Call it batida, kuduro, Afro house, Lisbon bass: anyone with a keen ear for contemporary developments in global electronic dance music can't fail to have noticed the rise in popularity and influence of Lisbon-based DJs such as DJ Marfox, DJ Nervoso and Nídia. These DJs and producers have brought the sound of the Lisbon projects to the wider world via international club nights, festival appearances, recordings and remix projects for a range of international artists. This book uses the 2006 compilation DJs do Guetto as a prism for exploring this music's aesthetics and its roots in Lusophone Africa, its evolution in the immigrant communities of Lisbon and its journey from there to the world. The story is one of encounters: between people, sounds, neighborhoods, technologies and cultural contexts. Drawing on reflections by DJ Marfox and others, the book establishes DJs do Guetto as a foundation stone not only for a burgeoning music scene, but also for a newfound sense of pride in a place and a community.

Call it batida, kuduro, Afro house, Lisbon bass: anyone with a keen ear for contemporary developments in global electronic dance music can't fail to have noticed the rise in popularity and influence of Lisbon-based DJs such as DJ Marfox, DJ Nervoso and Nídia. These DJs and producers have brought the sound of the Lisbon projects to the wider world via international club nights, festival appearances, recordings and remix projects for a range of international artists. This book uses the 2006 compilation DJs do Guetto as a prism for exploring this music's aesthetics and its roots in Lusophone Africa, its evolution in the immigrant communities of Lisbon and its journey from there to the world. The story is one of encounters: between people, sounds, neighborhoods, technologies and cultural contexts. Drawing on reflections by DJ Marfox and others, the book establishes DJs do Guetto as a foundation stone not only for a burgeoning music scene, but also for a newfound sense of pride in a place and a community.

"Call it batida, kuduro, Afro house, Lisbon bass: anyone with a keen ear for contemporary developments in global electronic dance music can't fail to have noticed the rise in popularity and influence of Lisbon-based DJs such as DJ Marfox, DJ Nervoso and Nidia Minaj. These DJs and producers are bringing the sound of the Lisbon projects to wider world via international club nights, festival appearances, recordings and remix projects for artists such as Panda Bear, Fever Ray and Elza Soares. This book uses the 2006 compilation DJs do Guetto as a prism for exploring this music's aesthetics and its roots in Lusophone Africa, its evolution in the immigrant communities of Lisbon and its journey from there to the world. The story is one of encounters: between people, sounds, neighborhoods, technologies and cultural contexts."--

The Dead C's Clyma est mort (1993) is the record of a live gig for one person. Tom Lax was running the Siltbreeze label in Philadelphia and had come to New Zealand to meet the artists he was releasing. He heard The Dead C at their noisy, improvised best, turning rock music on its head with a free-form style of blaring, loosely organised sound. Leading a second wave of music from Dunedin, New Zealand, The Dead C were an assault against the kind of jangly pop that had made the Dunedin Sound famous during the 1980s. This book uses The Dead C and in particular their album Clyma est mort (1993) to offer insights into the way the best of rock music plays vertigo with our senses, illustrating a sonic picture of freedom and energy. It places the album into the history of independent music in New Zealand, and into an international context of independent labels posting, faxing and phoning each other.

Rock 'n' roll may not have toppled the USSR, but it definitely rumbled through its foundations. Unlike the often-saccharine pop music sanctioned by the Soviet state, Ukrainian punk musicians of the 1980s Kyiv underground adapted ideologies of rock to roast the absurdities of late Soviet life, to articulate new ways of being Ukrainian, and to celebrate the cathartic pleasures of collective gatherings organized around musical performances. This book tells the story of Tantsi (Dances) a 1989 semi-official cassette release by the now-legendary Ukrainian punk band Vopli Vidopliassova, known to fans simply as VV (pronounced “Ve-Ve”). Their disruptive musical sounds, ironic lyrics, use of language, and propulsive performances toyed with the distinctions between official and unofficial Soviet culture. VV's Tantsi exemplifies how Soviet musical cultures existed within an ecosystem of contradictions as entrenched state infrastructures collided with emergent youth subcultures on the quicksand of late Soviet life. Today, Tantsi continues to invite us to dance while we laugh (or cry) at the absurdities of everyday life.

