A hugely detailed look at one of the hippest rock labels of the 80s – New Zeland's Flying Nun Records, an imprint that also had a huge impact on the rest of the world at the time! Flying Nun were key in helping guitar-based sounds get past the modes of the punk and post-punk years – not shaking off those influences, but refining them, pushing them forward, and really evolving the sound through key groups like The Clean, Chills, Verlains, Bailter Space, and Straightjacket Fits – all of whom really helped pave the way for big indie moments over here in the decade that followed. The book offers up an insane amount of information on Flying Nun – in year-by-year chapters that detail every single release, always with photos and cover art, plus more images too – in a hefty softcover volume that's almost 400 pages, and full color throughout. Book

A stunning book – even more amazing than we were expecting, and we were really expecting a lot! This is a heavy, hardcover, full color volume that takes a deep dig into the world of British jazz during some crucial modern years – presented with oversized images throughout, in the manner of some hefty art book from Taschen or one of those other fancy publishers! Author Richard Morton Jack presents listings for hundreds of crucial albums – each with both front and back cover artwork reproduced in full, in a size that's about a square 9" for most of the records, on pages that are much larger, with text at the bottom on each record, and even inner label reproductions! If you love Brit jazz from this period as much as we do, you'll find plenty to love – as the book contains listings for crucial records by giants like Joe Harriott, Stan Tracey, Graham Collier, Mike Westbrook, John Stevens, Don Rendell, and dozens of others – not just familiar albums, but really rare ones we've never seen before – work on the Lansdowne series on Columbia, and other labels that include RCA, EMI, Argo, and CBS – plus smaller indies too. The book is as beautiful as having an original pressing of one of these gems in your hands – and given that most of the originals go for hundreds of dollars, if/when you can find them, the book is a hell of a deal. Hardcover, 372 pages, and in full color throughout. Book

A mighty hefty book – but that's maybe no surprise, as it contains the collected lyrics of the great Lou Reed – from his early years with The Velvet Underground, through his decades of standout solo material! Reed picked up some unique diction during his solo career, but the book is especially helpful in unpacking some of those early VU lyrics that were sometimes hard to understand amidst all the freak and fuzz – and over the hundreds of pages, it's amazing to see how Lou Reed changes and develops as an artist – building up bravado during some eras, then letting his heart open up in others. This new edition features everything penned by Reed up through his final albums - and also features introductions by Laurie Anderson and Martin Scorcese too. Hardcover edition is 651 pages in all. Book

A wide-ranging book on soundtrack cultures from around the globe – presented as a series of different essays on the music by a variety of different academic who specialize in film music! Mark Slobin edited the volume, and contributes a few early essays on American film music – including a look at the cult around Max Steiner – and other essays look at Bollywood soundtracks, Hindi film music, other cinematic sounds in Chinese, Brazilian, Tamil, Indonesian, Egyptian, Mexican, and other cultures. The book is hefty – 383 pages for this softcover edition, with some black and white images – and contributors include Greg Booth, Abdalla Uba Adamu, Joseph Getter, Marilyn Miller, Sue MC Tuohy, Sumarsam, Eric Galm, Martin Stokes, and Brenda Berrian. Book

An insanely detailed book on the role of drugs in American music – written by a guy who's already written a fair bit about drugs and culture! This time around, Martin Torgoff turns his eye towards the postwar years – looking at the interwoven landscapes of jazz, underground culture, and drugs from the late 40s through the 60s – with chapters that look at both famous figures and lesser-known personas – in a list that includes Billie Holiday, Lester Young, William S Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Charlie Parker, and many more. The book's filled with short chapters that almost each read like a story themselves – never too exploitative, and often never with any sort of judgement at all – just surprising detail about the relation between drugs and performance, writing, or other artistic creation. These short chapters work well to weave together a world behind the scenes – subtle forces that later shaped more famous creations – and the book is a hefty 412 pages, with some black and white images. Book

Beautiful images from the late 70s onwards – posters, advertisements, album covers, and lots of other visual creations used to help showcase the new sounds and styles of the punk and new wave generation! The book is better than we even could have hoped – as it's not just a loose collection of classic records, and instead is a really thoughtful presentation of a wide array of media – divided up into sections that really make sense, often with a fair bit of history and other detail that really illuminates this new movement in style! The book is split in half – half US, and half UK – but also does a great job of linking the images to global trends in aesthetics too. A hefty 335 pages, hardcover, and full color throughout! Book

