Giacomo Bottà – författare

The book is a comparative study of popular music cultures in 1980s Torino, Tampere, Manchester and Düsseldorf and their relation to the industrial city as imaginary, as heritage and as everyday reality.Popular music genres, such as hardcore punk, house, industrial, post-punk and heavy metal, share a common origin in 1980s decaying industrial cities. All these genres have been canonized and understood as “scores” for grey, gloomy, decaying urban industrial environments or for their evocation, but is there an organic relationship between de-industrialization and this kind of music production?

The book is a comparative study of popular music cultures in 1980s Torino, Tampere, Manchester and Düsseldorf and their relation to the industrial city as imaginary, as heritage and as everyday reality.Popular music genres, such as hardcore punk, house, industrial, post-punk and heavy metal, share a common origin in 1980s decaying industrial cities. All these genres have been canonized and understood as “scores” for grey, gloomy, decaying urban industrial environments or for their evocation, but is there an organic relationship between de-industrialization and this kind of music production?

The night and popular music have long served to energise one another, such that they appear inextricably bound together as trope and topos. This history of reciprocity has produced a range of resonant and compelling imaginaries, conjured up through countless songs and spaces dedicated to musical life after dark. Nocturnes: Popular Music and the Night is one of the first volumes to examine the relationship between night and popular music. Its scope is interdisciplinary and geographically diverse.The contributors gathered here explore how the problems, promises, and paradoxes of the night and music play off of one another to produce spaces of solace and sanctuary as well as underpinning strategies designed to police, surveil and control movements and bodies. This edited collection is a welcome addition to debates and discussions about the cultures of the night and how popular music plays a continuing role in shaping them.

A squat in West Berlin, a farmhouse in Fellegara, a garret in Reggio Emilia, a cellar in Bologna - where is Affinità - Divergenze Fra Il Compagno Togliatti e Noi really from? This book traces the tangled geographies behind one of Italy’s most enigmatic records asking: how do places shape music, and how does music make space? Giacomo Bottà explores the groundbreaking album by Italian band CCCP – Fedeli alla Linea, arguing that their aesthetic, musical and ideological approach embodies an ‘imaginary and affective territorialization’ caught between maximalism and minimalism. Through chapters that analyze the band’s origins, the album as an artifact and its deeper theoretical implications, the book explores CCCP’s ambiguous position, their unique sound and their lasting influence on Italian alternative music. Ultimately, this study reveals the band’s out-of-time and out-of-place nature, capturing their controversial yet pioneering role in shaping creative identities across Europe.