Matt Phillips - Böcker

In the hierarchy of British jazz & rock musicians, the electrifying guitarist, composer, and bandleader John McLaughlin arguably holds an unassailable position at the very top.Across dozens of official studio and live recordings encompassing solo albums, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Shakti, and co-headlining group projects, GRAMMY award–winner John McLaughlin has consistently enthralled and surprised with boundary-pushing, genre-defying music. He revolutionized guitar playing with his virtuosic style, carving out one of the most critic-proof and prolific careers in modern times, and was also Miles Davis’s guitarist of choice on epochal albums In a Silent Way, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Bitches Brew, and Live-Evil. Drawing on hundreds of sources and interviews with key collaborators, Matt Phillips takes us on an exciting journey through McLaughlin’s entire career: his early years on the London pop scene; his flirtations with the European avant-garde; groundbreaking work with Miles Davis and Tony Williams; electrifying fusion groups The Mahavishnu Orchestra and Shakti; special projects with the likes of Chick Corea, Sting, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Carlos Santana, and Jeff Beck; hugely popular acoustic collaborations with Paco De Lucia, Larry Coryell, and Al Di Meola; and his 4th Dimension band. This is the first major book to illuminate McLaughlin’s entire output from 1980–2020. Including never-before-seen photographs, it’s a thrilling ride through the life of a master musician.

One of the most iconic and successful British bands of the 1980s, Level 42 are also arguably the ultimate 'fusion' unit, streamlining their energetic early jazz/funk/rock sound into slick, effortlessly-soulful pop music. Encompassing eleven studio albums, including twenty UK top 40 hits and two US top twenty singles, their catalogue, in many ways, defines the '80s but also reflects their musical virtuosity and vibrant eclecticism, peppering tracks with influences from Herbie Hancock, Return To Forever and The Mahavishnu Orchestra. Emerging from the so-called 'Britfunk' scene, Level 42 developed from being one of the most electrifying live acts of the era to become a true songwriters' collective, delivering the effervescent, ubiquitous hits 'The Sun Goes Down (Living It Up)', 'Something About You' and 'Lessons In Love'.Level 42 - on track is the first in-depth study of the band's illustrious catalogue, track by track, album by album, with recording information, musical analysis, studio gossip, full musician credits and contributions from Mark King and Gary Husband. The book also covers the solo projects of the band's many members. Level 42 - on track is a must for fans and those interested in the wider musical landscape of the 1980s and 1990s.

The word «parasite» evokes nearness and feeding: the Greek parasitos is «one who eats at the table of another». In biology, a parasitic organism is the beneficiary of an unequal relation with its host. The social parasite, too, is one recognized or misrecognized as the unproductive recipient of one-way exchange. In communications theory, meanwhile, static or interference («parasite», in French) is the useless information which clouds the channel between sender and receiver.In 1980, Michel Serres’s Le Parasite mobilized the concept of the parasite to figure noises, disruptions, destructions and breakdowns at the heart of communication systems, social structures and human relations. Drawing on Serres’s work, the chapters of this volume – organized around two conceptual poles, exploitation and interference – examine French literature (Villiers de l’Isle Adam, Proust, contemporary poetry), film (Nicolas Philibert, Claus Drexel), art (Sophie Calle, contemporary «glitch art») and philosophy (Descartes, Serres, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari), alongside medieval hagiography, immunology, communications theory and linguistic anthropology. The volume thereby demonstrates the new and continued relevance of the figure of the parasite in thinking about transmission, attachment, use, abuse and dependency.