Turn on, tune in, drift off : ambient music's psychedelic past /
Turn On, Tune In, Drift Off: Ambient Music's Psychedelic Past rethinks the history and socioaesthetics of ambient music as a popular genre with roots in the psychedelic countercultures of the late twentieth century. It narrates how anglophone audio producers and DJs between the mid-1960s and ce...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Oxford University Press,
[2023].
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| Summary: | Turn On, Tune In, Drift Off: Ambient Music's Psychedelic Past rethinks the history and socioaesthetics of ambient music as a popular genre with roots in the psychedelic countercultures of the late twentieth century. It narrates how anglophone audio producers and DJs between the mid-1960s and century's end commodified drone- and loop-based records as ambient audio, slow, spare, spacious audio sold as artful personal media for creating atmosphere, fostering contemplation, transforming awareness and stilling the body. The book takes a trip through landmark ambient audio productions and related discourses, including marketing rhetoric, artist manifestoes and interviews and music criticism, that during this time plotted the conventions of what became known as ambient music. These productions include nature sounds records, experimental avant-garde pieces, "space music" radio, psychedelic and cosmic rock albums, electronic dance music compilations, and of course, explicitly "ambient" music, all of which popularized ambient audio through vivid atmospheric concepts. In paying special attention to the sound of ambient audio, to ambient audio's relationship with the psychedelic, New Age and EDM countercultures of the United States and United Kingdom and to the coincident coevolution of therapeutic audio and "head music" across alternative media and independent music markets, this history situates ambient music as a highbrow framing and stylization of ongoing practices in crafting hip audio to alter consciousness, comportment and mood. In so doing, Turn On, Tune In, Drift Off illuminates the social and aesthetic rifts and alliances informing one of today's most popular musical experimentalisms. |
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| Physical Description: | xi, 376 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references, discography and index. |
| ISBN: | 0190699302 9780190699307 9780190699314 0190699310 |