Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

The theme for the fourth Totally Huge New Music Festival was 'Immanence', and this diverse collection of papers reflects on this theme in many different ways. From Black Metal to symphonic opportunity via John Cage and the teaching experience, this Sound Scripts volume traverses a range of musical territory as wide and eclectic as the festival it made a part of.

The mix of papers reflects contemporary approaches to the philosophy, practice, culture and structure of music, and surprising links occur for a conference whose call for papers was (deliberately) without a theme. Colin Black's attempts to develop what he calls a 'terrestrial' connection with music and the land contrast with Jim Denley's discussion of improvisation and place in Australia. Darren Jorgensen's discussion of British industrial group Coil reflect some of the ideas explored in Sam Gillies's exploration of Perth's own industrial noise duo Sub Ordnance. Michael Noble's discussion of 'becoming' explores a very different approach to thinking about music than that discussed in Jonathan W. Marshall's in-depth investigation into absence and the self in writing about sound art. Ben Byrne and Kynan Tan discuss electronic music practices from differing points of view, with Chris De Groot's paper examining the possibilities for sound art in film scores and Lindsay Vickery's methodical examination of non-linear structures providing a unique analysis of time and structure in the musical arts.