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The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World
What John Berger did to ways of seeing, well-known indie musician Damon Krukowski does to ways of listening in this lively guide to the transition from analog to digital culture
Having made his name in the late 1980s as a member of the indie band Galaxie 500, Damon Krukowski has watched cultural life lurch from analog to digital. And as an artist who has weathered the transition, he has challenging, urgent questions for both creators and consumers about what we have thrown away in the process: Are our devices leaving us lost in our own headspace even as they pinpoint our location? Does the long reach of digital communication come at the sacrifice of our ability to gauge social distance? Do streaming media discourage us from listening closely? Are we hearing each other fully in this new environment?
Rather than simply rejecting the digital disruption of cultural life, Krukowski uses the sound engineer’s distinction of signal and noise to reexamine what we have lost as a technological culture, looking carefully at what was valuable in the analog realm so we can hold on to it. Taking a set of experiences from the production and consumption of music that have changed since the analog era—the disorientation of headphones, flattening of the voice, silence of media, loudness of mastering, and manipulation of time—as a basis for a broader exploration of contemporary culture, Krukowski gives us a brilliant meditation and guide to keeping our heads amid the digital flux. Think of it as plugging in without tuning out.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published June 6, 2017
70 people are currently reading
895 people want to read
About the author
Damon Krukowski
20 books13 followersDamon Krukowski is a writer and musician. Author of The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World, he has taught writing and sound (and writing about sound) at Harvard University. He was in the indie rock band Galaxie 500 and is currently one half of the folk-rock duo Damon & Naomi. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
July 13, 2018
As both a writer and a vinyl junkie, I enjoyed the heck out of this. Krukowski uses the audio dichotomy of signal vs. noise to explain and explore how media—and the way we interact with it and the world around us—has changed since the shift from analog to digital. His analysis sits at the crossroads of curiosity and keen perception, likely to engage and intrigue even the most reluctant readers.
June 12, 2017
Krukowski, whose work in Galaxie 500 I enjoyed, goes about his task of writing this book as if he were a professor stuck with a class of exceptionally dense students. He sprinkles his text with unnecessary italics, apparently to assist the challenged. He belabors trite points as if they were brilliant insights of his own. And his first analogy, about analog vs. digital type (page 4), is hogwash. Instead of getting "twice as bad, every eighteen months" in an inverse of Moore's Law, digital typography started out bad, got worse for a few years as amateurs with cheap tools took over, and now is virtually indistinguishable from traditional letterpress, at least in professional contexts. The degradation of typographic standards that remains is largely due to the technology of typography becoming widely available. It has nothing to do with digital tech vs. analog tech. (I know something about this; I was part of the development team for Aldus PageMaker and Adobe inDesign in the 1990s and early 2000s. Digital tools for professional-grade typesetting have been available for twenty years.)
If Krukowski's authorial tone showed just a smidgen of humility, his book would be easier to swallow. Instead, we have yet another self-appointed authority who doesn't know what he doesn't know. Seems there's a lot of that going around these days.
If Krukowski's authorial tone showed just a smidgen of humility, his book would be easier to swallow. Instead, we have yet another self-appointed authority who doesn't know what he doesn't know. Seems there's a lot of that going around these days.
May 9, 2017
Damon Krukowski is a musician, poet, and publisher who has written a book exploring the ways that the move from analog recording and distribution of music to digital has effected the way in which music is experienced. In The New Analog:Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World (The New Press, 2017, 224 pages, $24.95/15.48) he examines, in some detail, the history and development of transmitting both print and recorded versions of sound to make it available to those wishing to reproduce and hear it. From printed notation to player piano rolls, wax cylinders, records, CDs, to broadcast from radio signals to streaming digital, he examines copyright issues as well as the complex nature of sound and its reproduction. Along the way, he discusses copyright issues as they affect those wishing to make a living from recording (musicians, writers, engineers, recording companies, sound distribution) providing the most cogent explanation of “mechanical royalties” I've ever read.
I'm not a techie. I haven't understood what's meant when my more knowledgeable friends talk about the compression or lifelessness of CD's as compared with earlier vinyl recordings. I've even suggested double blind listening tests to determine whether even highly sensitive listeners can actually tell the difference, but I've never read or heard of any being conducted. Krukowski, almost talking in two languages, techno speak and fan, makes these issues clearer for me. He writes about context, signal, and noise in ways that make sense to me. Krukowski is able to make most technical issues clear, only loosing me a few times. Written with an eye to clarifying certain issues in recording and hearing the distribution of those sounds, The New Analog helped me to understand much of what I have been missing, in trying to understand this revolution.
According to Krukowski, human beings hear in stereo sound. Having two ears allows us to make the minute mental distinctions placing us in space and providing context for the world around us. He describes a woman bike rider falling down while riding a bike with earbuds because, focused on the sounds being delivered to her ears, she was unable to integrate other cues. Our stereo hearing is remarkably accurate at providing context for what we hear while our brains separate signal from noise.
Signal is the foregrounded sound we are supposed to concentrate on...the music. Noise is the supposedly unnecessary sound that interferes with our being able to focus on signal. The role of the technology in separating signal from noise gives us the purer sound that comes to us through digital transmission, eliminating noise. But is music without noise what we really wish to hear?
The studio itself becomes a character in this dichotomy. A wooden studio provides a warm, wood-like sound. But a completely baffled and sound-dead studio, for a listener inside it, is still filled with sound, as one's internal functioning – respiration, heartbeat, blood flowing in the veins – can be heard. There is no silence. But the digital studio seeks to eliminate noise, while increasing and layering signal. The work of the studio technician is to take a series of signals, layer and sequence them, and create a larger complex work that turns out to be all signal with no differentiation about what to foreground or background – no sense of context. Loudness has become a substitute for subtlety.
Along with the changes in sound have come a change in the delivery system of those sounds. The invention of file sharing, though Napster, while only lasting for two years, spelled the end of record stores and will soon sound the death knell of the compact disk as a means of distributing music. All our music will be downloaded to digital devices to be heard through ear-buds simulating stereo sound, but actually have no separation and providing no contextual cues. Furthermore, those features record lovers, and even CD purchasers no longer have available the kind of information once provided by liner notes. Planned noise has been substituted for by social media, a very noisy place. However, the algorithms of FB, Twitter, Snap Chat, Goodreads, etc) quickly limit exposure to only the noise you wish to hear, increasing isolation and tribalism. We are not fully exposed to the range of noise that once took place in the record store, or other gathering places where people discussed and debated the values of content. However, the algorithms of FB, Twitter, Snap Chat, Goodreads, etc) quickly limit exposure to only the noise you wish to hear, increasing isolation and tribalism. Older mail lists, for instance, were relatively unfiltered, providing more choices of what to consider for the receiver. Who decides what the noise surrounding the signal will be?
