MIT Press, Sachbücher, Take This Hammer (Englisch, Paul Rekret, 2024)

"With Take This Hammer, Paul Rekret dissolves, expands and enriches any settled idea we previously had of the work-song. Weaving together styles (trap), media (streaming platforms), geographies (Cameroon) and questions (ecological crisis), Rekret draws a new cognitive map of labour and sound, work and song, which asks us not only to listen again to our current conditions, but makes us think about our long route towards crisis." &ndash Dhanveer Singh Brar, School of History, University of Leeds "Paul Rekret is one of the sharpest commentators on contemporary music culture writing today&hellip Take This Hammer reaffirms this fact." &mdash Eric A. Drott, Associate Professor, Butler School of Music, University of Texas at Austin "Take This Hammer lucidly engages with the question of how recent music responds to transforming labour relations on a global scale, moving between socio-economic analysis, formal interpretation and cultural criticism. Rekret's generous and wide-ranging discussion not only provides an indispensable account of changes in popular entertainment, but in demonstrating the relationship between artisanal production and the new world music, or financialization and trap, offers an essential guide to the contemporary conditions of culture." &mdash Larne Abse Gogarty, Slade School of Fine Art, University College London "Take This Hammer's twin interrogation of labour and song provides indispensable insight into the changing relationship between work and music in Modernity. Trapping, 'chill' playlists and the fetishized precarities of 'world music' provide the contemporary coordinates for this endlessly perceptive study of music, capitalism and historical transformation." &mdash Malcolm James, Co-Director Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Sussex.