Records Ruin the Landscape / review

I have reviewed David Grubbs’ book Records Ruin the Landscape for Music & Literature. Writing a review after devoting the last few years to my new book has been a rewarding process and one that has generated further writing already. It reminded me of how neither of my English books, En abîme and F.M.R.L.**, would have existed without my years in Italy working as a journalist: listening to records, reading books, reviewing them. There is a rigour that comes from writing reviews–an activity in close proximity with reading and listening–that thickens thought and demands attention.

(Then there’s a refusal of / removal from writing reviews, that occurs necessarily in waves — but this is the topic of another blog post)

** I need to write something about titles…

 

A Capriccio for D A N C E H A L L

The new issue of D A N C E H A L L, the journal published by Psykick Dancehall Recordings, is out.

I wrote a Capriccio – remembering the sounds in Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty, as they evoke an idea of Rome filtered in my text through E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Princess Brambilla.

More notes on listening, writing, reference and presence, that eventually didn’t find their way into my book but that belong to the same constellation.

Here are the first and the last pages of the text: