Drop the record needle on any vinyl album in your collection, then read the first pages of that novel you've been meaning to pick up—the reverberations between them will be impossible to miss. Since Dylan went electric, listening to rock 'n' roll has often been a surprisingly literary experience, and contemporary literature is curiously attuned to the history and beat of popular music. In The Ink in the Grooves, Florence Dore brings together a remarkable array of acclaimed novelists, musicians, and music writers to explore the provocatively creative relationship between musical and literary inspiration: the vitality that writers draw from a three-minute blast of guitars and the poetic insights that musicians find in literary works from Shakespeare to Southern Gothic. Together, the essays and interviews in The Ink in the Grooves provide a backstage pass to the creative processes behind some of the most exciting and influential albums and novels of our time. Contributors: Laura Cantrell, Michael Chabon, Roddy Doyle, Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, William Ferris, Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, Dave Grohl, Peter Guralnick, Amy Helm, Randall Kenan, Jonathan Lethem, Greil Marcus, Rick Moody, Lorrie Moore, the John Prine band (Dave Jacques, Fats Kaplin, Pat McLaughlin, Jason Wilber), Dana Spiotta, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Richard Thompson, Scott Timberg, Daniel Wallace, Colson Whitehead, Lucinda Williams, Warren Zanes.

A photographic look into the world of vinyl record collectors—including Questlove—in the most intimate of environments—their record rooms. Compelling photographic essays from photographer Eilon Paz are paired with in-depth and insightful interviews to illustrate what motivates these collectors to keep digging for more records. The reader gets an up close and personal look at a variety of well-known vinyl champions, including Gilles Peterson and King Britt, as well as a glimpse into the collections of known and unknown DJs, producers, record dealers, and everyday enthusiasts. Driven by his love for vinyl records, Paz takes us on a five-year journey unearthing the very soul of the vinyl community.

The Orpheus Institute celebrates 20 years of artistic research in music Artistic research has come of age, and with it the Orpheus Institute. Founded twenty years ago, the Institute’s purpose from the start has been to pursue research through the practice of musicians. The Orpheus Institute is of the same generation as the field it was established to explore. Like many young adults, artistic research and its structures are still constructing their identity within a wider world. How have they developed? How will they mature? How can they negotiate relationships with institutions, disciplines, and bodies of theory and yet retain the essence of their work—the critical perspective of the artist? In the last two decades there have been major changes in the dynamics and structures of culture, its institutions and constituencies. How can artistic research maintain a productive dialectic between its potential status as a discipline and its core as radical practice? These and related questions are the threads woven through this collection of essays and assessments by present and past members of the Orpheus community—researchers, scholars, administrators, advisors. Together and separately they weave a tapestry of past accomplishments, current research, and future perspectives. They celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Orpheus not with congratulations but with challenges and questions—a job for research, a job for the Institute, a job for the future. The wide range of contributors to this volume includes practitioner-researchers, theorists, and academic leaders from institutions at the forefront of artistic research in music. Contributors Tom Beghin (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Paulo de Assis (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Leonella Grasso Caprioli (Conservatorio di Vicenza), Jonathan Impett (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Esa Kirkkopelto (University of the Arts, Helsinki), Kari Kurkela (University of the Arts, Helsinki), Susan Melrose (Middlesex University, London), Stefan Östersjö (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Gertrud Sandqvist (Malmö Art Academy), Huib Schippers, Vanessa Tomlinson, Paul Draper (Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, Griffith University), Luk Vaes (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Janneke Wesseling/ Kitty Zijlmans (Leiden University)