The theme of this research companion is ‘connectivity and the global reach of electroacoustic music and sonics arts made with technology’ (p. 11). This book is purposed as a snapshot taken in 2016 of ‘music of the world’ (p. 10) as it relates to electronic/electroacoustic music (EEM); electronically mediated music or, simply put, music that utilises electronics at any point from its conception to the delivery of a work. It is a compilation representing various takes on the overarching theme of reaching out as a two-way mutual connection of interaction.

The book is organised into three parts with an excellent introduction written by the editor/author, which serves as a view into the received academic EEM canon in the British university system. No claims are made to cover an exhaustive state of knowledge regarding electronic music, terms, artists, techniques, cultures, genres or histories. Rather, the intro is a discussion of ‘first generation vocabulary’ (p. 4) to orient readers and is a useful overview of early history/vocabulary of academic EEM. Anyone interested in EEM would find this a good companion for their research as a handy reference. In the opening statements of the book, the author acknowledges biases in early academic texts on EEM. This openness regarding the journey of re-evaluating his own views and formative training in research/teaching at the university level shows refreshing promise for the subsequent pages. The flow from chapter to chapter can be read as a discussion between authors.

Part I, ‘Global reach – local identities’, focuses on reaching towards a more global composite of knowledge by understanding local identities that influence and lend to the rhizomic spread of EEM (p. 12). In ‘Research-creation in Latin America’, the nine authors identify as/use the term Latin American (LA) and share the valuable history of EEM innovators who pre-date British electroacoustic music studios, works and names found in most eurocentric EEM curricula.

Contemporary LA EEM practitioners and technicians’ works are featured as well. For instance, Medeiros’s work with ‘choice for advanced sensing instrumentation and signal processing techniques to improve the performance of digital music instruments’ (p. 23) and LaRosa’s focus on recording pre-Columbian instruments as a means to sonically document the ancient civilisations that created them while incorporating transformative modern computing techniques (p. 25). Each contribution provides a wealth of cultural and technical information and is a great start for this book. From here we travel across the globe in ‘Electronic music in East Asia’ by Marc Battier (France) and Lin-Ni Liao (Taiwan) through a dialogue with both the Western world and an exchange within East Asia regarding EEM. The authors offer an overall landscape view of each area’s sociopolitical/cultural histories as well as documented EEM development. For example, the earliest believed recorded tape compositions among Japanese electronic music composers is dated 1953 ‘which was realised at the JOQR studio of Nippon Cultural Broadcasting by Mayuzumui Toshiro’ (p. 58). EEM pioneers are listed along with their backgrounds, works and credentials as we are guided through milestones in Asian EEM associations, festivals, styles, trends and academic studies. The section then zooms into Leigh Landy’s (UK) earnest inquiry into the distinct sound of Chinese EEM (p. 81), considering ‘most forms of contemporary music (in a Western sense) were banned during the Cultural Revolution from 1966–1976’ (p. 77). Through interviews with both conservatory composers such as Zhang Xiafu (b. 1954) from the Central Conservatory of Music in Bejing and underground EEM musicians such as Yan Jun across several generations, ‘The three paths: cultural retention in contemporary Chinese electroacoustic music’ uncovers commonalities in composition between these two groups: 1) sampling; 2) the use of Chinese instruments and of musical approaches; and 3) inspiration from (non-music related) Chinese culture (p. 92).

From local identities to ‘Technologies of genre: digital distinctions in Montreal’ by Patrick Valiquet (Canada) we move to genre theory through the lens of the author’s experience among musicians and artists outside of the academic electroacoustic tradition in Montreal. This chapter calls out selective canonisation among other transparent tropes (p. 99) by outlining a shifting landscape of various systems by which definitions can be calibrated and quantised by musicologists and EEM academic historians as a method of tagging and categoring music. It might be eye-opening for academic readers regarding the compulsion for vetting or legitiming underground/experimental/non-academic/noise-scene/‘bedroom producer’ musicians where technology democratisation has made this a topic of discussion in the first place. ‘Scholars have persisted in selecting “intelligent” dance music genres for insertion into the lineage of high art engagements with repurposed media and non standard synthesis (Thomson 2004; Kelly 2009; Haworth 2013)’ (p. 98). Ironies and insights are highlighted throughout the chapter along with examples from EEM festivals.

Part I closes with Hillegonda Rietveld’s (UK) ‘Dancing in the technoculture’, which takes a look at subgenres and cultural/technocratic influences in electronic dance music’s ‘techno-culture’ development. The chapter touches on city nodes as points of development in local identities from Detroit Techno, Chicago House, Goa Psytrance to Jamaican roots in dubstep and UK breakbeat, DnB and jungle and shares a substantial discography. Rietveld then discusses outreach through digitally networked communication environments online, music distribution platforms and social media as EDM continues to dance beyond a variety of boundaries and borders.

Part II, ‘Awareness, consciousness, participation’, focuses attention towards social inclusion and empowerment of participation across lines of division as it pertains to technology, respect and the environment. Equitable two-way outreach with a view to build relationships is epitomised by Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freires’s participatory practice model. It is a primary influence on the concepts and methodologies incorporated in ‘Participatory sonic arts: the Som de Mare project – towards a socially engaged art of sound in the everyday’ by Pedro Rebelo (Portugal) and Rodrigo Cicchelli Velluso (Brazil).

Freire stated ‘nobody educates anybody else, nobody educates himself, people educate each other through their interactions of the world (Freire 1993)’ (p. 142). The authors document the influence of the socioeconomic/political state of the favelas in Mare, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as expressed by local participants through engagement with sonic/embodied experiences. A shared vocabulary was activated by joining ‘sound studios, acoustic ecology, music, education and, art criticism’ (pp. 138, 146). The project resulted in three galleries of works created from collective themes articulating ‘aspects of identity, relationship with place, personal and shared memory’ (p. 152).

