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<p><b><a href="https://youtu.be/K8rpA0e_cow">Minor Compositions
Podcast Episode 31 Take This Refusal and Dance To It</a></b><br>
<br>
This episode is a conversation with Paul Rekret, centered around
his book <i>Take This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis</i> (2024). In
this discussion we explore the book’s key themes through both
discussion and curated music selections that speak to the
intersections of labor, leisure, and sound. <br>
<br>
<i>Take This Hammer</i> examines how shifts in work and the
economy – from the fragmentation of the working day to the rise of
precarious labor – have shaped and been reflected in the forms and
experiences of popular music. Rekret traces how the separation of
work and leisure, once central to industrial society, has become
increasingly blurred in the age of streaming, automation, and
remote labor, and considers how music both registers these changes
and imagines alternatives. Together, we’ll listen to tracks
connected to themes from the book, and discuss how musical forms –
across genres like trap rap, dance music, and field recordings –
respond to crises of work, economic instability, gentrification,
and ecological breakdown. This session is an invitation to think
with music: not just as entertainment, but as a way of sensing and
sounding out life under capitalism and beyond.<br>
<br>
This episode is accompanied by an installment of the Saint Monday
Mixtapes, which can be accessed <a
href="https://www.spreaker.com/episode/dance-dance-refusal--66444103">here</a>.<br>
<br>
<b>Bio:</b> Paul Rekret is the author of three books: <i>Down
With Childhood: Pop Music and the Crisis of Innocence</i>
(2017); <i>Derrida and Foucault: Philosophy, Politics, Polemics</i>
(2018); <i>Monopolated Light and Power</i> (with Edward George,
Louis Moreno, Ashwani Sharma (2024)), and editor of George
Caffentzis's <i>Clipped Coins, Abused Words & Civil
Government</i> (2021). He has published on political and
cultural theory in journals such as <i>Theory, Culture &
Society</i>, <i>Constellations</i>, <i>South Atlantic
Quarterly</i> and his writing has appeared in <i>Frieze</i>, <i>The
Wire</i>, <i>Art Monthly</i>, <i>The New Inquiry</i>, and
elsewhere. He is a member of Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective
and works on sound and ecological crisis as part of
Amplification/Annihilation. He is a Lecturer in the School of
Media and Communications at the University of Westminster.<br>
<br>
For <a
href="https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-press/publications/take-this-hammer/">more
on the book</a>.<br>
<br>
Intro music: Guitar Welch, Hogman Maxey, Andy Mosely, and Huddie
Ledbetter - Take This Hammer<br>
<br>
The Minor Compositions podcast is in made in collaboration with <a
href="https://fireflyfrequencies.org">Firefly Frequencies</a>.<br>
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