The Onion, February 26, 2003
"Equal parts historical exhumation and agenda-setting exposition .... makes margins and headlines part of the same text."
Book Description
In a series of essays by some of the best music writers of our time, Undercurrents identifies the key concepts and underlying themes that have been hardwired into the modern era's most radical musics, ever since Thomas Edison invented the record player. The phonograph, electronics, chance operations, Futurism, Surrealism, the civil rights movement, noise, alternative tuning systems and market forces have all redrawn the map of contemporary sound. Undercurrents tracks these seismic shifts across a wide range of music including modern composition, free jazz, experimental rock and pop, Industrial, ethnic music, Techno and electronica, and looks at the extraordinary innovations and invented instruments that have passed into obscurity.
Many of the essays in the book first appeared as a series in The Wire magazine, which since 1982 has bypassed the music mainstream in search of the most innovative, uncompromising and compelling sounds from all genres across the world. As music listeners have grown increasingly eclectic and adventurous in their tastes, The Wire has emerged as the most authoritative source on modern music.