Damon Krukowski is the editor/publisher of Exact Change, an independent publishing house, along with Naomi Yang, with whom he performs as David & Naomi. He has been a member of rock band Galaxie 500, a 1980's and early nineties indie rock band, as well. He attended Harvard University and lives in Boston. He blogs at International Sad Hits.
The New Analog:Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World (The New Press, 2017, 224 pages, $24.95/15.48) by Damon Krukowski examines the physiology, acoustic science, and effect of the changes from analog to digital sound in the rapidly changing media environment. By placing our audio experience of recorded music into a larger context of how human beings interact with the world, he offers a more nuanced view than many who decry the emergence of digital music as it's experienced through devices like head phones and iPods. He recognizes that digital delivery of music has been responsible for the loss of community represented by the teeming record store where people could hang out and discuss the music, as well as the quickly developing death of the CD as a means of delivering music. He calls for the re-introduction of the noisy environment once surrounding music, which would lessen the isolation with which people now experience it. While he sometimes gets caught up in the tangled weeds of detailed technology and psycho-physiology, he nevertheless delivers a thoughtful and readable examination at how rapid technological change leads to unanticipated social disruption. I received the book at an Advanced Reviewers Copy from the publisher through Edelweiss. I read it on my Kindle app.
I'm not a techie. I haven't understood what's meant when my more knowledgeable friends talk about the compression or lifelessness of CD's as compared with earlier vinyl recordings. I've even suggested double blind listening tests to determine whether even highly sensitive listeners can actually tell the difference, but I've never read or heard of any being conducted. Krukowski, almost talking in two languages, techno speak and fan, makes these issues clearer for me. He writes about context, signal, and noise in ways that make sense to me. Krukowski is able to make most technical issues clear, only loosing me a few times. Written with an eye to clarifying certain issues in recording and hearing the distribution of those sounds, The New Analog helped me to understand much of what I have been missing, in trying to understand this revolution.
According to Krukowski, human beings hear in stereo sound. Having two ears allows us to make the minute mental distinctions placing us in space and providing context for the world around us. He describes a woman bike rider falling down while riding a bike with earbuds because, focused on the sounds being delivered to her ears, she was unable to integrate other cues. Our stereo hearing is remarkably accurate at providing context for what we hear while our brains separate signal from noise.
Signal is the foregrounded sound we are supposed to concentrate on...the music. Noise is the supposedly unnecessary sound that interferes with our being able to focus on signal. The role of the technology in separating signal from noise gives us the purer sound that comes to us through digital transmission, eliminating noise. But is music without noise what we really wish to hear?
The studio itself becomes a character in this dichotomy. A wooden studio provides a warm, wood-like sound. But a completely baffled and sound-dead studio, for a listener inside it, is still filled with sound, as one's internal functioning – respiration, heartbeat, blood flowing in the veins – can be heard. There is no silence. But the digital studio seeks to eliminate noise, while increasing and layering signal. The work of the studio technician is to take a series of signals, layer and sequence them, and create a larger complex work that turns out to be all signal with no differentiation about what to foreground or background – no sense of context. Loudness has become a substitute for subtlety.
Along with the changes in sound have come a change in the delivery system of those sounds. The invention of file sharing, though Napster, while only lasting for two years, spelled the end of record stores and will soon sound the death knell of the compact disk as a means of distributing music. All our music will be downloaded to digital devices to be heard through ear-buds simulating stereo sound, but actually have no separation and providing no contextual cues. Furthermore, those features record lovers, and even CD purchasers no longer have available the kind of information once provided by liner notes. Planned noise has been substituted for by social media, a very noisy place. However, the algorithms of FB, Twitter, Snap Chat, Goodreads, etc) quickly limit exposure to only the noise you wish to hear, increasing isolation and tribalism. We are not fully exposed to the range of noise that once took place in the record store, or other gathering places where people discussed and debated the values of content. However, the algorithms of FB, Twitter, Snap Chat, Goodreads, etc) quickly limit exposure to only the noise you wish to hear, increasing isolation and tribalism. Older mail lists, for instance, were relatively unfiltered, providing more choices of what to consider for the receiver. Who decides what the noise surrounding the signal will be?
Damon Krukowski is the editor/publisher of Exact Change, an independent publishing house, along with Naomi Yang, with whom he performs as David & Naomi. He has been a member of rock band Galaxie 500, a 1980's and early nineties indie rock band, as well. He attended Harvard University and lives in Boston. He blogs at International Sad Hits.
The New Analog:Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World (The New Press, 2017, 224 pages, $24.95/15.48) by Damon Krukowski examines the physiology, acoustic science, and effect of the changes from analog to digital sound in the rapidly changing media environment. By placing our audio experience of recorded music into a larger context of how human beings interact with the world, he offers a more nuanced view than many who decry the emergence of digital music as it's experienced through devices like head phones and iPods. He recognizes that digital delivery of music has been responsible for the loss of community represented by the teeming record store where people could hang out and discuss the music, as well as the quickly developing death of the CD as a means of delivering music. He calls for the re-introduction of the noisy environment once surrounding music, which would lessen the isolation with which people now experience it. While he sometimes gets caught up in the tangled weeds of detailed technology and psycho-physiology, he nevertheless delivers a thoughtful and readable examination at how rapid technological change leads to unanticipated social disruption. I received the book at an Advanced Reviewers Copy from the publisher through Edelweiss. I read it on my Kindle app.
July 31, 2017
I think it’s believed that music nerds often prefer vinyl or analog sound over digital. Like we’re purists somehow who hate change or anything new. And while that’s true to some extent, and those music nerds who swear by vinyl and analog exist by the thousands, I’ve always sides with the format or delivery system that is most accessible to people, the format that goes from the musician to the listener in the most convenient way. In that sense I have completely embraced the digital age and its mp3s or streaming services. But then again, I also think music should be available for free to listeners, because money is just another obstacle between the music and the music lover.
