Live Wires

The writing is easy to read, knowledgeable without being painfully esoteric. A remarkable Recommended Listening appendix should keep us all busy for at least a decade to come . . . We are merely passengers on this intellectually stimulating and frequently entertaining ride . . . This is a wonderful guide through a still-evolving phenomenon and one that now, more than ever, deserves our attention. * Spectrum Culture *
The key to success with a book of this type is balance; too much detail and the layman is left baffled, but too little leaves more informed readers with a craving for chewy morsels of depth. Where authors such as Simon Reynolds employed a sociological approach in Energy Flash and David Toop’s Ocean Of Sound was one of philosophy, Daniel Warner examines technology in order to analyse the music. He gets it just about right . . . where the author succeeds is by injecting a real sense of his own passion into the text . . . Where descriptive sections could have been burdened with the dryness of unnecessary academic heft, they are lightened here by an authorial style that indicates a love of the music alongside a wealth of knowledge. Definitely best consumed whilst imbibing his excellent chapter of recommended listening. * Shindig *
This is a good book. Scholarly without being dry, it's hard to imagine a better narrative account of the way the sonic experiments of the 50's avant-garde segued into the sound-world we inhabit today . . . If you want to know how, for example, culturally and technically, the turntable became an instrument, Warner can tell you – and he does so absorbingly. * Record Collector *
Warner gives us just enough theory to grasp the significance of each development or key work. It’s a good introduction to the artistic aims and means of an ever-expanding sound world, and – from Varèse to Blondie to Squarepusher to DJ Shadow – makes for an invigorating and nostalgic playlist. * BBC Music Magazine *
an excellent examination of how five key electronic technologies – the tape recorder, circuit, computer, microphone, and turntable – revolutionized musical thought, production, and performance . . . Music has long been part of our sonic soundscape. But, beginning in the 1950s, and continuing through to current day, seemingly endless combinations of new technologies and creative endeavors created experimental electronic music. Live Wires captures that synergy with engaging history and personal insights . . . Those readers with some awareness of the background Warner provides will find the story engaging. Those with no history with electronic music will find it a sonic adventure well worth reading. * Leonardo *
If we dare mention Christmas, this book would make a perfect stocking filler for Electronica fans… oh, right. Yes, that’s you. Self-gift? * Electrowow *
There can’t really be two ways to say this: Dan Warner’s Live Wires is a good book. Dan Warner’s intimately experiential/technical descriptions of his favorite instances of every kind and genre of electronic music in the experimental culture – a culture that almost obliterated the boundaries between “classical” and “pop” – will get you right inside of his sensitively perceptive ear and his deep knowledge and understanding of the sense and implication of what he has, and you will, come to hear. * Benjamin Boretz, composer *