Extreme Music: the book

Hi everyone. Things have been a little quiet lately at Anomaly Index. There are a few reasons for this, but one of the key factors is that I’ve been preparing my very own book for publication. If you like the deep examinations of obscure and unusual music featured in Anomaly Index, then you are quite likely to enjoy Extreme Music, which just came out through Feral House:

This book is an examination of various different extreme conceptual themes within fringe music. As just a taster of many, there are chapters on topics like Harsh Noise Wall, extremely fast music (including music with BPMs over 1000), found music, extremely long compositions, and anti-records. Each chapter includes original research and interviews with artists. The focus is on the stories behind different strange musical artifacts, and the ideas that propel them. I conducted over 100 interviews to assemble this book. That includes interviews with people/acts like Romain Perrot (Vomir), John Olson, and Bull of Heaven, to name just a few. The book is designed to be interesting and readable, as opposed to dense and academic.

I will say: This book is exhaustive! To give you a sense, here is just page one of the three-page table of contents:

Anyhow, this is one thing that has been keeping me busy lately. If you’re interested in the strange, poorly-documented fringes of music, then I do suspect you will enjoy this book. Thank you for allowing this bit of self-promotional indulgence; more Anomaly Index posts are coming soon!