May 2nd Newsletter

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Torn Light Records
1855 N Milwaukee
Chicago, IL 60647
312.955.0614
Open Everyday
10AM-7PM

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  • Jim Keith – Mass Control: Engineering Human Consciousness
    Jim Keith – Mass Control: Engineering Human Consciousness
    $60.00 | , ,

    “Here stands the New Man. His conception of reality is a dance of electronic images fired into his forebrain, a gossamer construction of his masters, designed so that he will […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Korm Plastics “The Second Annual”
    Korm Plastics “The Second Annual”
    $20.00 | ,

    Following the critically acclaimed first Annual, Korm Plastics is very proud to present The Second Annual, which has more pages and more authors and covers a wide selection of musical […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Pablo Escobar And Colombian Narcoculture
    Pablo Escobar And Colombian Narcoculture
    $30.00 | , ,

    “In the years since his death in 1993, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar has become a globally recognized symbol of crime, wealth, power, and masculinity. In this long-overdue exploration [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • An Ideal For Living: A Celebration Of The EP
    An Ideal For Living: A Celebration Of The EP
    $24.00 | ,

    “Hozac Books is proud to present An Ideal For Living- A Celebration of the E.P. (Extended Play) by Corey du Browa & friends. An impressive first overview & history of […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Sal Maida – Four Strings, Phony Proof, 300 45s & Bottom’s Up
    Sal Maida – Four Strings, Phony Proof, 300 45s & BottomR…
    $20.00 | ,

    “HoZac Books is proud to present Four Strings, Phony Proof, 300 45s, & Bottom’s Up, written by Sal Maida, one of the most interesting 1970s rock figures you just don’t […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • All Over The Place: The Rise Of The Bangles From The L.A Underground
    All Over The Place: The Rise Of The Bangles From The L.A Underground
    $30.00 | ,

    “This monumental project, started by author and unofficial band historian Eric Shade back in the 1990s has had quite a journey from start to finish. This insane overview of the […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Paul Collins – I Don’t Fit In: My Wild Ride Through The Punk & Power-Pop Trenches
    Paul Collins – I Don’t Fit In: My Wild Ride Through The Pu…
    $25.00 | ,

    “After two long years of painstaking research and development, we present to you, the first major memoir covering the birth of DIY Power Pop, from Paul Collins. From it’s initial […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford
    Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford
    $20.00 | ,

    Constant Stranger spotlights the accomplishments and enduring influence of the poet Frank Stanford (1948-1978). The book comprises a mix of republished and brand-new tributes, translations, [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Downstream from Trout Fishing in America: A Memoir Of Richard Brautigan
    Downstream from Trout Fishing in America: A Memoir Of Richard Brautiga…
    $17.00 | ,

    In Downstream From Trout Fishing In America: A Memoir of Richard Brautigan, Keith Abbott paints a portrait of Richard Brautigan as a lovable and whimsical friend. Abbott explains the [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Manon: Feathers
    Manon: Feathers
    $33.00 | ,

    Memories and observations from the five-decade career of feminist installation artist Manon Swiss artist Manon (born 1940) came to prominence in the 1970s with her installation The Salmon [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography
  • Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending, Revised and Expanded Edition: An Incredible String Band Compendium
    Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending, Revised and Expanded Edition: An I…
    $35.00 | ,

    A wide-ranging collection of interviews, anecdotes, essays, and ephemera concerning one of the most enigmatic bands to emerge from the 1960s hippy scene. “Encyclopaedic in scope, passionate [...]

    GENRE: Folk / Country, Non-Fiction
  • The Golden Bough: A Study In Magic And Religion
    The Golden Bough: A Study In Magic And Religion
    $20.00 | ,

    The landmark study of world myth and culture Draws on myths, rituals, totems and taboos of ancient European and primitive cultures throughout the world. The third edition of this monumental […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Childsplay: The Art Of Allan Kaprow
    Childsplay: The Art Of Allan Kaprow
    $18.00 | , ,

    “Allan Kaprow has been described as an avant-garde revolutionary, a radical sociologist, a Zen(ish) monk, a progressive educator, and an anti-art theorist. But, above all, as this book [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography
  • Gerald Jenkins – It’s After The End Of The World
    Gerald Jenkins – It’s After The End Of The World
    $25.00 | , ,

    “A Picture novel study of the human spirit in the fantastic / magical and the human soul in the metaphorical and physical in Five Chapters – being Oppression, Rainbows, Mythology, […]

    GENRE: Art/Photography
  • Annette Michelson – On The Wings Of Hypothesis: Collected Writings On Soviet Cinema
    Annette Michelson – On The Wings Of Hypothesis: Collected Writin…
    $15.00 | , ,

    Annette Michelson’s erudite and incisive readings of the revolutionary films of Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov, collected for the first time.This posthumous volume gathers Annette [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Joel Warner – The Curse Of The Marquis De Sade
    Joel Warner – The Curse Of The Marquis De Sade
    $12.00 | , ,

