Volume 7, Issue 1 – October 2023

We are pleased to announce the launch of Volume 7, Issue 1 of Riffs! This issue is the second of two special issues on Popular Music Materiality, edited by Dr. Iain A. Taylor (University of the West of Scotland). Our contributors explore the materiality of popular music, and the forms, formats, and practices which constitute it. In this issue, we consider popular music, and popular music culture, as a thing, a ‘going on’, as a place where several goings on become entwined.

This issue also includes an interview with Richard Marsh of Pop Will Eat Itself (PWEI) and images of objects and artefacts of memorabilia, taken by the ever-wonderful Riffs photographer Ian Davies as part of his collaboration with PWEI.

To download your free PDF of this issue, click here.

Each of the articles in this issue are listed below. Follow the links to each to download individual PDFs.

The editorial team would like to thank Dr. Iain A. Taylor for his expertise and for developing and editing this issue, and also our contributing authors for experimenting with us. With thanks also to the peer reviewers who worked with us to develop these pieces.

Iain A. Taylor – Editorial

Marisol Pérez Pelayo – The Legacy of the Sun: Cemican, Mesoamerican instruments, and their materiality in metal music

Joshua O. Brew and Eric Sunu Doe – Towards a Sustainable Ecology with Palmwine Music and its Material Culture in Ghana

Kayla Rush – As Long As It’s a Rock Guitar: Sound, materiality, and enskillment among electric guitar learners

Paul Nataraj – Where Can a Record Take Us? Using ‘A’s copy of Fear of a Black Planet to explore ‘nomadic materiality’

Pop Will Eat Itself – In conversation with Iain A. Taylor

Seán Ó Dálaigh – Shit Music

Andrew Ty – The Multiple Bodies In and Out of Music Video: Figuring out an inclusive cross-discovered approach