Damon Krukowski’s New Analog is an interesting book for many reasons. From its shape (the book is the size of a 45 record) to its content. Before I get into the grand conclusion Krukowski draws from this book, I should say that the topics he chooses to write about are interesting, relevant to music listeners and music lovers, and written in an easy-to follow language. The New Analog spends most of its time discussing the shift of music from analog to digital, the gadgets it’s brought us, and how the music listening experience has changed now that we’re dealing with digital albums and not hardcopies. It also spends a fair amount of time discussing how music is recorded and the process is presented in a more-or-less very interesting way as Krukowski knows not to get too technical in explaining details. Though it’s short, the New Analog can be enjoyed at the surface for the way Krukowski talks about the different topics and there’s honestly a lot to learn here. The man just knows his stuff and it’s nice to get the opinion of someone who did the research.
The main issue with the New Analog is Krukowski’s idea that analog noise is important for music enjoyment and its survival. He feels that the noise, meaning the surface noise on the vinyl, that the recording gear picked up in the studio, that encapsulates the music (the album cover and liner notes) and that literally separates you from the music (the journey to the record store) are all important for the enjoyment of music. And of course, although they all make for a different experience, one can also treat the recording of the music and its packaging as more noise and argue that music must only be experienced live. And no one wants to sound like John Philip Sousa. Isn’t the money required to buy a record also noise? Krukowski ignores that much of what made analog music what it was had to do with limitations and that a lot of that noise we hear, the artists would rather us not hear and are not part of their vision for the music they made. They’re simply limitations. And if the convenience of listening to music on my iPod or streaming it on my phone leads to my listening to more music than I would otherwise, maybe this is a step in the right direction.
The New Analog is a good book and it means well, but it’s better enjoyed in its separate parts.
Damon Krukowski’s New Analog is an interesting book for many reasons. From its shape (the book is the size of a 45 record) to its content. Before I get into the grand conclusion Krukowski draws from this book, I should say that the topics he chooses to write about are interesting, relevant to music listeners and music lovers, and written in an easy-to follow language. The New Analog spends most of its time discussing the shift of music from analog to digital, the gadgets it’s brought us, and how the music listening experience has changed now that we’re dealing with digital albums and not hardcopies. It also spends a fair amount of time discussing how music is recorded and the process is presented in a more-or-less very interesting way as Krukowski knows not to get too technical in explaining details. Though it’s short, the New Analog can be enjoyed at the surface for the way Krukowski talks about the different topics and there’s honestly a lot to learn here. The man just knows his stuff and it’s nice to get the opinion of someone who did the research.
The main issue with the New Analog is Krukowski’s idea that analog noise is important for music enjoyment and its survival. He feels that the noise, meaning the surface noise on the vinyl, that the recording gear picked up in the studio, that encapsulates the music (the album cover and liner notes) and that literally separates you from the music (the journey to the record store) are all important for the enjoyment of music. And of course, although they all make for a different experience, one can also treat the recording of the music and its packaging as more noise and argue that music must only be experienced live. And no one wants to sound like John Philip Sousa. Isn’t the money required to buy a record also noise? Krukowski ignores that much of what made analog music what it was had to do with limitations and that a lot of that noise we hear, the artists would rather us not hear and are not part of their vision for the music they made. They’re simply limitations. And if the convenience of listening to music on my iPod or streaming it on my phone leads to my listening to more music than I would otherwise, maybe this is a step in the right direction.
The New Analog is a good book and it means well, but it’s better enjoyed in its separate parts.
December 1, 2024
Lejos de ser una oda a los vinilos o un pollxvieja hablando de como era mejor la música de antes, es más bien un muy buen análisis de como ha ido cambiando la forma en la que consumimos música y también un reclamo a que nos preocupemos más por el mundo que nos rodea y nuestra forma de habitarlo. Porque la digitalización de la música no es más que otro ejemplo de como hoy en día se elimina el ruido de todo para solo consumir su señal. Ya que que estamos entre libros, el ruido vendría a ser el papel o incluso el librero que nos pregunta en que nos puede ayudar, o incluso el bus que cogemos para ir a nuestra librería favorita, o también aquellos libros que quizás no nos interesan pero están ahí. En el caso de la música, el ruido puede ser el (valga la redundancia) simple ruido de la púa rozando con la guitarra o también aquella música a la que no podemos llegar porque Spotify (o más bien su sofisticado algoritmo) no la considera de importancia. Porque el ruido es información que se pierde para que nos llegue un sonido más “nítido” y porque el ruido es más información, y por lo tanto, más espacio, que en términos informáticos siempre conlleva más dinero. Es tal el aislamiento de ese ruido que ya no solo se produce en la grabación y en la comercialización, sino que también en la reproducción por medio de esos auriculares con cancelación de RUIDO. Ya no solo no llegamos a precibir nada del proceso de grabación sino que tampoco de nuestro entorno. Otro ejemplo más: es señal la ruta que nos marca el gps y ruido, las calles que tenemos que recorrer y por las que nos tenemos que guiar. Todo hoy en día se crea y se desarrolla pensando en la señal que recibiremos, no vaya a ser que de tanto ruido dejemos de utilizar ese servicio. Y claro que la digitalización ha traído sus ventajas y la democratización del arte está bien, y que podamos acceder a infinidad de obras por un módico precio, pero el tema es cuando todo ello es en detrimento de los creadores de dichas obras, cuando todo se moldea para que ese consumo derive en hacer crecer el patrimonio de unos pocos listillos que han sabido aprovechar esa tendencia a que nos lo den todo mascadito. Dicho esto, no por ello voy a dejar de escuchar música en plataformas o música la cual en el proceso de creación solo ha empleado elementos digitales, pero sí está bien ser más consciente de una de las acciones que más hago en mi día a día y sus consecuencias.
February 15, 2019
Welp. Points for being in Galaxie 500 and for name checking Charles Simic - you have my attention. It appears the author has spent a lot of his time since the band wandering the halls of academia and recording studios, and the book takes some nice dives into those areas, particularly how studio engineers hear music and analyze it. Unfortunately most of book is really just a long winded explanation of why your old rotary telephone was way better than Facebook, hammering the same point home at the end of every chapter with the subtlety of an old man screaming at the kids to get off his lawn. I was a music store manager in my 20s and 30s. I totally empathize with a lot of the sentiments in this book. But this book is really just preaching to a target audience; if you’re an analog purist, you’re going to nod your head a lot and probably drink yourself into tears wondering why time keeps marching forward. If you’re anything but, you’re going to get frustrated at being locked down into his one-sided arguments with no escape from his steamroller narrative. Overall worth reading but not re-reading and some of the content will probably be as outdated as an 8-track in 5-10 years (unlike Galaxie 500). I guess I should have bought the cheaper, more easily disposable digital version.
