Riffs - Volume 4, Issue 1

In my role as co-managing editor of Riffs: Experimental Writing on Popular Music, I’m pleased to announced the launch of Volume 4, Issue 1 of Riffs! This issue is guest edited by Edmund Hunt (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire) and is the first of two issues which consider the relationship between music and technology.

As is usual with Riffs, the contributors were asked to respond to a prompt. For this issue, that prompt was a quote from Christina Kubisch, taken from The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music, ed. by Nick Collins and Julio d’Escriván, 2nd edn (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 2017:176)

Technology is something I love and hate at the same time. One one hand the absence of any kind of technology means silence (or an environment of natural sounds which we hear much clearer because of the general silence); on the other hand, you need technology to make art

In response to this, we received some fanastic articles from contributors across the world, all of which are available to read in full on the Riffs website.

On behalf of the editorial team, I’d like to express my thanks to all those who contributed to this issue, particularly during strange and difficult times. For the first time, this issue is one of two on the same topic, and we look forward to working with Edmund Hunt as our Guest Editor and to continuing with our theme of music and technology later this year. Until then, please explore the newest issue of Riffs! by visiting the website and reading the various pieces.

Here’s the cover of Riffs Vol 4 - Issue 1.

If you’d like to discuss my work with Riffs, or would like to talk about working together, please feel free to drop me a line, or to say hello on Twitter.