Music

Designing and Conducting Practice-Based Research Projects
This is a textbook aimed primarily at upper undergraduate and Master’s students undertaking practice-based research in the arts and includes practical guidance examples exercises and further resources.
The book offers definitions and a brief background to practice-related research in the arts contextualization of practice-based methods within that frame a step-by-step approach to designing practice-based research projects chapter summaries examples of practice-related research exercises for progressing methods design and evaluating research approach and lists for further reading. This textbook can serve as the foundation for a wider online “living” textbook for practice-related research in the arts.

Throbbing Gristle
In 1976 the British band Throbbing Gristle emerged from the radical arts collective COUM Transmissions through core members Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti joined by Hipgnosis photographer Peter Christopherson and electronics specialist Chris Carter. Though having performed previously in more low-key arts environments their major launch coincided with the COUM retrospective exhibition Prostitution at London’s ICA gallery showcasing and contextualising an array of challenging objects from COUM’s various actions in performance art and pornography. In a deliberately curated strategy inviting press civic and arts dignitaries extravagant followers of the nascent punk scene and music journalists the band created an instant controversy and media panic that tapped into the restrictive climate and encroaching conservatism of late 1970s Britain. Any opportunities that were being explored by a formative punk ethos and movement around sex censorship and transgression were amplified and exposed by Throbbing Gristle and Prostitution. An outraged Member of Parliament Nicholas Fairbairn took the bait and called the ensemble the ‘wreckers of civilisation’ providing the suitable newspaper headline that would be followed a month later by ‘the filth and the fury’ as the Sex Pistols uttered strong profanities on live television.
The switch from COUM to Throbbing Gristle encompassed a primary mode of expression in making music as opposed to art to further coincide with the energy of the nascent punk scene. The band quickly developed a radically deviant and challenging reputation through pushing the punk format past its strictures in terms of lyrical themes amateurism and considerations of what constitutes music. Through a handful or record releases on their own label Industrial Records and a sporadic string of live performances the band nurtured a strong and devoted following including key journalists and fanzine editors of the punk and post-punk scenes such as Jon Savage and Sandy Robertson. The band’s style of exploring harsh pre-recorded sounds samples of disconcerting narrative and conversation and feeding all sounds through messy electronic processing devices gave rise to the title industrial music. This was further buttressed by performing a strictly timed set of one hour and adopting a non-rockstar mode by appearing disinterested and preoccupied with electronic devices. Having given a name and impetus to the industrial music scene many of their followers and fans formed bands in later years.
Drawing on works such as Andy Bennett’s When the Lights Went Out this book looks at late 1970s Britain before during and immediately after the Winter of Discontent to situate the activism of Throbbing Gristle in this time. It explores how the band worked in and against the time and how they worked in and against punk as punk worked in and against the time and place. Punk acts as a mediating factor and nuisance value as Throbbing Gristle emerged with punk in late 1976 seemingly grappled with it through 1977 and then went on to create and eventually criticise a number of post-punk scenes that had flourished around 1979. Trowell narrates the story through a series of live performances as this is a point where Throbbing Gristle interact with the various city-scenes around England during their original period of operation (1975-1981). The band reflected (and incorporated into their live music) key tropes form the time both ‘mainstream’ and fringe (subcultural avant-garde art counter-culture taboo subjects extremes) such that Throbbing Gristle events had an impact and affect and Trowell traces these as a series of impressions and reverberations amongst fans who went on to do their own music and projects.

When worlds collide: How a classically trained cellist integrates a heavy metal music camp into her learning ecology
The creation of connections between learning spaces is a central dimension of music learning. However these connections do not arise automatically but require specific efforts from the learners. In this article we look at these efforts focusing in particular on the conflicts that can arise often due to the association of places with certain genres. As an example we attend to a classically trained cellist participating in the Wacken Music Camp a learning space for heavy metal music. Among other things our findings can help music educators to understand the alienation many students feel from school music lessons and we also offer perspectives on how to address this alienation productively.

Contemporary Black Urban Music: The Revolution of Hip-Hop, Ron Westray (2023)
Review of: Contemporary Black Urban Music: The Revolution of Hip-Hop Ron Westray (2023)
London: First Hill Books 250 pp.
ISBN 978-1-83998-527-0 h/bk $49.95

Conspicuous co-optation: Exploring the subculture and pop culture connection at Gainesville’s Fest
The purpose of this study is to understand the subcultural and commercial overlap that exists in the physical signifiers conspicuously co-opted by attendees and artists at Fest a punk rock festival held in Gainesville Florida. Contemporary punk rock does not exist in an insular space shielded from the influences of popular culture current events and mass media. Rather this intersection of subculture and popular culture offers valuable perspective on how punk fans’ relationship to commercial culture remains a significant influence in this space today. This participant observation study investigates the co-opted and reinvented signifiers evident in this subcultural space at the 2022 festival looking at a range of festival elements such as band merchandise and performances as evidence of this phenomenon.

‘Teddy boy, he’s got them all’: An interview with Ted Carroll about Rock On, Chiswick and Ace Records
Growing up in Ireland Ted Carroll came of age during the rock ’n’ roll boom of the late 1950s and ultimately moved to London where he set up the Rock On record stall near Portobello Market in 1971. Rock On which later opened as a shop in Camden would play a huge role in the underground music scene throughout the 1970s and 1980s and the record label that grew out of it Chiswick Records was one of the first independent labels in the United Kingdom to release punk records by a number of key bands. Carroll and his partners would go on to expand and diversify their output particularly on the enduringly successful reissue label Ace. Carroll has opened a new Rock On shop in the last year and here discusses collecting punk rock and independent labels with Michael Connerty.