March 8, 2018
Whilst there were a number of points in the book which I agree with, the overall tone came across as one who hates all things digital and refused to make any reference to the numerous advantages it offers. Numerous points are rehashed over and over or stretched beyond a reasonable point to apply them to other examples. Other points, such as the ones made about GPS, are laboured and feel quite irrelevant.
I agree that yes, when abused or misused, the digital world has its negatives, but this generally came across as a constant railing about how things are universally worse now than ever before, which is something I wholeheartedly cannot agree with.
I agree that yes, when abused or misused, the digital world has its negatives, but this generally came across as a constant railing about how things are universally worse now than ever before, which is something I wholeheartedly cannot agree with.
January 11, 2020
Una bella lettura per chi è addentro la musica. Ne parlo sul MySpiace: https://www.myspiace.it/ascoltare-il-...
December 24, 2024
Interesting discussion of noise vs signal in a digital world
It is ironic and a little sad that this book was intended to be experienced as a physical copy, and I read it in a digital format. A lot of this book discussed in detail the history of audio production and the technology involved. Some of it was technical enough that I felt it would best be appreciated by people in that industry. The overall point he is making, however, is how in this digital world, we are losing the information conveyed by noise that is isolated out of the digital signals we're given. He also ties this into why it's so easy for digital formats like Spotify and Amazon to pay creators so little for their work. For some of us, though, having access to digital files makes it possible to have huge libraries of music and print that we wouldn't have money or space for otherwise, but that in no way invalidates the authors point
It is ironic and a little sad that this book was intended to be experienced as a physical copy, and I read it in a digital format. A lot of this book discussed in detail the history of audio production and the technology involved. Some of it was technical enough that I felt it would best be appreciated by people in that industry. The overall point he is making, however, is how in this digital world, we are losing the information conveyed by noise that is isolated out of the digital signals we're given. He also ties this into why it's so easy for digital formats like Spotify and Amazon to pay creators so little for their work. For some of us, though, having access to digital files makes it possible to have huge libraries of music and print that we wouldn't have money or space for otherwise, but that in no way invalidates the authors point
August 23, 2021
Lo cierto es que no esperaba realmente que este libro tratara de lo que trata. El título me llevó a pensar que hablaría de alguna especie de desintoxicación de lo digital en lugar de tratar el tema de lo digital y lo analógico en el sector de la música. Pero lo cierto es que al final una de mis conclusiones ha sido la necesidad de hacerlo, al menos parcialmente.
Confesaré que he tenido que leerlo en dos veces, con una pausa de por medio para asumir que el tema que trata no es el que yo esperaba y poder así disfrutarlo como se merece.
Tiene una gran parte técnica que puede llegar a resultar aburrida si no eres tan friki como yo, que me entusiasma aprender sobre lo que sea (literalmente) pero la parte que se puede extraer de todo lo que cuenta, así como el sabor que deja al reposarlo, es maravillosa.
Confesaré que he tenido que leerlo en dos veces, con una pausa de por medio para asumir que el tema que trata no es el que yo esperaba y poder así disfrutarlo como se merece.
Tiene una gran parte técnica que puede llegar a resultar aburrida si no eres tan friki como yo, que me entusiasma aprender sobre lo que sea (literalmente) pero la parte que se puede extraer de todo lo que cuenta, así como el sabor que deja al reposarlo, es maravillosa.
August 27, 2017
I love the ideas presented in this book, and find myself thinking about them often.
October 20, 2017
Lively but disorganized and often underdeveloped. The Revenge of Analog by David Sax is better.
April 7, 2019
Elucidation for sure here.
I could say it right here: signal vs. noise. But Krukowski's concise words are needed to really put that into context and perspective.
This is a worthy book to read as we carry on with our smartphones and streaming services.
And, what's more, you will learn about sound. That's a good deal.
I could say it right here: signal vs. noise. But Krukowski's concise words are needed to really put that into context and perspective.
This is a worthy book to read as we carry on with our smartphones and streaming services.
And, what's more, you will learn about sound. That's a good deal.
March 22, 2023
Heartily recommended - a book to encourage us to pay attention to the "noise" in our lives that provide us with so much information and context. Starting from his perspective as a musician, Damon Krukowski takes us from a discussion of digital music to a place of recognizing what we lose as we analog beings live in a digital world. LOVED this book.
December 17, 2017
This book is more than just a simple “back to vinyl” sermon, refreshingly. It’s a highly scientific and socio-psychological look at the history of recorded music, the transition from analog to digital, and what that means to people and society.
Damon Krukowski writes as a musician, music fan, and techno nerd, yet mixes this all together quite skillfully. He writes about context, signal, and noise in ways that will make sense to most readers.
Krukowski writes that people hear in stereo sound. That having two ears allows us to make the small, even tiny, mental distinctions providing much-needed context for the world around us. He tells one story, among others, of a person falling over while riding a bicycle wearing earbuds because, while they were focused on the sounds that were being delivered in their ears, they weren’t able to integrate and HEAR other sounds in the world around them. Krukowski asserts that our stereo hearing is incredibly accurate for providing context for what we actually hear (and need to hear, for the most part) while our brains separate signal from noise.
And what’s the distinction? The author explains that signal is the foregrounded sound we’re supposed to concentrate on, ie., music in this case, while noise is the allegedly “unnecessary” sounds that interfere with our being able to focus on signal. The role of technology in separating signal from noise provides the allegedly purer sound that one obtains through digital transmission, eliminating noise entirely. But the question is, is music without (analog) noise what we really want to hear? Krukowski makes the case that it is not.
Krukowski’s “The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World” skillfully examines the science, physiology, and effects of the changes from analog sound to digital sound, not only over time, but now in the rapidly changing musical media world in which we live. By putting our audio experience of recorded music into a bigger context of how people interact with the world, he offers a more intricate view than many who bemoan the emergence of digital music as it's experienced through devices like head phones, iPods, and even smartphones. He argues that the digital delivery of music replacing analog, tactile music has largely been responsible for the loss of community represented by now many distant-memory record stores where people could hang out, chill, and talk with others about music and other similar interests, while shopping for tangible, artistic items of value that one can hold and play and hear signal WITH noise. He then calls for the re-introduction of the noisy environment once surrounding all music, that would lessen the near-total isolation with which people now experience music.
The only reason I am giving this book 4 stars instead of 5 is that he sometimes gets caught up in going seriously too far into hard technology that one might need an engineering degree to fully appreciate, and the middle has an extended section that drags a bit as a result. However, he ultimately delivers a very thoughtful analysis at how rapid technological change leads to unanticipated social consequences that aren’t always good. A very interesting and decent book and recommended for all audiophiles, vinyl (and CD) enthusiasts, and music lovers in general.
