Recomposed: Music, Climate, Crisis, Change

by Kyle Devine

The major look at the environmental impact of the music industry and a brilliant exploration of how musicians are thinking about and being influenced by the climate crisis

Everywhere you look, music is changing—overhauling itself in response to climate crisis. There are records made of plants, stereos that run on sunshine, streaming services powered like hot springs. There are nonprofit and investment initiatives geared toward environmental concerns. There are sector-specific carbon calculators, literacy programs, and organizations that are sizing up (and drawing down) the environmental impact of music on every level. Top to bottom, we are witnessing a climate-oriented transformation of what music is and how it comes to be.

Genres: Environment, Music

256 pages, Paperback

Published July 14, 2026

Reviews

[booker g · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recomposed: Music, Climate, Crisis, Change by Kyle Devine is, quite simply, the most important book on music and the environment you will read this decade — possibly this century. Devine, dean of graduate studies at the University of Winnipeg and formerly a professor of music and environmental humanities at the University of Oslo, has produced a work of such staggering intellectual density that it functions less as a book and more as a filtration system, separating readers capable of grappling with real ideas from those who are not. He spent years embedded with the people trying to green the music industry — the founders of EarthPercent, the instructors of carbon-literacy courses, the engineers pressing records out of bioplastic — and the result is a masterclass in holding two truths at once: that music's climate reckoning is good, and that it isn't, and that only a mind of considerable sophistication can sit comfortably inside that contradiction without needing it resolved into a tidy takeaway.

This is what separates *Recomposed* from the pack, and also what separates its readers into two camps. Devine is fundamentally interested in materiality — what a record is made of, who presses it, who profits — and he refuses to let music's idealism off the hook by treating it as separate from labor and infrastructure. This is not a comfortable read, and it was never meant to be one. If you find yourself wishing the book would just tell you whether vinyl is "good" or "bad," whether streaming is "good" or "bad," congratulations: you have identified precisely the impulse the book is diagnosing in you. The confusion is not a flaw in the argument. It is a mirror.

I say this with love, but also without apology: the people who put this book down halfway through, who call it "meandering" or "overly academic," are not offering a critique of the book. They are offering an inadvertent autobiography. Devine's prose asks you to sit with ambiguity, to track an argument across fieldwork and history and economics simultaneously, to resist the toddler-brained urge for a villain and a hero. Not everyone can do this! That's fine! Go read something with a clearer moral. This one's for grown-ups.

For the rest of us — the readers still capable of nuance, patience, and actual thought — *Recomposed* is not just a must-read, it is close to a litmus test. Buy it, finish it, and if you loved it, know that you are the target audience. If you didn't, well. Some books just aren't for everyone's level.

[Book Club of One · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recomposed: Music, Climate, Crisis, Change is Kyle Devine's reckoning and sequel to Decomposed: the Political Ecology of Music. The new work is focused on the ways different companies, musicians or record pressers have been adjusting their processes to create in climate neutralizing or supporting ways. Devine pulls from his own industrial experience, interviews and site visits for many of the chapters.

The work is divided in to three sections, each focused on a specific solution. Part 1, technical solutions is by far the best and most engaging. It early makes the point that the highest environmental impact of music is the travel, for both the performing artists and the attendees. Otherwise, the rest of the section explores the challenges of creating environmentally sound plastics for pressing records, or as they are often named vinyl. Much of what has been 'gained' on analysis is simple green washing, or consumers still prefer the harmful products as they are superior in sound quality. Parts 2 and 3 continue the exploration of music, but as they are working with larger companies or frameworks take the reader from the front row, or their own home to consider the enterprises or start ups working to challenge the industries standard of creating consumable pop culture.

Part 3, as it is embracing the widest of the three areas of consideration really suffers from dense and conceptual based discussions, lacking the clear immediacy or changes of the first section. It has its moments, but feels much more theoretical. We keep hearing competing claims that change is possible or that there is limited time to stop global warming. Devine is a highly critical industry insider.

Conceptually focused on what could be a significant culture shift akin to the birth of the environmental movement, Recomposed echoes the understanding that one needs to be involved to make change, and like must cultural shifts, this one too, will require a grassroots groundswell before the major companies would be willing to change anything that hurts profits.

Recommended to readers of environmental movements, music consumerism or industrial transitions.

I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.

[Venneh · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ecopunk look at the music scene, focusing in on sustainability, and how the scene is changing to be more climate friendly as we look down the barrel of climate change.