    Described as both “one of the most important novels ever written” and “the gospel of evil,” 120 Days of Sodom was written by the Marquis de Sade, a notorious eighteenth-century […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Hard Travelin’: The Life And Legacy Of Woody Guthrie
    Hard Travelin’: The Life And Legacy Of Woody Guthrie
    $10.00 | , ,

    For the first ever American Music Masters event sponsored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, musicians and folkies came together to salute the life and legacy […]

    GENRE: Folk / Country, Non-Fiction
  • Semiotext(e): The German Issue
    Semiotext(e): The German Issue
    $15.00 | , ,

    A first-hand account of the Western world on the threshold of a major global mutation, bridging art and intellect, culture and politics, Europe and America.The German Issue (1982) was originally [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • From A Nation Torn: Decolonizing Art And Representation In France
    From A Nation Torn: Decolonizing Art And Representation In France
    $15.00 | , ,

    From a Nation Torn provides a powerful critique of art history’s understanding of French modernism and the historical circumstances that shaped its production and reception. Within art [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Seeing The Unspeakable: The Art Of Kara Walker
    Seeing The Unspeakable: The Art Of Kara Walker
    $12.00 | , ,

    One of the youngest recipients of a MacArthur “genius” grant, Kara Walker, an African American artist, is best known for her iconic, often life-size, black-and-white silhouetted figures, arranged [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Parallel Public: Experimental Art In Late East Germany
    Parallel Public: Experimental Art In Late East Germany
    $16.00 | , ,

    How East German artists made their country’s experimental art scene a form of (counter) public life. Experimental artists in the final years of the German Democratic Republic did not practice [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise Of The New Art Practice In Yugoslavia
    A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise Of The New Art Practice In Yugoslavia
    $18.00 | , ,

    The first comprehensive study of the former Yugoslavia’s diverse and groundbreaking alternative art scenes from the 1960s to the 1980s. This first comprehensive study of the former [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Out Of Sight: The Los Angeles Art Scene Of The Sixities
    Out Of Sight: The Los Angeles Art Scene Of The Sixities
    $12.00 | , ,

    A social and cultural history of Los Angeles and its emerging art scene in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s The history of modern art typically begins in Paris and ends […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • On & By: Andy Warhol
    On & By: Andy Warhol
    $10.00 | , ,

    Writings about Andy Warhol by critics, artists, cultural theorists, and Factory associates together with archival material, interviews, and texts by Warhol himself. The impact of Andy Warhol on [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • October Files: John Cage
    October Files: John Cage
    $10.00 | , ,

    An extended trajectory of Cage literature, from early critical reaction to writing by contemporaries to current scholarship.John Cage (1912–1992) defined a radical practice of composition that [...]

    GENRE: Modern Composition / Musique Concrete / Electronic, Non-Fiction
  • Louis-Auguste Blanqui – Eternity by the Stars: An Astronomical Hypothesis
    Louis-Auguste Blanqui – Eternity by the Stars: An Astronomical H…
    $20.00 | ,

    In a century replete with radical politics, final liberations, historical codas, and dreams of eternity, the shadowy figure of Louis-Auguste Blanqui, the constant revolutionary, wrote Eternity by [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Lemuria: A True Story of a Fake Place
    Lemuria: A True Story of a Fake Place
    $25.00 | ,

    Is Lemuria a real place or the fever dream of crackpots, mystics, conspiracy theorists, and Bigfoot hunters? Below the waters where the Pacific and Indian Oceans lies a lost continent. […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Corpses, Fools And Monsters
    Corpses, Fools And Monsters
    $20.00 | ,

    A radical history of transness in cinema, and an exploration of the political possibilities of its future. In the history of cinema, trans people are usually murdered, made into a […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music
    The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music
    $25.00 | ,

    Since it was founded in 1982, The Wire magazine has covered a vast range of alternative, experimental, underground and non-mainstream music. Now some of that knowledge has been distilled into [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda
    A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda
    $30.00 | ,

    The first major biography of the French filmmaker hailed by Martin Scorsese as “one of the Gods of cinema.” Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Adam Pendleton – Pasts, Futures, and Aftermaths: Revisiting the Black Dada Reader
    Adam Pendleton – Pasts, Futures, and Aftermaths: Revisiting the …
    $45.00 | ,

    The sequel to Pendleton’s acclaimed Black Dada Reader, compiling an anti-canon of radical experimentation and thought In 2011, artist Adam Pendleton (born 1984) assembled Black Dada Reader, [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography
  • A Record Could Be Your Whole World: Vinyl Records as the Total Artwork Of The Late 20th Century
    A Record Could Be Your Whole World: Vinyl Records as the Total Artwork…
    $50.00 | ,

    This is a book about records considered ‘in themselves’. It is not about musicians, or music, or design, or music history — though all those things are considered at various […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Martin Wong: Footprints, Poems, and Leaves
    Martin Wong: Footprints, Poems, and Leaves
    $20.00 | ,