Damon Krukowski writes as a musician, music fan, and techno nerd, yet mixes this all together quite skillfully. He writes about context, signal, and noise in ways that will make sense to most readers.
Krukowski writes that people hear in stereo sound. That having two ears allows us to make the small, even tiny, mental distinctions providing much-needed context for the world around us. He tells one story, among others, of a person falling over while riding a bicycle wearing earbuds because, while they were focused on the sounds that were being delivered in their ears, they weren’t able to integrate and HEAR other sounds in the world around them. Krukowski asserts that our stereo hearing is incredibly accurate for providing context for what we actually hear (and need to hear, for the most part) while our brains separate signal from noise.
And what’s the distinction? The author explains that signal is the foregrounded sound we’re supposed to concentrate on, ie., music in this case, while noise is the allegedly “unnecessary” sounds that interfere with our being able to focus on signal. The role of technology in separating signal from noise provides the allegedly purer sound that one obtains through digital transmission, eliminating noise entirely. But the question is, is music without (analog) noise what we really want to hear? Krukowski makes the case that it is not.
Krukowski’s “The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World” skillfully examines the science, physiology, and effects of the changes from analog sound to digital sound, not only over time, but now in the rapidly changing musical media world in which we live. By putting our audio experience of recorded music into a bigger context of how people interact with the world, he offers a more intricate view than many who bemoan the emergence of digital music as it's experienced through devices like head phones, iPods, and even smartphones. He argues that the digital delivery of music replacing analog, tactile music has largely been responsible for the loss of community represented by now many distant-memory record stores where people could hang out, chill, and talk with others about music and other similar interests, while shopping for tangible, artistic items of value that one can hold and play and hear signal WITH noise. He then calls for the re-introduction of the noisy environment once surrounding all music, that would lessen the near-total isolation with which people now experience music.
The only reason I am giving this book 4 stars instead of 5 is that he sometimes gets caught up in going seriously too far into hard technology that one might need an engineering degree to fully appreciate, and the middle has an extended section that drags a bit as a result. However, he ultimately delivers a very thoughtful analysis at how rapid technological change leads to unanticipated social consequences that aren’t always good. A very interesting and decent book and recommended for all audiophiles, vinyl (and CD) enthusiasts, and music lovers in general.
October 11, 2019
Like Krukowski's Ways of Hearing, this is a really a magazine article or pamphlet gussied up into a book. Its principal thesis is that digital sound (and digital media generally) removes noise from what we hear and presents us only with signal - that is, it removes what we think we don't want to hear and presents us only with what we do want to hear, and that this is dangerous, because what we think we don't want to hear can actually be very important for us to hear, and because, in the digital realm, it is tech companies, and not the listener or reader, who are deciding what is signal and what is noise, and they are doing that for their benefit, not yours.
This is fine, as far as it goes, but Krukowski doesn't talk much about the main reason why the digital world over the analog, which is that people, in general, are lazy and thoughtless, and they value convenience over quality. CDs and MP3s became the dominant way many people listened to music for many years not because they had better sound quality (it was worse, and in the case of MP3s, much worse) but because they were much easier to find and use and much more portable than vinyl. For this reason, all the good reasons that Krukowski presents for why we should hear the noise are for naught, because as long as people can be spoon-fed the signal they are looking for at little or no obvious cost to them personally, that is what they will choose.
One extremely irritating thing that I mentioned in my review of Ways of Hearing is that Krukowski advocates the tech-bro/libertarian mantra that "information wants to be free", so that it is, as he puts it, a "moral imperative" to freely share copyrighted work. First, information is an abstract concept, and it doesn't want anything. Second, copyright protects expression, not information. Third, tech industry advocates promote this idea in order to persuade people that it's ok to rip off artists while the tech businesses get rich (they certainly don't want the "information" protected by their patents to be free). If Google and Facebook can sell you access to the "content" without having to pay for it themselves, it's all profit to them. As a result, the last twenty years have seen a massive transfer of wealth from creative industries to tech industries, whether they are ISPs, computer manufacturers, pirates, or platform hosts like Google and Facebook, who are all taking their cut as listeners access their "free" music.
This is fine, as far as it goes, but Krukowski doesn't talk much about the main reason why the digital world over the analog, which is that people, in general, are lazy and thoughtless, and they value convenience over quality. CDs and MP3s became the dominant way many people listened to music for many years not because they had better sound quality (it was worse, and in the case of MP3s, much worse) but because they were much easier to find and use and much more portable than vinyl. For this reason, all the good reasons that Krukowski presents for why we should hear the noise are for naught, because as long as people can be spoon-fed the signal they are looking for at little or no obvious cost to them personally, that is what they will choose.
One extremely irritating thing that I mentioned in my review of Ways of Hearing is that Krukowski advocates the tech-bro/libertarian mantra that "information wants to be free", so that it is, as he puts it, a "moral imperative" to freely share copyrighted work. First, information is an abstract concept, and it doesn't want anything. Second, copyright protects expression, not information. Third, tech industry advocates promote this idea in order to persuade people that it's ok to rip off artists while the tech businesses get rich (they certainly don't want the "information" protected by their patents to be free). If Google and Facebook can sell you access to the "content" without having to pay for it themselves, it's all profit to them. As a result, the last twenty years have seen a massive transfer of wealth from creative industries to tech industries, whether they are ISPs, computer manufacturers, pirates, or platform hosts like Google and Facebook, who are all taking their cut as listeners access their "free" music.
August 31, 2017
This book is a bit all over the map, and many of the points the author makes could be developed in more detail, but it sure is an interesting read. Krukowski notes in the introduction that the reader may want to flip through rather than follow the page numbers, and though I read it straight through (in one sitting, I might add, which is rare for me), I can see that random perusing might be the way to go. His chief idea is to use the concepts of "signal" and "noise," both literally and metaphorically, to discuss what he fears we are leaving behind in the digital media world. (He focuses on sound--physical media vs. non-physical digital, and uses cell phones in his argument--and says nothing about physical vs. non-physical video, but I guess that would be a whole different book, though most of his arguments would apply.)