A hefty paper presentation of the fantastic Smithsonian exhibit of the same name – filled with images from the important showcase at the Museum Of African American History & Culture – and balanced with new essays penned for the book! The book is filled with striking images throughout – of groundbreaking artists, musicians, and even pop culture figures – a lineup that includes Sun Ra, Betty Davis, Black Panther, Nona Hendryx, Jordan Peele, Samuel Delaney, Nick Cave, Octavia Butler, and dozens of others – alongside images from films, books, records, artwork, posters, and other sources – interwoven with writings from Angela Tate, Vernon Reid, NK Jemisin, Eve Ewing, Elaine Nichols, and others. The mix of voices and subjects is huge, and stunning – and this softcover volume is 216 pages, with full color images throughout. Book

A hefty journal that's almost bigger than a book – 300+ pages, all delivered with the kind of well-penned text and really compelling subjects that always makes Blank Forms such a winner! This time around, there's a very long interview with Detroit underground legend Theo Parrish – referenced in the title, and served up with a huge amount of full color images as well – of posters, records, fliers, and more – so that the Theo Parrish section alone is over 175 pages in length! The rest of the book also features a combination of interviews and writings from creative forces – also illustrated – the first a long section that interviews dhrupad singer Amelia Cuni, followed by two pieces penned by her – the second a discussion of the music of Takehisa Kosugi by Akio Suzuki and Aki Onda, followed by writings by Kosugi on the sound objects of Suzuki! 324 pages, softcover, with illustrations throughout. Book

The music scene in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is one that's had an undeniable impact on cultural activity in recent decades – yet it's also one of those scenes that initially happened without most folks taking place – that is, it was a real artist and musician's scene, and not the kind that was easily open to outsiders until many years later! In this really well-done book, Cisco Bradley (who also gave us a great volume on William Parker) digs deep into the earliest days of the Williamsburg scene – that late 80s moment when Manhattan and other spots had become too expensive for the truly creative – and the other side of the East River emerged as a great place to move, live, and continue to make music. Bradley really gets at the criss-crossing elements of the scene at the time – and follows it well into the 21st Century, to a time when the changing real estate market in Brooklyn, and subsequent zoning changes, started to give Williamsburg the same creative fate as Soho, the East Village, and other important New York scenes in previous decades. Different initial chapters look at key spaces as forces – warehouses and lofts, clubs and galleries, and even pirate radio – and later chapters look at the larger forces causing change in the 21st Century. A really hefty book, as well-researched as it is well-written – 388 pages, softcover, with some black and white images. Book

A book that's a typographical masterpiece – a look at letters and signs from around the globe, past and present – organized in a wonderfully striking way! The book is part history, and much more about art and graphic design – as it's filled with page after page of really beautiful images – some that artworks, some that are listings of alphabetic fonts, and some that are just odd signs and photographs from the world at large! Obviously, letters are the main subject matter, but the book is way more than that – a beautifully expanded version of the original A2Z volume, with some great vintage advertising from the European scene – served up in a hefty, full-color, softcover volume, 314 pages in all. Book

A fantastic book of images from the early 80s hip hop scene in New York – put together by a photographer who was right on the scene for a number of key years – and snapped hundreds of images of performers, clubs, street scenes, graffiti artists, and all the other forces that made hip hop happen! The book's a bit like the classic Back In The Days by Jamel Shabazz, but it also goes even further – as Bramly managed to capture a heck of a lot of key DJs and rappers, and also includes comments and memories from many of them too – snippets of text that are every bit as essential as the images – although the images are more than enough on their own! Bramly's got a great eye – both for a key moment, and composition within the frame – and the book is stuffed with images throughout, both color and black and white – in a hefty softcover volume that's over 300 pages in length. Book