Released in 1996, Kitten Licks catapulted Brisbane indie-rock three-piece Screamfeeder into the '90s alternative-rock boom alongside Powderfinger, silverchair, You Am I and Regurgitator. International tours, regular festival shows, and TV appearances followed. And yet, commercial success for Screamfeeder was comparatively short-lived. By the end of the decade, the band's outlook was bleak: at a career standstill and unable to record new music. Today, both Screamfeeder and Kitten Licks endure as fiercely loved cult icons. In its vitality and idiosyncrasy, Kitten Licks captures a moment of cresting change for a band, a city and a national scene, while continuing to delight and inspire those who discover it anew. This book tells the story of Kitten Licks in the words of those who lived it, and who still do. How it was made, how it was swept up into '90s mythology and what the journey tells us about the fickle nature of music production in Australia, namely: how to survive it.

Saturday Night Fever is simultaneously one of the biggest-selling albums of all time and one of the most reviled. How can a record create such a polarizing reaction? Australian writer Clinton Walker attempts to answer that question and finds that, among other things, a certain seemingly unlikely Australianness is part of the reason. Fever was a supernova for disco, for the Bee Gees, for the domineering Robert Stigwood, producer of the film and its true auteur, and for the entire record business. This book traces all the interdependent convolutions that fed into the film and its music – not least the Australian roots that Stigwood and Gibb brothers shared, which gave them an Otherness and almost gormless, shape-shifting self-determination – and it finds that sometimes great art can be made by a committee ... that sometimes, five songs are enough to change the world.

The voice of Amália Rodrigues (1920-1999), the “Queen of Fado” and Portugal's most celebrated diva, was extraordinary for its interpretive power, soul wrenching timbre, and international reach. Amalia à l'Olympia (1957) is an album made from recordings of her first performances at the fabled Olympia Music Hall in Paris in 1956. This album, which was issued for multiple national markets (including: France; USA; Japan; Britain; the Netherlands) catapulted Amália Rodrigues into the international limelight. During its time, this album held the potential for international listeners, outside of Portugal, to represent Portugal, while also standing in for cosmopolitanism, the glamorous city of Paris, and to present a sonorous voyage in sound. This book introduces readers to the voice of Amália Rodrigues and to the genre of the Portuguese fado, offering a primer in how to listen to both. It unpacks this iconic album and the voice, sound, style, and celebrity of Amália Rodrigues. It situates this album within a historical context marked by cold war Atlanticist diplomacy, Portugal's dictatorial regime, and the emergence of new forms of media, travel, and tourism.In so doing, it examines processes that shaped the internationalization of peripheral popular musics and the making of female vocal stardom in the mid-20th century.

“I'm a Barbie Girl, in a Barbie world,” the ubiquitous refrain that dominated the airwaves in summer 1997. Aqua's single from their debut album Aquarium spread like wildfire, topping charts across the globe. With their erotically charged lyrics and dance beats, Aqua moved beyond their Danish Eurodance beginnings and achieved global renown in the late 1990s. In the US, however, they are an infamous “one hit wonder,” remembered for their highly publicized lawsuit with Mattel. Although Aqua's fame waned at the turn of the millennium, the 25th anniversary of their debut precipitated a resurgence in their popularity. This book unwraps a bubblegum dance classic to offer the first in-depth examination of what lies beneath Aqua's sticky-sweet veneer. It traces the history of Aquarium alongside interpretations of the album's singles informed by queer theory and covers by contemporary musicians commissioned for the book. Peeling back the layers of Aquarium reveals a confection rife with unexpected contradictions and possibilities; videos permeated by seemingly innocuous articulates of heteronormativity are held in tension with suggestions of queerness, fetishism, and adolescent lust when heard through the ironic lens of camp.

Perhaps the best musical encapsulation of the Cold War as experienced in the walled city of West-Berlin, Kollaps is a product of its time while remaining as vital, exhilarating and surprising as the day it was released. The book explores the contexts, themes and influences that shaped Kollaps. It describes the early days of Einstürzende Neubauten in West-Berlin, their infamous live performances and guerilla style recording tactics, and the scrap metal banging, piercing guitar noise and evocative lyricism that went on to inspire generations of fans. Most significantly, it explores the desire and deep sense of belonging that is expressed by what Nick Cave called the 'incredibly mournful, haunting' nature of this music. The beginning of a 40-year career, this first burst of energy remains their purest statement.