Loading the Silence

Prize: Winner of The Rebecca Coyle Prize 2014, International Association for the Study of Popular Music - Australia/New Zealand

'In Loading the Silence Linda Kouvaras does a real favour for those seeking to learn about and from the political sonicities of the avant garde of the 1970s and since. That she does so in the context of Australian musical practices makes the stories she tells all the more fascinating for those of us regrettably less familiar with that continent's (sometimes "un-Australian") experimentality. Refreshingly, Kouvaras's critical curiosity embraces musical practices and places: the leaky sounds and voicings of women's bodies, the hospital, the unwatery landscape itself... A convincing critical compendium is the result.' George McKay, University of Salford, UK

'... Kouvaras has created a reference of vital importance, a book of international significance that is likely to be considered a seminal work in the study of sound art.' Music Forum 'Loading the Silence functions as both an entrance to Australian sound-art for those with no great knowledge of the field, and as a work of cultural musicology, which identifies the importance of various, often contradictory, strains of postmodernism within this body of work, theorising a close link between sound-art and the altermodern - that is, the post-postmodern. It also acts as a fine introduction to the key concepts and approaches behind sound-art in general'. Context

'This is an excellent reference book with a huge bibliography... giving readers the opportunity to probe deeply into Australia's seminal media art scenes.'
- Aurelio Cianciotta, Neural