Did you know that the CO2 equivalents generated by consumption of recorded music have not declined in the era of music streaming—supposedly an era of music dematerialized, rendered virtual—but instead have as much as doubled? Kyle Devine knows, and in Decomposed he teaches us about such things with intelligence, humaneness, and passion. His book is at once a history of materialities of recording, from lac beetle resins in the 1920s to today's energy-sump server farms, and a manifesto for ecological scrutiny of our musical behaviors.
Gary Tomlinson, John Hay Whitney Professor of Music and Humanities, Yale University; author of A Million Years of Music
Kyle Devine brilliantly excavates the political ecologies of sound reproduction, moving from nineteenth-century chemical labs and shellac harvests to Thai vinyl record plants and the infrastructures of streaming media. Decomposed is a highly original and wonderfully compelling book—a must-read for anyone interested in music or the materiality of media.
Nicole Starosielski, Associate Professor, NYU; author of The Undersea Network
Kyle Devine opens us to oil wells, studio albums, digital accessories, and much else —creative, horrible, and in between—on which music reproduction depends. Itself rendered with precision and elegance, Decomposed is fit for music lovers, social scientists, and all citizens of a tremulous earth.
Harvey Molotch, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, NYU and UCSB; author of Where Stuff Comes From: How Toasters, Toilets, Cars, Computers and Many Other Things Come to Be as They Are
Decomposed is a superbly lucid study that places recording in the broad human history of industrialization, globalization, resource extraction, labor exploitation, and ecological damage, debunking ideas of music's inherent goodness or intangibility. An immensely rigorous and compelling study, an absolute must-read, this book paves the way for a new ethics of music consumption.
Anna Morcom, Mohindar Brar Sambhi Chair of Indian Music, University of California, Los Angeles
“This is an important and brilliant book.”
Popular Music
"Devine's critical history of recording formats throws a necessary wrench into [the] mythology of musical purity."
The New Yorker
Winner of IASPM Canada Book Prize, 2020