Krukowksi, a member of Galaxie 500 back in the late 80s, is a musician and makes sure that he doesn't come off as a head-burying luddite: he understands the lure of digital, and is a user of Spotify--and I assume iTunes. But he is concerned both as a creator and consumer of music about the "noise" being left behind (the metadata of album packaging, the ambience of analog recording) as digital focuses with laser intensity on "signal" (the actual content being communicated). His examples are drawn from a wide variety of sources--Beatles, Beach Boys, Oasis, Kiss, The Sweet Inspirations--and I was quite charmed by his use of a publicity shot of Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell in 1939's The Women, and of an exchange of dialogue from a Fred Astaire movie.
There are some concepts that zipped past me, like "latency," which has to do, I think, with lag time in live digital broadcast, but most of what he tackles he explains well. As a music lover who was happy with my scratchy 45s, I've never really been an audiophile so I'm a little less concerned with digital compression, though I 100% agree that vinyl sounds richer and warmer than digital ever does. But I do miss my metadata, as I was the kind of music consumer who pored over liner notes and credits and appreciated album art, and it was this argument that made me really appreciate this book. I'd love to read a sequel if ever gets around to it.
Krukowksi, a member of Galaxie 500 back in the late 80s, is a musician and makes sure that he doesn't come off as a head-burying luddite: he understands the lure of digital, and is a user of Spotify--and I assume iTunes. But he is concerned both as a creator and consumer of music about the "noise" being left behind (the metadata of album packaging, the ambience of analog recording) as digital focuses with laser intensity on "signal" (the actual content being communicated). His examples are drawn from a wide variety of sources--Beatles, Beach Boys, Oasis, Kiss, The Sweet Inspirations--and I was quite charmed by his use of a publicity shot of Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell in 1939's The Women, and of an exchange of dialogue from a Fred Astaire movie.
There are some concepts that zipped past me, like "latency," which has to do, I think, with lag time in live digital broadcast, but most of what he tackles he explains well. As a music lover who was happy with my scratchy 45s, I've never really been an audiophile so I'm a little less concerned with digital compression, though I 100% agree that vinyl sounds richer and warmer than digital ever does. But I do miss my metadata, as I was the kind of music consumer who pored over liner notes and credits and appreciated album art, and it was this argument that made me really appreciate this book. I'd love to read a sequel if ever gets around to it.
December 3, 2024
In The Analog, Damon Krukowski offers a compelling and thoughtful meditation on the value of analog technology in a digital age. As a musician and writer, Krukowski provides a unique perspective on the ongoing tension between digital and analog worlds, arguing for the preservation and appreciation of analog practices without completely disregarding the conveniences or innovations brought about by digital advancements.
Krukowski makes a persuasive case for the richness and depth that analog experiences—such as vinyl records, printed books, and traditional film—offer over their digital counterparts. He doesn’t dismiss the digital trend but instead offers an enthusiastic exploration of the joys and subtleties that analog provides, such as its tactile nature and its ability to capture a sense of time and space that digital formats often miss. What stands out in Krukowski's work is his ability to present the analog world in a way that feels fresh and relevant, even as we continue to advance into increasingly digital societies.
What I appreciated most about The Analog is Krukowski’s nuanced approach. He does not degrade the digital age or its benefits; rather, he highlights how the two worlds—analog and digital—can coexist and inform one another. The book is less about rejecting digital technology and more about rediscovering the value in the physical, the sensory, and the tangible. This balanced approach makes it a great read for those who love technology but feel the loss of something essential in the digital transformation.
Krukowski also excels at presenting complex ideas in an accessible way, making this book an excellent read for common people who may not have deep technical knowledge but are still keen to understand the societal impacts of technology. He does a great job breaking down how analog technologies, from music to communication, shape our experiences in ways that are sometimes overlooked in the rush toward digital efficiency. His insights into the sensory experience of analog media resonate deeply with anyone who’s ever felt a nostalgic connection to the past or found themselves frustrated by the flatness of modern, digital interactions.
Krukowski makes a persuasive case for the richness and depth that analog experiences—such as vinyl records, printed books, and traditional film—offer over their digital counterparts. He doesn’t dismiss the digital trend but instead offers an enthusiastic exploration of the joys and subtleties that analog provides, such as its tactile nature and its ability to capture a sense of time and space that digital formats often miss. What stands out in Krukowski's work is his ability to present the analog world in a way that feels fresh and relevant, even as we continue to advance into increasingly digital societies.
What I appreciated most about The Analog is Krukowski’s nuanced approach. He does not degrade the digital age or its benefits; rather, he highlights how the two worlds—analog and digital—can coexist and inform one another. The book is less about rejecting digital technology and more about rediscovering the value in the physical, the sensory, and the tangible. This balanced approach makes it a great read for those who love technology but feel the loss of something essential in the digital transformation.
Krukowski also excels at presenting complex ideas in an accessible way, making this book an excellent read for common people who may not have deep technical knowledge but are still keen to understand the societal impacts of technology. He does a great job breaking down how analog technologies, from music to communication, shape our experiences in ways that are sometimes overlooked in the rush toward digital efficiency. His insights into the sensory experience of analog media resonate deeply with anyone who’s ever felt a nostalgic connection to the past or found themselves frustrated by the flatness of modern, digital interactions.
June 2, 2020
"Este ensayo pone sobre la mesa una nueva perspectiva sobre el cambio paradigmático que ha supuesto el paso de la era analógica a la digital desde la experiencia del autor, Damon Krukowski, como productor y consumidor musical. Su trayectoria como miembro fundador en los 80 de Galaxie 500, grupo de pop independiente americano, ha sido atravesada por la revolución tecnológica que ha modificado la manera tanto de producir música como de escucharla.
Pone sobre la mesa las implicaciones para nuestra comunicación general a partir de este cambio tecnológico mediante un análisis de la evolución en los procesos de producción, distribución y consumo musical a partir de una rica gama de ejemplos y curiosidades: las grabaciones de los Beatles en Abbey Road, las aficiones de Proust, el Dark Side of the Moon de Pink Floyd, las técnicas vocales usadas por Sinatra delante del micro, las experimentaciones de John Cage, el uso compulsivo de los auriculares en el espacio público, el sensorama de Huxley y la gestión de los datos personales en las plataformas de escucha en streaming, entre otros.
