The Daily Swarm

Download it from MIT Press here.

Amazon:

“By insisting on the primacy of vibration in the nexus of sound, affect, and power, Sonic Warfare charts a transdisciplinary micropolitics of frequency that breaks with the orthodoxies of phenomenology and cultural studies and triumphantly succeeds in immersing us in the present of viral capitalism, pirate media, and asymmetric warfare. Steve Goodman’s incisive critiques of Marinetti, Kittler, Attali, Virilio, and Bachelard take their place alongside illuminating readings of Spinoza, Deleuze, Guattari, Whitehead, Serres and others; the result is a speculative intervention into contemporary modes of affective modulation and collective contagion that exceed any sonic theory previously published this decade. Sonic Warfare is rigorous, affirmative, sober, and pitiless: in its ambition, its purpose, and its passion, it is nothing short of a breakthrough for contemporary sonic thought.”

—Kodwo Eshun, Course Director of Masters of Arts in Aural and Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London, and author of More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction

Pitchfork:

Pitchfork: You spend a lot of time deconstructing the virus metaphor as applied to the ways music spreads and shifts. How have technological advances in transmission, both digital sharing and pirate radio, changed the ways that music mutates and becomes over-exposed? How has it changed the ways that new music from urban areas around the world—the global ghettotech—operates and evolves?

K9: Audio virology is not a metaphor. It is to be taken literally. It maps real processes of mutation, transmission, contagion and memory within music culture. Both analog and digital developments have intensified the viral nature of sonic culture. Because we live in a condition of ubiquitous music and media, and near infinite technological memory, it is much easier for local cultures to find an audience that resonates with their music, whether local or globally. At the same time the acceleration and saturation leads to things becoming outmoded, or out of fashion before they’ve even happened. That’s a pretty complicated situation. Hype becomes autonomous from its object and runs away with itself.

via FACT