GREETINGS

Hi, and thanks for visiting - you've reached the blog for NO WAVE, a book on the radical music and film movement in New York in the late 1970's. The book was written by Marc Masters, a contributor to the Wire, Pitchfork, and others, with a foreword and invaluable assistance from No Wave expert Weasel Walter, and the editing expertise of Ziggy Hanaor and Rob Young of Black Dog Publishing, the British imprint which is releasing the book.

Flashing through the New York underground in the late 1970s, No Wave was the ultimate anti-movement. Its bands consisted of artists and poets untrained in music, looking to explode rock and disappear before the smoke cleared. The primary perpetrators – Lydia Lunch’s howling Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, James Chance’s skeletal Contortions, the dark-noise groups Mars and DNA – all drew on primitivism, performance art, and the avant-garde.

NO WAVE traces the history of this noisy and uncompromising genre, from its most famous names down to its many offshoots and sidetracks - from early pioneers like Suicide, to forgotten treasures like Red Transistor and Bush Tetras, to descendents like ESG and Sonic Youth. The book also delves into No Wave cinema, where pioneers like Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, and Beth and Scott B. translated the aggression and innovation of No Wave music to the screen. Illustrated with concert photos, record covers, and other ephemera of the times, and featuring over 30 exclusive interviews, NO WAVE is the definitive guide to a genre whose sounds and ideas still vibrate through alternative culture today.

NO WAVE is already available in the UK (you can order it there by clicking here), and can be pre-ordered in the US by going here. We're just getting this blog started - stay tuned for photos and passages from the book, interview outtakes and other material that we couldn't include in the book, links to reviews and No Wave-related news, and hopefully (rights permitting) video and music from the time period.