
Signed copies of Hounds Of Love available from Rough Trade
02/11/24 14:31
Not long to go now until this book is out in the world, argh!
Anyone interested in buying a signed copy can order one via this link from Rough Trade.
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Anyone interested in buying a signed copy can order one via this link from Rough Trade.
-----Pre-order Kate Bush's Hounds Of Love (33 1/3 series)
25/02/24 13:49
Kate Bush's Hounds Of Love publishes November 14, and is available for pre-order now.
Hounds Of Love invites you to not only listen, but to cross the boundaries of sensory experience into the realms of imagination and possibility. Side A spawned four Top 40 hit singles in the UK, ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)’, ‘Cloudbusting’, ‘Hounds of Love’ and ‘The Big Sky’, some of the best loved and most enduring compositions in the Bush catalogue. On side B, a hallucinatory seven-part song cycle called The Ninth Wave broke away from the pop conventions of the era, with strange and vivid production techniques that plunge the listener into the psychological centre of a near-death experience. Poised and accessible, yet still experimental and complex, with Hounds Of Love Bush mastered the art of her studio-based songcraft, finally achieving full control of her creative process. When it came out in 1985, she was only 27 years old.
This book charts the emergence of Kate Bush in the early-to-mid-1980s as a courageous experimentalist, a singularly expressive recording artist and a visionary music producer. Track-by-track commentaries focus on the experience of the album from the listener’s point of view, drawing attention to the art and craft of Bush’s songwriting and sound design. It considers the vast impact and influence that Hounds Of Love has had on music cultures and creative practices through the years, underlining the artist’s importance as a barrier-smashing, template-defying, business-smart, record-breaking, never-compromising role model for artists everywhere.
Contents:
Track Listing
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The first woman
Still dreaming
I put this moment… here
Hounds Of Love
The Ninth Wave
A ritual in six steps
Before The Dawn
Blackbirds
Wave after wave
Notes
Selected Bibliography
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Hounds Of Love invites you to not only listen, but to cross the boundaries of sensory experience into the realms of imagination and possibility. Side A spawned four Top 40 hit singles in the UK, ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)’, ‘Cloudbusting’, ‘Hounds of Love’ and ‘The Big Sky’, some of the best loved and most enduring compositions in the Bush catalogue. On side B, a hallucinatory seven-part song cycle called The Ninth Wave broke away from the pop conventions of the era, with strange and vivid production techniques that plunge the listener into the psychological centre of a near-death experience. Poised and accessible, yet still experimental and complex, with Hounds Of Love Bush mastered the art of her studio-based songcraft, finally achieving full control of her creative process. When it came out in 1985, she was only 27 years old.
This book charts the emergence of Kate Bush in the early-to-mid-1980s as a courageous experimentalist, a singularly expressive recording artist and a visionary music producer. Track-by-track commentaries focus on the experience of the album from the listener’s point of view, drawing attention to the art and craft of Bush’s songwriting and sound design. It considers the vast impact and influence that Hounds Of Love has had on music cultures and creative practices through the years, underlining the artist’s importance as a barrier-smashing, template-defying, business-smart, record-breaking, never-compromising role model for artists everywhere.
Contents:
Track Listing
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The first woman
Still dreaming
I put this moment… here
Hounds Of Love
The Ninth Wave
A ritual in six steps
Before The Dawn
Blackbirds
Wave after wave
Notes
Selected Bibliography
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I Put This Moment... Here
08/02/23 11:51
Really happy to share that my proposal to write a 33 1/3 book about Kate Bush's Hounds of Love was accepted in the publisher's most recent open call.
Kate Bush is one of my favourite artists and Hounds of Love is a dream record to write about. I'm so excited to begin!
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Kate Bush is one of my favourite artists and Hounds of Love is a dream record to write about. I'm so excited to begin!