Con una prosa nítida y una facilidad sorprendente para explicar los conceptos técnicos, Krukowski desarrolla una crítica pragmática e inteligente sobre las consecuencias de la ausencia del ruido en el sonido digital. Para el autor, el ruido se erige como herramienta de lucha en contra de la alienación que parece impregnar la vida del individuo contemporáneo." Guillem S. Arquer
Pone sobre la mesa las implicaciones para nuestra comunicación general a partir de este cambio tecnológico mediante un análisis de la evolución en los procesos de producción, distribución y consumo musical a partir de una rica gama de ejemplos y curiosidades: las grabaciones de los Beatles en Abbey Road, las aficiones de Proust, el Dark Side of the Moon de Pink Floyd, las técnicas vocales usadas por Sinatra delante del micro, las experimentaciones de John Cage, el uso compulsivo de los auriculares en el espacio público, el sensorama de Huxley y la gestión de los datos personales en las plataformas de escucha en streaming, entre otros.
Con una prosa nítida y una facilidad sorprendente para explicar los conceptos técnicos, Krukowski desarrolla una crítica pragmática e inteligente sobre las consecuencias de la ausencia del ruido en el sonido digital. Para el autor, el ruido se erige como herramienta de lucha en contra de la alienación que parece impregnar la vida del individuo contemporáneo." Guillem S. Arquer
November 21, 2017
This is an erudite but accessible discussion about existing in the digital world. Rejecting the binary lens of good vs. bad with the digital takeover of music consumption, Krukowski lends a musician's knowledge to the enduring value of analog in a digital world. His premise is that with many new revolutionary inventions, we shouldn't rush wholesale into the new medium (even though we have been rushed, so to speak). This rush necessarily destroys what it's replacing, and Krukowski does a phenomenal job of elucidating the aspects of analog that will benefit us as the world is digitized. No troglodyte, he gives the reader much to think about as he navigates through the digital world. And that's of the main points - we must navigate, because even though digital media promises our on-demand satisfaction, there are clear consequences to our full-on embracing of digital media. While no doom-and-gloom prognosticator, Krukowski deftly calls out those things that we should hold on to. In the end, it's our human connections that the digital world separates. This is not an "answers" book (one of its greatest strengths), but if there is an answer, it's to retain what works from analog as we live a digital life.
October 26, 2020
This is an interesting read that will likely broaden your thinking on the world around you today -- a world dominated by digital technology. How does this affect how we appreciate art, how we communicate and interact? Krukowski helps us explore some of these issues by walking us through some of the points in our lives that have been changed by digital technology, most especially around music. You uses the recording concept of "signal and noise" to help us understand the concepts that underlie digital technology. It's a very effective tool for helping understand how these technologies have influenced our lives, for good or bad. I do like that Krukowski doesn't tell us how to think about this, but allows the reader to reach their own conclusions about what this all means. Because of the philosophical bent to this topic that Krukowski takes, it may require you to think through what he is communicating to fully grasp it, and it that way it can read as a little overly diffuse in its presentation. But definitely offers some interesting ideas to ponder.
January 16, 2022
Damon Krukowski’s The New Analog is fascinating - one of those books that makes you pause and think at regular intervals. Part engineering lesson, part philosophical treatise, it’s a discussion on how we listen to music in the 21st century. For the complexity of the subject matter it is very clearly written, with useful analogies and numerous pictures - a bit like Alain de Botton’s best work. I’m not sure I understood everything, but the bits I did pick up I found absorbing.
The main purpose of the book is contrast the old and the new - more specifically to highlight the differences between analog and digital recordings. To best illustrate the point Krukowski explains the evolution of the telephone - from the plain old telephone service which was an analog connection between two people transmitted continuously over copper wire, to the cell phone, which picks up a voice, converts it into data, then sends the data to another device in discrete units, which is then decoded and listened to.
Krukowski argues that all transmitted sound has both a signal and noise. The key difference is that with analog the signal and noise cannot be separated, unlike digital which is just pure signal. The main benefit to digital is that this signal can be streamed very cheaply - a revolutionary development that has bettered the lives of billions of people around the world. But there is a cost to this ubiquity: to deliver the sound economically, unwanted “noise” is intentionally stripped from the signal when the sound is compressed. This not only compromises the quality of the sound, but it also removes nuance and atmosphere from a recording. For example, it’s a lack of “noise” that makes it very difficult to whisper on a mobile phone, or place where a mobile call is from.
Krukowski takes this concept further by applying the signal and noise analogy to not just to how sound is transmitted, but how music is obtained. Yes, we can download or stream a song, and the artist name and the song name may take up a nanobyte of space on our device - pure signal. Or we can obtain the same song by purchasing a vinyl record. There is a lot of extra noise or friction that goes with purchasing an album. One has to leave the house, travel to a record shop, sort through the shelves to find the desired album, interact with people, and get the record home safely. Once home, rather than finding the song through a search bar and pressing play, one must get up off the couch, physically pull the record from the sleeve, choose a side, inspect it for dust, and carefully place the needle. And rather than listen to a single song, or part of one song before hyperactively skipping to the next, one usually listens to a full side of music. Listening to vinyl is a tactile experience; it creates a sense of ceremony, which may be inconvenient, but this inconvenience arguably adds richness to the experience. The same signal vs noise analogy can be extended to how we now obtain books, and how we socialize online. Conversations lose meaning and are more prone to misinterpretation when written virtually as opposed to spoken orally.
And the digitalization of culture is killing artists’ livelihoods - for every one vinyl album sale a song needs to be streamed over 47,000 times to produce the same amount of income. This business model rewards one-hit wonders, musicians capable of creating a catchy pop song, rather than artists striving to create an album of songs with depth and meaning. Music has been commodified. We pay virtually nothing to obtain pretty much whatever we want; is it no surprise that when we invest so little in the music we stream, we end up deriving so little pleasure from the experience?
The main purpose of the book is contrast the old and the new - more specifically to highlight the differences between analog and digital recordings. To best illustrate the point Krukowski explains the evolution of the telephone - from the plain old telephone service which was an analog connection between two people transmitted continuously over copper wire, to the cell phone, which picks up a voice, converts it into data, then sends the data to another device in discrete units, which is then decoded and listened to.
Krukowski argues that all transmitted sound has both a signal and noise. The key difference is that with analog the signal and noise cannot be separated, unlike digital which is just pure signal. The main benefit to digital is that this signal can be streamed very cheaply - a revolutionary development that has bettered the lives of billions of people around the world. But there is a cost to this ubiquity: to deliver the sound economically, unwanted “noise” is intentionally stripped from the signal when the sound is compressed. This not only compromises the quality of the sound, but it also removes nuance and atmosphere from a recording. For example, it’s a lack of “noise” that makes it very difficult to whisper on a mobile phone, or place where a mobile call is from.
