If you haven’t read it, this is a good opportunity. And if you’ve read it, you will agree that it never hurts to keep these books on hand. I don’t know how to define these books: journalistic works, essays, small encyclopedias… Because these books are all of this and more. Maybe, two of the best ways to understand the twentieth century through its music.

 

Loops: A history of the Electronic Music

Javier Blánquez & Omar Morera

“Loops is a pioneering work, being the first study to put on the table all the phenomena related to the use of instruments, equipment and techniques associated with electronic music. Loops starts in 1910 and goes until February 2002, dealing with the same passion the most difficult electronic expressions and those related to the phenomenon of dance music; also draws connections with the world of pop, rock, film and literature. […] A guide or a basic introduction for the uninitiated, a book that helps to find clues and to choose recordings according to different tastes, and also a work to expand the data and knowledge of the experts.”

 

 

The Rest is noise

Alex Ross

“The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century is a voyage into the labyrinth of modern music, which remains an obscure world for most people […] The Rest Is Noise shows why twentieth-century composers felt compelled to create a famously bewildering variety of sounds, from the purest beauty to the purest noise. […] The narrative goes from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties, from Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia to downtown New  York in the sixties and seventies. We follow the rise of mass culture and mass politics, of dramatic new technologies, of hot and cold wars, of experiments, revolutions, riots, and friendships forged and broken.”