Alarms on Record

Richard Osborne

Origin: Static Issue 06
Content: Text

Why has popular music been so fascinated with the sonically disruptive? This essay traces the growing presence of alarm bells, horns, and sirens in popular music and attempts to account for some of the reasons for their presence. It takes as its cue the fact that popular music is dominated by its recorded form, arguing that it is this fact that has led it to readily accommodate the alarm.

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Contributor:

Richard Osborne is a Ph.D. student at the London Consortium. He has a B.A. in English Literature and History from the College of St Paul and St Mary and an M.A. in Popular Culture from the Open University. His doctoral research is on the vinyl record.