Bleep

Press Release

The first decades of the 21st century saw dramatic changes in the music industry as new technology transformed creation, communication, and consumption. Amid this turmoil one change occurred relatively quietly, almost naturally: so-called bedroom producers, music makers raised on hip-hop and electronic music, went from anonymous, often unseen creators to artists in their own right. In Bedroom Beats and B-sides, Laurent Fintoni details the rise of bedroom producers at the turn of the century through the stories of the instrumental hip-hop and electronic music scenes that made this rise possible. From trip-hop, illbient, and IDM to leftfield hip-hop, glitch, and beats, the book explores how these scenes acted as incubators for new ideas about composition and performance that are now taken for granted. Combining social, cultural, and musical history with extensive research and over 100 interviews, the book tells the B-side stories of hip-hop and electronic music from the 1990s to the 2010s, exploring the evolution of a modern beat culture from local scenes to global community via the diverse groups of idealists on the fringes who made it happen and the external forces that shaped their efforts. The first comprehensive history of the instrumental hip-hop and electronic scenes that have shaped the rise of the bedroom producer as a legitimate artist and performer, from trip-hop and IDM in the 1990s to the beat scene of the late 2000s. A truly unique and global look at a thirty-year period of modern music culture based on a decade of research and travel across Europe, North America, and Japan. Cover hand drawn by renowned hip hop illustrator Dan Lish. Includes quotes and stories drawn from more than 100 interviews with producers, DJs and label owners such as James Lavelle, Luke Vibert, Mark Pritchard, Flying Lotus, DJ Spooky, Hudson Mohawke, Kode9, Prefuse 73, Anti Pop Consortium and many more. “Laurent Fintoni has created an epic tome of information. It’s one of the best examples of connecting the dots between many facets of electronic music. He writes similar to a DJ seamlessly transitioning from one point to the other, with visual vigor. Not since Kwodo Eshun’s More Brilliant Than The Sun, has someone delved this deep between the beats.” King Britt (Professor UCSD/Producer) “Finally a deep dive into one of the more interesting new musical trajectories of the modern era.” Sam Valenti IV (Ghostly)