Another view on participation driven projects is presented in ‘The problem with participation’ by Atau Tanaka (Japan) and Adam Parkinson (UK) as the authors interrogate their own/colleagues’ experience and outcomes with case studies involving community participation ranging from 2008 to 2015 (mostly in the UK and a few in the United States, France and Japan). Facets such as workshopping, stances on best practices in pedagogy as well as defining participants’ roles as end users/performers/subjects are well documented and explained. Their view on the interdisciplinarity aspect of projects is that collaboration of various disciplines should not be performative for the sake of ‘naive positivism’ (p. 173) but be purposed to inform and enrich each discipline involved. From here we move to an example of mutually beneficial interdisciplinary practice through ‘The agency of sonic art in changing climates’ by Leah Barclay (Australia), which shares the roots and practice of acoustic ecology – the combination of art and science as a ‘call to engagement’ (p. 198). The central theme across two of Barclays pieces in this chapter is community connection through environmental stewardship by listening to the environment. Here she showcases a practice anchored in respect for symbiosis between the communities and the environments with which she engaged spanning locations across the Amazon to Taiwan. Cooperation and coevolution gives rise to a discussion involving human physiology, technology, exosomatic systems and posthumanism in ‘Tuning and metagesture after new natures’ by Sally Jane Norman (New Zealand). This chapter goes into how social, technical and physiological ‘organs’ contribute to metagestures used to play instruments or systems that allow access to ‘forms of biological and cosmological existence that extend our sense of the intelligible universe’ (p. 204).

Part II concludes with a chapter on biological information explored through brain computer interfacing (BCI) in ‘Music neurotechnology: a natural progression’ by Eduardo Reck Miranda (Brazil) and Joel Eaton (UK). Reaching out by reaching in becomes an interdisciplinary and inclusive practice through music neurotechnology. This chapter is a walk through four works as an introduction to first steps towards developing ‘interactive musical computers based on neurochips’ (p. 223). From researching the behavior of neuronal tissue to methods for music composition informed by neurobiology resulting in rhythms driven by simulated neural networks, the application and development of brain–computer music interfacing (BCMI) was used in a performance by the Paramusical Ensemble (Plymouth University, UK) and separately in an audiovisual performance using hybrid BCMI (p. 241).

Part III, ‘Extending performance and interaction’, is a future-facing discussion on reaching through technology, be it through innovations in practice on to networked performances as a neural network of connection over distance. It presents various programs and tools as a conceptual prosthesis for interaction and experience (p. 14). Before looking to the future (p. 13), ‘Rendering the invisible: BEAST and the performance practice of acousmatic music’ includes several figures throughout that illustrate the BEAST speaker array layouts over the years and detailed information about Harrison’s (UK) own research in spatial sound including multichannel composition, acoustic music performance, stereo diffusion, mixer configurations, his own diffusion (graphic) scores and experiences with other spatial systems/venues. He concedes that these kinds of systems remain specialised with limited access in their reach where a wider range of composers and audiences are concerned. Yet, he remains interested and hopeful, in spite of his suspicions, regarding ambisonic systems, research and works that involve high-order spatialisation. Blending old and new practices, Emmerson and Fields (UK) discuss various ways of organising space, time, telitivity and affordances through a collaborative global lens of sound-based networked performances in ‘Where are we? Extended music practice on the internet’. Examples of systems/performances from 2010 to 2016 are presented while simultaneously considering the previous 20-plus years of network music history. Currently, in 2022, telematics and synchronistic/asynchronistic remote performance systems/research continue to make progress as they are of great importance across the spectrum of the arts and global communications. This chapter provides ample information as well as language to continue building and discussing development in this area.

The book ends with Mick Grierson’s (UK) ‘Creative coding for audiovisual art: the CodeCircle platform’, which talks about an online web-based programming tool developed and maintained by Goldsmiths University. It is a browser based integrated development environment (IDE). It was developed as an attempt to support learning of creative coding for interactive audiovisual computer programs (p. 313). It skips the time-consuming compilation step when coding and creating programs, allowing users to test ‘just-in-time’ to understand the relationships between their actions and any associated outcomes more efficiently. It may increase intuitive leaps to occur while also making the process of programming more engaging (p. 318). The program was one of the first, in the pedological arena, to offer a collaborative code environment where individuals may work on the same code simultaneously in real time (p. 313).

In the opening statement of this book, it seems that the motivation to reach out for more diversity in the EEM curriculum might have been a proactive response during an era when the UK vote for Brexit brought forth underlying xenophobia in England (among other prejudices). While it does address and challenge the ‘myth of origins’ (p. 11) through publishing EEM histories and works of some of the underrepresented countries/cultures while touching on practices that exist outside the walls of academia, there is a seeming gap in diverse representation among contributing authors.

Perhaps a factor for the gap in diversity could be that formal academic publishing channels are sometimes limited in their reach? However, if that is the case, how can academia continue to stretch their reach towards the wider world of diverse practitioners and researchers? Even towards those who might not be institutionally affiliated? Ultimately, Emmerson’s openness to receiving wisdom and insight from a more complete world, rich in varied practices and histories, viewed through a broader lens is evident in this compilation. This step towards the reformation of established systemic views with inclusive practices coming from within its own walls is a springboard towards a promising continuation of the theme of connection and interaction on several levels. Perhaps others will be inspired to challenge structural biases and continue to reach beyond their own bubbles just as Emmerson has done. The global future from 2022 is reaching back, however ‘timey-wimey’ yet, still, gratefully. Here’s to staying curious!