The edited volume Punk Ethnography is a collection of essays and interviews that provide context to the much acclaimed, and much critiqued, world music label Sublime Frequencies (SF). The label, co-founded by Hisham Mayet, and brothers Alan and Rick Bishop, presents musics and sounds of the “fourth world” (p. 32) in a “cut up” (p. 146), avant-garde framework; it exists as a platform for sound ethnographies that virulently eschew the ivory tower field of ethnomusicology. Punk Ethnography is divided into three main parts, with two “Interlude” sections containing interviews with subjects who are fans of, or who have partnered with, SF in some capacity. Part one provides critical background to SF and the most common critiques of it as a label; part wo focuses on how SF artistically formulates its works; Part three takes a geographic tour of various SF albums, especially those contained in the label’s popular Radio series.

The introductory chapter makes excellent and succinct work of not only explaining SF as an entity and a culture but also preparing readers for what they will encounter in the subsequent chapters. “We would like to make clear that this collection is not conceived as an ethnography of a music label, but rather as a set of critical essays about an ethnographic music label…through a multiplicity of voices and narrative/rhetorical styles” (p. 14). Thus, while most of the pieces in part one might seem to carry an air of SF apologetics—such as a positive examination of the label’s mission by one of its primary contributors David Novak, or a nostalgic take on the punk band “the Sun City Girls” that preceded and heavily influenced the SF label by freelance journalist and sympathetic fan Marc Masters—the chapters in the remaining two parts are varied in critical approach and style.

Throughout Punk Ethnography, authors explore the ideal of the unmediated field recording, the Bishop brothers’ fierce opposition to ethnomusicology, and the aesthetics of “rawness.” Of particular interest are the many ethical questions that have plagued—and continue to plague—the founders’ persistent refusal to attribute authorship to the persons used in/for SF’s productions. As part of its mission, SF prides itself in presenting, without narration and extremely limited liner notes, collages of sounds that constitute the environments—from recordings of local radio broadcasts to clips featuring bird calls and children playing in the street—featured on its albums. Rather than capturing sanitised, high-fidelity audio of singular performances in studios, SF claims to capture the true, “raw” essence of existence in exotic places. Some praise the unmediated recording especially in the face of situations and environments that are already heavily curated by overarching ideologies and agendas (highlighted in E. Tammy Kim’s chapter on SF’s album Radio Pyongyang). Others (notably Andrew McGraw’s chapter on Radio Java) explicitly call out the contradiction in this notion, as there is indeed someone making curating choices about what sound clips to include or discard, and how to cut and arrange them.

The Bishops’ vocal stance against the field of ethnomusicology casts them as anti-establishment Robin Hood-esque heroes of the masses who cannot access the hidden treasures of the outside world. They “rescue” Other musics and sounds from obscurity and disappearance due to Western cultural imperialism and its modern advances. This perception is more fairly stated and justified directly by Julie Strand’s highly experiential chapter on Bush Taxi Mali, and ironically by Joseph Salem’s profusely academic chapter on Radio Palestine. The Robin Hood perception crumbles, however, as it becomes apparent that SF’s avowed artistic and ethnographic methods tend to project something akin to a “naturalist” observational stance, which has an odious history of comparing humans in their “natural state” to non-human animals, as described in Lynda Paul’s chapter on SF’s ideology of “rawness.” The image further crumbles in light of SF’s commitment to scant attribution, and distance from critical examination and political discussions clouding the raw essence of the works: this distance runs the risk of dishonouring the lives of the very people whose sounds the albums are meant to highlight, as indicated by Rachel Lear’s chapter on the album Latinamericarpet.

The main strength of Punk Ethnography is the varied nature of the critical takes: as a whole, it allows readers to absorb many different informed perspectives and come to their own conclusions about SF. In a way, however, it does reify the Bishop brothers’ primary contention with the field of ethnomusicology in terms of limited access to the ivory tower: this book is probably more for the select audience of self-reflexive ethnomusicologists than it is for the average reader of punk-related, or “world music”-related non-fiction. While certainly a strong contribution to academia, one wonders if this book might not have benefited from accepting some of SF’s criticism as valid.