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Joanna Demers. 2010. Listening Through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Nick Collins and Julio d'Escriván. 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Reviewed by Marilou Polymeropoulou
"Electronic music is the mainstream," begin Nick Collins and Julio d'Escriván in the Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music (CCTEM), referring to the impact of electronic music and technology on twentieth- and twenty-first century music making (1). The editors of the volume synthesize a history of electronic music based on perspectives by composers and scholars from a variety of disciplines, including communication studies, musicology, visual arts, music technology, psychology of music, and computer science. "In some quarters of academia, aesthetics is a dirty word," asserts Demers. Meanwhile, in Listening Through the Noise, Joanna Demers presents an aesthetic theory of experimental electronic music accompanied by audio examples which can be found online at the Oxford University Press website. Both books define electronic music as organized sounds generated by electronic circuits, which may be part of musical instruments, computers, or any electronic equipment (Collins and d'Escriván 256; Demers 5). The CCTEM serves as a more historically-focused account-an introduction to the field that mainly addresses student readers-while Listening Through the Noise provides a philosophical approach that requires some background knowledge in aesthetic theory, as well as familiarity with history and sound of the music itself.
The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music primarily serves three purposes: a) delivering a concise but not conventional history of electronic music; b) bridging the rivalry between electroacoustic and electronica music, which are classified as "academic serious art" and "pop" music, respectively, and c) envisaging a cultural perspective by including artists' thoughts on electronic music. The volume is divided into three sections, and while each maintains a specific interest in history, practices, and foundations of electronic music, the reader will find much overlap between them. Some of the chapters analyze specific themes, such live performances (chapter three), algorithmic composition (chapter six), live audiovisuals (chapter seven), and the psychology of electronic music (chapter twelve); others present an overview of significant moments in electronic music history. In chapter one, Andrew Hugill introduces the origins of electronic music as a result of creative imagination, whilst Ge Wang, in chapter...