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2022 Reflections
17/12/22 08:35
As per tradition, The Wire editor Derek Walmsley sent an email to all of the magazine's contributors asking for our 'best of the year' lists, and our personal reflections on how 2022 went. I was quick to respond with my lists:
top ten Releases of the Year
1 Alice Cohen Moonrising (Styles Upon Styles)
2 Björk Fossora (One Little Independent)
3 Brian Eno FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE
4 Helms Alee Keep This Be The Way (Sargent House)
5 Éliane Radigue/Frédéric Blondy Occam XXV (Organ Reframed)
6 Kai Whiston Quiet As Kept, FOG (Lux)
7 Weyes Blood And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow (SUB POP)
8 Nadja Labyrinthine (Broken Spine/Cruel Nature)
9 Coby Sey Conduit (AD93)
10 Die Wilde Jagd Atem (Bureau B)
top ten Archive Releases of the Year
1 Cheri Knight American Rituals (Freedom to Spend)
2 Iannis Xenakis Electroacoustic Works (Karlrecords)
3 Funkadelic Maggot Brain (Westbound)
4 John Tilbury Keyboard Studies (Another Timbre)
5 Denis Dufour Complete Acoustic Works Vol 1 (Kairos)
6 David Bowie Brilliant Adventure (1992–2001) (Parlophone)
7 Sun Ra Arkestra Nothing Is… Completed & Revisited (Ezzthetics)
8 William S Burroughs Ali’s Smile (Paradigm Discs)
9 Scritti Politti Anomie & Bonhomie (Rough Trade)
10 Paul McCartney McCartney I II III (Capitol)
But the deadline for the personal reflection came and went, I just didn't relish the thought of tracing back over what has been a strange, at times extremely shit but occasionally great, year. Then Derek emailed to ask again, and so I responded in the moment from the heart.
Finally, it was so surprising and so so pleasing to see Blackstar Theory listed third in the top ten books of the year. Feeling validated as a writer is a rare sensation, so I'm celebrating this one!
What a time it's been. Everyone I know has been going through something tough this year. Roll on 2023!
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Blackstar Theory signed copies [sold out]
19/02/22 11:09
[Update: I've sold out of these signed copies now - man they went quick! Thanks everyone for being so supportive.]
Thank you so much to the people who came out to help me launch Blackstar Theory: The last works of David Bowie last weekend at Vout-O-Reenee’s in London. It was such a pleasure being with real live people in the same room, chatting, dancing and loving music together. I hadn’t felt that in so long! More thanks must go to Arsalan Mohammad for hosting the Q&A. I posted a collection of some great pictures people took on the night as a story highlight on Instagram, if anyone's interested.
Also, here's a link to the 4-hour Bowie disco mix (playlist expertly selected and sequenced by Liz Tray).
Supply chain issues and delays meant that my shipment of copies didn't arrive in time and I couldn't sell or sign any books at the launch. So that means I'm doing it here!
[update: these are old sold now].
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Thank you so much to the people who came out to help me launch Blackstar Theory: The last works of David Bowie last weekend at Vout-O-Reenee’s in London. It was such a pleasure being with real live people in the same room, chatting, dancing and loving music together. I hadn’t felt that in so long! More thanks must go to Arsalan Mohammad for hosting the Q&A. I posted a collection of some great pictures people took on the night as a story highlight on Instagram, if anyone's interested.
Also, here's a link to the 4-hour Bowie disco mix (playlist expertly selected and sequenced by Liz Tray).
Supply chain issues and delays meant that my shipment of copies didn't arrive in time and I couldn't sell or sign any books at the launch. So that means I'm doing it here!
[update: these are old sold now].
-----
Coming soon: Blackstar Theory
12/07/21 21:06
Blackstar Theory dives deep into Bowie's ambitious last works: the surprise ‘comeback’ project The Next Day (2013), the off-Broadway musical Lazarus (2015) and the album that preceded the artist’s death in 2016 by two days, ★ (pronounced Blackstar). The book explores the swirl of themes that orbit these projects from a starting point in musical analysis and features new interviews with key collaborators from the period: producer Tony Visconti, graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook, musical director Henry Hey, saxophonist Donny McCaslin and assistant sound engineer Erin Tonkon.
Together, these works tackle the biggest of ideas: identity, creativity, chaos, transience and immortality. Their themes entangle realities and fictions across space and time; a catalogue of sound, vision, music and myth spanning more than 50 years is subjected to the cut-up; we get to the end only to find signposts directing us back to the very start. They enact a process of individuation for the Bowie meta-persona and invite us to consider what happens when a star dies. In our universe, dying stars do not disappear - they transform into new stellar objects, remnants and gravitational forces. The radical potential of the Blackstar is demonstrated in the rock star supernova that creates a singularity resulting in cultural iconicity. It is how a man approaching his own death can create art that illuminates the immortal potential of all matter in the known universe.
Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie will be out in January 2022 (e-pub in Dec 2021) and is now available to pre-order.
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Wire Issue 443: One Thing That Got Me Through (2020)
01/01/21 08:19
I think this global pandemic could be my fault. Back in April I was burnt out and falling apart and I wished the world would stop and then a terrible miracle happened. The dissonance between the genuine horror at the unfolding situation and feeling such relief marked the first few months of my lockdown experience with profound thriver’s guilt. I’ve been one of the lucky ones who managed to keep their job throughout all of this. Penitence of the fortunate. And then I noticed the birds.
