'Volcanic Tongue' by David Keenan - Special Signed Limited Edition Hardback with CD and Fanzine

Signed by Julian House and David Keenan - Hardback - This LIMITED EDITION Ships with a bonus compilation CD curated by David and Matthew Jones of Warp Records, plus a 12,000 word fanzine of additional content from the author. The CD comes mounted in the book, 

Publishes March 27th

Volcanic Tongue presents the first ever collection of multi-award-winning author David Keenan's music writing. Keenan has been writing about music since publishing his first fanzine, inspired by The Pastels and Scotland’s DIY music scene, in 1988. Since then, he has written about music for Melody Maker, NME, Uncut, Mojo, The New York Times, Ugly Things, The Literary Review, The Social and, most consistently, The Wire.

Volcanic Tongue was also the name of the record shop and mail order that Keenan ran with his partner Heather Leigh in Glasgow from 2005-2015.

Volcanic Tongue features the best of his reviews, interviews and think pieces, with exclusive in-depth conversations between Keenan and Nick Cave, members of revered industrial bands Coil and Throbbing Gristle, krautrock legends like Faust, Shirley Collins, the first lady of English folk, Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, German auto-destructives Einstürzende Neubauten, as well as discographical analysis of the back catalogues of Sonic Youth and John Fahey, extensive writings on free jazz and obsessive in-depth digs into favourites like Pere Ubu, Metal Box-era Public Image Ltd, Sun Ra, guitarist and vocalist John Martyn and many more. It is an essential addition to any music fan's bookshelf and a primer for the crème-de-la-crème of avant-garde listening.

This first collection of his much-vaunted criticism functions as an extended love letter to the revolutionary music of the 20th century and the incredible culture that sustained it.

Author, David Keenan, said: ‘Volcanic Tongue is a book about my own personal adventure in modern music and spans the whole of my adult existence, starting from my first musical epiphany when I saw The Pastels live in Glasgow at the age of seventeen in 1988 and was inspired to become a writer, and running up to 2015, when I left The Wire to become a full-time novelist. More than a collection of my music writing from over the years, I hope it functions as a guide to what was one of the most exciting but still relatively undocumented periods of musical revolution, specifically the underground music explosion of the 1990s and early 2000s, while reaching back to join the dots between various vanguard manifestations of folk, blues, psychedelia, industrial music, rock n roll and free jazz. My world was permanently changed when I encountered the writings of the late rock critic Lester Bangs, through the posthumously issued collection of his work, Psychotic Reactions & Carburetor Dung, specifically Greil Marcus’s formulation of Bangs’ writing as being “rock ‘n’ roll as literature and literature as rock n roll”, a formula that I dedicated my life to. Volcanic Tongue, then, is the result of that lifelong quest.’

Publisher, Lee Brackstone said: ‘David Keenan’s many publications over the past decade have all been fiction but it is as a groundbreaking champion of avant-garde music where he started his life as a writer on publications like The Wire and Melody Maker. Volcanic Tongue (affectionately named after the legendary record shop he ran in Glasgow with Heather Leigh) is a ‘time-traveling evangelist’s guide’ to late 20th century music that defies categorisation and genre; a book that echoes the ambition and scope of Lester Bangs’ still awe-inspiring Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung in its sheer audacity and style. To steal from the strapline of Andrew Weatherall’s famous festival Convenanza in Carcassone, Volcanic Tongue is a book that will ‘turn listeners into believers’ and a title that will surely have the same resonance across the decades as his debut publication about the occult tributaries of English underground music, England’s Hidden Reverse.’