Sound, Music, Affect

Sound, Music, Affect features brand new essays that bring together the burgeoning developments in sound studies and affect studies. The first section sets out key methodological and theoretical concerns, focussing on the relationships between affective models and sound. The second section deals with particular musical case studies, exploring how reference to affect theory might change or reshape some of the ways we are able to make sense of musical materials. The third section examines the politics and practice of sonic disruption: from the notion of noise as 'prophecy', to the appropriation of 'bad vibes' for pleasurable aesthetic and affective experiences. And the final section engages with some of the ways in which affect can help us understand the politics of chill, relaxation and intimacy as sonic encounters. The result is a rich and multifaceted consideration of sound, music and the affective, from scholars with backgrounds in cultural theory, history, literary studies, media studies, architecture, philosophy and musicology.

Sound, Music, Affect is not only about these three concepts, but also much more. It weaves together politics and aesthetics and smartly pitches a valuable contribution to the debates in current cultural theory. It gives us great case studies of why thinking through "meaning" is not sufficient--we also need to account for that regime of reality that makes our knees jerk, ears bleed, hands shake and mouths open into a shout., We all know how powerfully we can be moved by music. But we still find it hard to describe just how music affects us; it's so much easier to analyze its forms, or to speculate on what it means. The essays in this book combine affect theory with sonic cultural studies, in order to discuss the ways that we feel music, and the social and political consequences of such feelings., This collection of erudite, provocative essays is likely to become a classic. An indispensable introduction to the new modes of thought about music, sound and affect, it will move conversation about sound and music firmly into productive Deleuzian realms.

Ian Biddle is senior lecturer and Head of Postgraduate Studies in Music at Newcastle University, UK. He is co-founder and co-ordinating editor (with Richard Middleton) of the journal Radical Musicologyand the author of Music, Masculinity and the Claims of History (2011).Marie Thompson is a PhD candidate at Newcastle University, UK, based jointly in ICMUS and Culture Lab. Her research interests lie primarily with avant-garde and experimental musics. She regularly performs solo as Tragic Cabaret, in the duo Ghostly Porters, and as part of Newcastle's audiovisual collective, Kira Kira.