Money I would spend on nights out, ill-advised Ubers and manicures now pays for bird seed, fat balls and meal worms. A new daily structure. Every morning they’re out there on the roof, in the trees and hedges waiting for the day’s buffet. I’ve learned their songs and chirps, and I watched their chicks fledge and change feathers. After a few months I noticed many musician friends were similarly enraptured - new compositions and at-home productions based in bird song, discreet shotgun mics pointed at feeders. The feel-better hit of the summer, if there was any justice they should have given this year’s Ivors award to my local band of wood pigeons.
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Money I would spend on nights out, ill-advised Ubers and manicures now pays for bird seed, fat balls and meal worms. A new daily structure. Every morning they’re out there on the roof, in the trees and hedges waiting for the day’s buffet. I’ve learned their songs and chirps, and I watched their chicks fledge and change feathers. After a few months I noticed many musician friends were similarly enraptured - new compositions and at-home productions based in bird song, discreet shotgun mics pointed at feeders. The feel-better hit of the summer, if there was any justice they should have given this year’s Ivors award to my local band of wood pigeons.
-----Book contract
29/12/19 21:11
Earlier this month I signed a contract with Bloomsbury to write my first monograph, all about Bowie's 'late work' - The Next Day (2013), Lazarus (2015) and ★ (2016). Very excited and quite terrified, which I have been assured by my editors are appropriate feelings to have right now.
Meanwhile I'm busily co-authoring a book with Prof Pamela Burnard (Cambridge Uni) called Doing Music, Gender and Diverse Creativities: Enacting Socially Just Education for Brill | Sense. On top of this I have my new EP Bird Rib coming out in early Feb, 2020 with Bigo & Twigetti. Check out the amazing artwork that will become the cover image kindly licensed with permission from the super talented Maurizio Bongiovanni.
Busy times! If things go a bit quiet and you wonder where I am, look for me down the bottom of the garden in the writing shed. x
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Meanwhile I'm busily co-authoring a book with Prof Pamela Burnard (Cambridge Uni) called Doing Music, Gender and Diverse Creativities: Enacting Socially Just Education for Brill | Sense. On top of this I have my new EP Bird Rib coming out in early Feb, 2020 with Bigo & Twigetti. Check out the amazing artwork that will become the cover image kindly licensed with permission from the super talented Maurizio Bongiovanni.
Busy times! If things go a bit quiet and you wonder where I am, look for me down the bottom of the garden in the writing shed. x
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The New Woman - Kate Bush from 1977 to 1980
15/10/19 17:16
I wrote this essay for a book that was meant to get published, but didn't, about Kate Bush's early career and featuring wonderful photos by Gered Mankowitz. Since it's not going to see the light of day, I thought I might as well publish it here for anyone who is interested.
Part of the payment I was promised for the piece was a signed Mankowitz print (!) which did arrive, so I'm not too upset about the way things turned out!
Download the PDF
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Part of the payment I was promised for the piece was a signed Mankowitz print (!) which did arrive, so I'm not too upset about the way things turned out!
Download the PDF
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Making Room for 21st Century Musicianship in Higher Education
03/05/18 17:15
Click here to read my paper on Making Room for 21st Century Musicianship in Higher Education, which shares my experiences and perspectives relating to contemporary Post-digital aesthetics in music creation, performance and production, and the development of new, practice-focussed music technology curriculum at Kingston University.
Abstract: Having been asked to respond to Action Ideal VIII by the Mayday Group, concerning technology and its impacts on music education, what follows are some observations and reflections from my experiences teaching undergraduate music and music technology degrees in the UK. I put forward the idea that Post-Digital music aesthetics reflect an emergent sensibility in contemporary music cultures, and this represents an opportunity for music educators to reconfigure and strengthen their pedagogical approaches. By recognizing the legitimacy of new and varied forms of musicianship, and acknowledging the ways in which our subject area continues to grow in its range of practices and necessary literacies, strategies can be developed to support a music student experience that is cohesive, inclusive, hybridized, meaningful and useful.
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Brits 2018: Why Everyone Loves Ed Sheeran's The Shape Of You
21/02/18 13:36
I wrote a thing for The Conversation ahead of this week's Brit Awards about the musical reasons why Ed Sheeran's hit is so catchy…
Admittedly, not the kind of thing I'd usually spend time on. I'm glad I did it, though. A good reminder that simple things can have a kind of elegance in their efficiency.