A beautiful book, and one that's almost as enjoyable as finding a box of rare records from the funk and soul underground of the 60s and 70s! The book is a huge overview of funk and soul from Ohio – starting with the early 60s, and running up to the big years of Ohio funk that rose on the charts into the 80s – presented here with information on 1700 different artists, 500 record companies, and over 3000 different albums – many presented with label scans and other visual information too! Both the Numero Group and soul historian Dante Carfagna are no strangers to the Ohio scene – as they've both plumbed the depths in recent decades, and have given us no end of fantastic discoveries that we never would have heard otherwise – really wonderful material from Cinncinnatti, Cleveland, Columbus, and other cities – all music that makes up the rich array of scenes and talents presented in the book. There's a very visual presentation to the book – with over 125 pages alone of rare photos, posters, and other images from the scene – next to another huge chapter that features almost 80 more pages of rare record label scans and covers! Next to that, you'll find chapters that list different Ohio record labels, along with releases; Ohio pressing plants and recording studios; and even Ohio funk and soul artists who recorded for non-Ohio and national labels, and some who made no records at all! We love the presentation – as the huge book is very image and information-heavy, with no essays or other writing at all – beautifully done in a hardcover volume, with 350 pages – super-hefty, and a great gateway to continued digging for rare material from this surprising hotbed of funk and soul. And hopefully, we'll see books on the rest of the 49 states to follow in this format! Book

A mighty hefty set of photos of Roxy Music on stage – served up in a massive oversize book that's filled with fan photos from the early days onward! Photographer Jocelyn Fiske has a lifetime love of Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry – and managed to sneak some great shots of the group in the early 70s, then get very serious once their comeback years hit in the later part of the decade – served up here in hundreds of oversized, full color shots of the new romantic years, later solo Bryan Ferry, and even the 21st Century reunion as well! The images are striking – these are definitely not the polished shots of Ferry and the group on the album covers – and from the drenched look of Bryan on stage alone, the whole thing stands as a vivid testimony to the "work" that went into the music of Roxy! Hardcover edition is oversize, 317 pages, and full color throughout. Book

A hefty look at the key role of composition in British jazz during the glorious modern uprising that began in the second half of the 60s – a book that features chapters on key figures from that moment, including Barry Guy, Mike Gibbs, Michael Garrick, Mike Westbrook, John Mayer, and Keith Tippet! Each of the artists had their own way of mixing stricture and improvisation – Mayer in his experiments with Indian music, Guy in his embrace of free jazz, Gibbs in the way he mixed rock influences with avant jazz – a legacy that continues to be hugely influential, all these many years later! And don't mistake "composer" with "classical" – as none of these artists made music that was jazz throughout, not some of the more highbrow experiments on the American scene of the postwar years – an approach that author Duncan Heining gets at well in these pages, then backs up with a great bonus 2CD set of material to illustrate his arguments. Hardcover book is over 300 pages, with some black and white images. Book

A really great idea for a book on records – and one that's completely different than most that we've seen before! Unlike other books of this nature, which are filled with "essential" or "classic" records – this book is full of flops, or records that never really hit the heights, but which are pretty darn great overall! In the eyes of the authors – and our eyes too – all of these records are under-acknowledged gems – some by big names, others by more obscure artists – lots of which never got their full due at the time. The book is filled with some of our favorite records of all time – which is a big hats off to the long list of contributors, who include Miriam Linna, Steve Shelly, Peter Holsapple, Russ Titelman, Marshall Crenshaw, Bob Irwin, Lenny Kaye, and many others – who've come up with a set of essays on titles that include The Living Legend by Baby Huey, Gene Clark & The Gosdin Brothers, Continued by Tony Joe White, Delta Sweete by Bobby Gentry, Entertainment by Family, Desertshore by Nico, Young Mod's Forgotten Story by The Impressions, Roots by The Everly Brothers, Rock Bottom by Robert Wyatt, and lots lots more! The book is filled with records that we love, and that we'd now call classic – served up in a hefty softcover edition that's almost 400 pages in length, with black and white images throughout. Book

A hefty book on the great Otis Redding – one of the best soul singers of all time, even though he left this planet all too soon! Redding's career on record was less than a decade long, but marked by a huge amount of work – not just time in the studio, with the legendary Stax Records – but also countless hours on the road, where Otis honed his talents and perfected his craft – while additionally putting both himself and his talents at risk. Author Mark Ribowsky looks at these years in wonderful depth – mostly with a focus on Redding, but also a strong look at Stax as well – as the partnership between the two was one of the most important in soul music at the time, and continues to have an impact all these many years later. Book is 366 pages, with copious notes at the end – hardcover, and with some black and white images. Book