Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience

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.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Somewhere Between the Signifying and the Sublime Marie Thompson and Ian Biddle SECTION 1 - AFFECTIVE (RE)THINKING: SOUND AS AFFECT AND AFFECT AS SOUND Non-cochlear Sound: On Affect and Exteriority - Will Schrimshaw Felt as Thought (or, musical abstraction and the semblance of affect) - eldritch Priest My Mother's Scream - Patricia Ticineto Clough SECTION 2 - HEARING, PLAYING, FEELING: MUSIC AND THE ORGANIZATION OF AFFECT So Transported: Nina Simone, 'My Sweet Lord' and the (Un)folding of Affect - Richard Elliott (I Can't Get No) Affect - John Mowitt Listening to the Talking Cure: Sprechstimme, Hypnosis, and the Sonic Organization of Affect - Clara Latham SECTION 3 - AFFECTS OF TURBULENCE Spread the Virus: Affective Prophecy in Industrial Music - Dean Lockwood Brace and Embrace: Masochism in Noise Performance - Paul Hegarty Three Screams - Marie Thompson SECTION 4 - PALLIATIVE SOUNDS AND THE MARKETING OF AFFECTION Music for Sleeping - Anahid Kassabian Relax, Feel Good, Chill Out: the Affective Distribution of Classical Music - Freya Jarman Quiet Sounds and Intimate Listening: the Politics of Tiny Seductions - Ian Biddle

About the Author :
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.

Review :
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.