Click here to read the article.
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Admittedly, not the kind of thing I'd usually spend time on. I'm glad I did it, though. A good reminder that simple things can have a kind of elegance in their efficiency.
Click here to read the article.
-----The Curious Musician
27/07/17 21:33
The new Oxford Handbook of Technology and Music Education is finally here! I was so honoured to be asked by Alex Ruthmann & Roger Mantie to contribute to this exciting volume. Look a that list of names! It's nuts that I'm in there with them.
This 700 page volume has contributions from 42 authors sharing their diverse perspectives and further commentaries on provocation questions at the intersection of technology and music education. If anyone is interested in reading my little contribution, you can find it here.
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Bowie Musicology
13/07/17 21:49
My article is called "Bowie musicology: mapping Bowie’s sound and music language across the catalogue", built around a fun research idea that was initially sparked in a friend's front room a few years go. I've spoken about bits of this work at the 2015 Bowie themed conference at ACMI in Melbourne and later in a special keynote at Cambridge. It feels really good to have it published now. Thank you Sean Redmond and Toija Cinque for the opportunity to be part of this. <3
If anyone's interested in reading the article, it's here: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ccon20/31/4
and here: https://www.academia.edu/33892304/Bowie_musicology_mapping_Bowies_sound_and_music_language_across_the_catalogue
Scary Monsters [Chapter 1]
23/01/16 13:15
In the summer of 2015 I sent a proposal off to the editors of the 33 1/3 series for a book about my favourite David Bowie album Scary Monsters and Super Creeps (1980). To my surprise and delight, out of the 606 proposals they received from their open call, I somehow made the shortlist of 85. In the end, my book idea was not chosen for publication (though I have to say the albums/authors that were chosen seem extremely worthy and I can't wait to read the new volumes).
Part of the proposal package included a draft introductory chapter, so I thought I would share that here just in case it is of interest to anyone. I realise that in the wake of the news of his death there has been a flood of amazing stories, blogs, think-pieces, memories and tributes - many people might be feeling some Bowie-death-fatigue setting in. I know I am. If that's the case I invite you to consider and celebrate the staggering body of work he has gifted us, as I ask you to focus on Scary Monsters and Super Creeps.
(click on the 'read more' link to see the chapter)
x LK
A book chapter about digital creativities
04/01/15 09:17
It’s available from Bloomsbury from the 29th of January as a hardback, paperback or e-book.
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/activating-diverse-musical-creativities-9781472589118/
“This book treats with freshness and vitality issues that are crucial for educators in higher education and beyond. The international and multi-disciplinary group of scholars – anthropologists, psychologists, musicians, artists and art educators – engage us in deeply educational issues and experiences...Enthusiastically recommended!” – Liora Bresler, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, University of Illinois, USA
“This is an illuminating and long-overdue book that celebrates the myriad ways in which musicians engage their creativity, both as they develop their expertise and then as professionals. In many contexts, we are experiencing acute needs to champion innovative artistic practices whilst at the same time maintaining the qualities of traditional practices. It is clear that creative entrepreneurship is essential to future success, and this book helps to demystify its principles and practice. It is a must-read for all those engaged in higher music education.” – Helena Gaunt, Vice Principal and Director of Academic Affairs, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, UK
***UPDATE: It's here!
I received a hardback copy of the book from the publishers and I thought it was rather pretty! Also, amazed my reference to Kanye West got through the edit...
BJME article
21/06/12 15:45
You can access it online here, if you want to.
The abstract:
"I am a composer, producer, pianist and part-time music lecturer at a Further Education college where I teach composing on Music Technology courses at levels 3 (equivalent to A-level) and 4 (Undergraduate/Foundation Degree). A ‘Music Technology’ course, distinct from a ‘Music’ course, often attracts applicants from diverse musical backgrounds; it is not uncommon for a typical class to contain a majority that cannot read staff notation and have taught themselves to play their instrument. Sometimes the student's only experience of music-making prior to the course has been sequencing beat patterns using computer software. Potential students are drawn to music technology courses for many different reasons – perhaps their individual interests lie in sound engineering, acoustics, live sound reinforcement, computer programming or software application design. As a teacher of composing in this context, I am faced with a challenge: how to bridge the knowledge and confidence gaps that exist between students with more and less formal musical experience? I believe that music technology applications can help in this area, particularly with fostering confidence and motivation in less-experienced students. What follows is a student profile and a case study of one assessment task in composing, which will illustrate how such strategies can work."
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