Krukowski takes this concept further by applying the signal and noise analogy to not just to how sound is transmitted, but how music is obtained. Yes, we can download or stream a song, and the artist name and the song name may take up a nanobyte of space on our device - pure signal. Or we can obtain the same song by purchasing a vinyl record. There is a lot of extra noise or friction that goes with purchasing an album. One has to leave the house, travel to a record shop, sort through the shelves to find the desired album, interact with people, and get the record home safely. Once home, rather than finding the song through a search bar and pressing play, one must get up off the couch, physically pull the record from the sleeve, choose a side, inspect it for dust, and carefully place the needle. And rather than listen to a single song, or part of one song before hyperactively skipping to the next, one usually listens to a full side of music. Listening to vinyl is a tactile experience; it creates a sense of ceremony, which may be inconvenient, but this inconvenience arguably adds richness to the experience. The same signal vs noise analogy can be extended to how we now obtain books, and how we socialize online. Conversations lose meaning and are more prone to misinterpretation when written virtually as opposed to spoken orally.
And the digitalization of culture is killing artists’ livelihoods - for every one vinyl album sale a song needs to be streamed over 47,000 times to produce the same amount of income. This business model rewards one-hit wonders, musicians capable of creating a catchy pop song, rather than artists striving to create an album of songs with depth and meaning. Music has been commodified. We pay virtually nothing to obtain pretty much whatever we want; is it no surprise that when we invest so little in the music we stream, we end up deriving so little pleasure from the experience?
July 13, 2017
This is a book I will return to as the summer progresses. Pretty much all of my concerns about the digital world that I have thought about since my 50th birthday are addressed by Krukowski - brilliantly, might I add. One of my great delights over the last two years is diving back into the world of LPs. I forgot how much I missed records until I started listening to them again (the needle on my turntable broke in 1987; I had a cd player, so I didn't see the need to replace the expensive $30 stylus).
I will reread this in a few weeks. I'll be sure to annotate it when I do that, too. Since I think we need a balance with the analog and digital worlds, this book was the perfect book for me to read right now.
I will reread this in a few weeks. I'll be sure to annotate it when I do that, too. Since I think we need a balance with the analog and digital worlds, this book was the perfect book for me to read right now.
December 19, 2024
exceptuando un par de capítulos, da vueltas una y otra vez a las mismas analogías sobre lo que significa y supone el “ruido” de la música analógica frente a lo digital (a mi parecer, muy condicionado por la nostalgia y por qué no, ligero pollaviejismo, ya que en muchas ocasiones ofrece argumentos pobres y sin fundamentar)
lo que sí me ha resultado interesante ha sido su exposición sobre los procesos de grabación y producción analógicos, que teniendo en cuenta su trayectoria es en lo considero que puede tener más que ofrecer
en genral, creo que para las ideas que desarrolla hubiera sido suficiente un artículo
lo que sí me ha resultado interesante ha sido su exposición sobre los procesos de grabación y producción analógicos, que teniendo en cuenta su trayectoria es en lo considero que puede tener más que ofrecer
en genral, creo que para las ideas que desarrolla hubiera sido suficiente un artículo
May 27, 2018
A fairly slim volume given its price, but a thought provoking non the less. It posits a fairly nuanced argument that in simplified terms is that as we rush to digitise everything we are leaving behind really valuable context and insight, some might call noise. For example embracing iTunes and Spotify all the rich contextual information, about who was involved with the recording etc is lost that is provided with the physical content. For a die hard rack digger this is good info as it can lead you to other recordings you’ll like.
February 8, 2021
Nada puede competir con el mundo como era cuando un hombre lo descubrió cuando era joven y lo hizo suyo
Creo que eso explica el libro de Krukowski y nos explica a muchos puretas en nuestras disertaciones, en nuestro conservadurismo ¡a veces reaccionario! que a veces nos empeñamos en disfrazar. El autor en esta obra sobre como se hacía la música y cómo la vivimos tiene muy buenos argumentos pero no he podido evitar leerla desde una simpatía del desacuerdo: nada de lo actual puede competir con el mundo cuando Krukowski se enamoró de la música y empezó a crearla
Creo que eso explica el libro de Krukowski y nos explica a muchos puretas en nuestras disertaciones, en nuestro conservadurismo ¡a veces reaccionario! que a veces nos empeñamos en disfrazar. El autor en esta obra sobre como se hacía la música y cómo la vivimos tiene muy buenos argumentos pero no he podido evitar leerla desde una simpatía del desacuerdo: nada de lo actual puede competir con el mundo cuando Krukowski se enamoró de la música y empezó a crearla
May 2, 2021
Quote from the introduction:
"Nevertheless this book is hardly a Luddite's call."
Narrator: "It is totally a Luddite's call."
Almost rated it two stars because of the interesting historical facts around analog recording, but lost it as it veered into yet another rehash of social media bashing.
(Seriously - a young band has *less opportunity* in a world where you can do professional level production, market, build a following, and eventually get to tour worldwide, without major label contract, starting from your bedroom like australian guitarist Plini?)
"Nevertheless this book is hardly a Luddite's call."
Narrator: "It is totally a Luddite's call."
Almost rated it two stars because of the interesting historical facts around analog recording, but lost it as it veered into yet another rehash of social media bashing.
(Seriously - a young band has *less opportunity* in a world where you can do professional level production, market, build a following, and eventually get to tour worldwide, without major label contract, starting from your bedroom like australian guitarist Plini?)
August 24, 2025
I love when a non-fiction book combines science, history and a little bit of narrative poetry. In "The New Analog," Damon Krukowski explores the power of music --and the power of silence - to evoke emotion. If you've ever used the phrase "signal to noise ratio," this book will resonate with you. A bonafide indy rock star, the author takes us through the insane journey from analog music to digital music and explores what got lost in the transposition. And he shows us how to find richness of music both in our ears and in our hearts.
June 25, 2017
Galaxie 500 frontman Damon Krukowski offers a wonderfully thoughtful take on our world's transition from analog to digital output. It is refreshing to hear an artist's take on the way they have perceived the digit revolution. It is more technical than I thought it would be going in, but I actually enjoyed it all the more because of Krukowski's attention to detail and the amount of research he did to write this book. I would recommend to anyone that loves music.
July 5, 2017
Damon Krukowski's book tells two stories in one. The first is a philosophical meditation on how digitization and optimization — which Krukowski calls removing noise from signal — has cost us considerably as a society. The second is a detailed explanation of what digitization does to sound. As a non-expert, I found the latter sections to be a touch too dense and technical, hence my rating of four stars. But Krukowski's central thesis is valuable and important and well worth reading.
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