Recomposed: Music, Climate, Crisis, Change

by Kyle Devine

CAN MUSIC SAVE THE WORLD?

We are witnessing a climate-oriented transformation of what music is and how it comes to be. Recomposed shows how musicians around the world are using the cultural power of music to link climate awareness to climate action.

Award-winning author and academic Kyle Devine profiles EarthPercent, founded by Brian Eno and others to help funnel money from the music business to climate causes. Devine enrolls in a course led by ClimateEQ, which teaches carbon literacy for the music industry. He investigates a platform to help musicians finance solar energy. Devine embeds himself among a dynamic cast of manufacturers and inventors seeking ways to make records more sustainable, from recycling old vinyl to making discs from bioplastic. At the center of this multifaceted story is the climate impact of music festivals and touring musicians.

Everywhere you look, music and our habitat are changing together.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Environment

256 pages, Paperback

Published July 14, 2026

Reviews

[feux d'artifice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up at a bookstore on a whim and while at first I wasn't sure how I felt about the writing style, I ended up easing into it and using so many post its.

The organization of the book from micro to macro was quite interesting, I almost wish we can have a sequel. I like that the book wants us to ask better questions.

[Karla Roro]

I felt nervous reading this book and this hasn’t gone away as I finished it.
Currently questioning life choices and convictions and wondering if I agree with the author (on what exactly?)

[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.

[Chester Hansen · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

Fascinating read!

This is not merely an examination of vinyl and CD manufacturing practices or the environmental impacts of touring acts and festivals, although the book talks about many interesting things in that field. What I valued most about the book was the author's ability to zoom out and place the music industry in context with the rest of the industrial capitalist world. This was done not only in relation to emissions and environmental impact but also in a deeper sense of the cultural place of music in a world that is in chaos. The book asks us to think about the music industry's negative and positive effects on the planet, and all the contradictions and hypocrisies that come with consuming and creating music in 2026.

Through the course of the book the author examines music's ability to affect wider social change through raising awareness and even changing the way people think - he also does not pull any punches in analyzing the tendency or possibility of music itself acting as a kind of "pressure valve" by diverting attention inwards to our emotions and thoughts, and away from the universalism of class struggle and the destruction of the natural world. I think many artists in all fields can consciously or subconsciously use the many positive impacts that art can have on people as sort of a pass to avoid thinking about the bigger picture. As someone who has been involved in the music industry for 15 years, this book articulated many aspects of a general malaise I have been feeling for a long time.

Regardless of your opinion on all these things, this book will definitely make you think more deeply and ask some tough questions which I think is a sign of a well-crafted piece of writing. Highly recommend! Also pairs well with Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist

[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.