    A rich and engaging facsimile of the artist’s first visual poetry book, self-published in 1968 The paintings of Chinese American artist Martin Wong (1946-99) are celebrated for their [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Marcel Schwob – Spicilege
    Marcel Schwob – Spicilege
    $17.00 | ,

    Exquisitely crafted essays on medieval criminal slang, ancient Greek prostitution, laughter, anarchy and more from the endlessly influential Marcel Schwob “All over the world,” wrote [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction, Weird Fiction/Sci-Fi/Unexplained Phenomena
  • Hamlet in Purgatory: Expanded Edition
    Hamlet in Purgatory: Expanded Edition
    $21.00 | ,

    In Hamlet in Purgatory, renowned literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt delves into his longtime fascination with the ghost of Hamlet’s father, and his daring and ultimately gratifying journey [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Remedios Varo – On Homo Rodans and Other Writings
    Remedios Varo – On Homo Rodans and Other Writings
    $18.00 | ,

    With the 2018 publication of Letters, Dreams, and Other Writings, Wakefield Press introduced the writings of Surrealist painter Remedios Varo into English for the first time. These texts, never [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Kate Zambreno – To Write As If Already Dead
    Kate Zambreno – To Write As If Already Dead
    $18.00 | ,

    To Write As If Already Dead circles around Kate Zambreno’s failed attempts to write a study of Hervé Guibert’s To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life. In this […]

    GENRE: Memoir, Non-Fiction
  • Expanded Cinema: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition
    Expanded Cinema: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition
    $34.00 | ,

    Fiftieth anniversary reissue of the founding media studies book that helped establish media art as a cultural category. First published in 1970, Gene Youngblood’s influential Expanded Cinema was [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Jimmy Desana: Salvation
    Jimmy Desana: Salvation
    $20.00 | ,

    Salvation is a previously-unpublished artist book by Jimmy DeSana that he conceptualized shortly before his death in 1990. The publication contains 44 of the artist’s late photographic [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography
  • Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization
    Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization
    $19.00 | ,

    A landmark work that demystifies the rich tradition of Indian art, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization analyzes key motifs found in legend, myth, and folklore taken directly […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • The Mysticism of Sound and Music: The Sufi Teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan
    The Mysticism of Sound and Music: The Sufi Teaching of Hazrat Inayat K…
    $28.00 | ,

    “A modern classic of Universal Sufism that explores the mystical dimensions of music-and the musical dimensions of mysticism. Music, according to Sufi teaching, is really a small expression [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Mike Collino – Come The Maker Carcass
    Mike Collino – Come The Maker Carcass
    $10.00 | ,

    January 6, 2024 Edition of 100 Alien Passengers #97

    GENRE: Art/Photography
  • Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith
    Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith
    $31.00 | ,

    What our staff has to say: “The Harry Smith resurgence is upon us.” – Jack He was an anthropologist, filmmaker, painter, folklorist, mystic, and walking encyclopedia. He taught [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Folk / Country, Non-Fiction
  • A Mammal’s Notebook: The Writings of Erik Satie
    A Mammal’s Notebook: The Writings of Erik Satie
    $32.00 | ,

    This is the largest selection, in any language, of the writings of Erik Satie (1866-1925). Although once dismissed as an eccentric, Satie has come to be seen as a key […]

    GENRE: Modern Composition / Musique Concrete / Electronic, Non-Fiction
  • Pierre Clastres – Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians
    Pierre Clastres – Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians
    $22.00 | ,

    Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians is Pierre Clastres’s account of his 1963–64 encounter with this small Paraguayan tribe, a precise and detailed recording of the history, ritual, myths, and [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Giovanni Intra – Clinic of Phantasms: Writings 1994-2002
    Giovanni Intra – Clinic of Phantasms: Writings 1994-2002
    $13.00 | ,

    Artist, gallerist, and writer Giovanni Intra’s inventive approach to art writing provides a guide to the New Zealand and Los Angeles art scenes of his era. Everything you read about […]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Try to Tell a Fish about Water: The Art, Music, and Third Life of Norma Tenega
    Try to Tell a Fish about Water: The Art, Music, and Third Life of Norm…
    $15.00 | ,

    In addition to her accomplishments as a gifted musician and songwriter, Norma Tanega was a noted gallerist, teacher, and a central figure in the vibrant and homegrown creative scene of […]

    GENRE: Folk / Country, Non-Fiction
  • Ibn Khald?n – The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History
    Ibn Khald?n – The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History
    $25.00 | ,

    The Muqaddimah, often translated as “Introduction” or “Prolegomenon,” is the most important Islamic history of the premodern world. Written by the great fourteenth-century [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Simone Weil – Anthology
    Simone Weil – Anthology
    $19.00 | ,

    Philosopher, theologian, critic, sociologist, political activist — Simone Weil was among the foremost thinkers of our time. Best known in this country for her theological writing, Weil [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Intermedia, Fluxus and the Something Else Press: Selected Writings by Dick Higgins
    Intermedia, Fluxus and the Something Else Press: Selected Writings by …
    $35.00 | ,

    What our staff has to say: “Fun book on one of the centers of the Fluxus movement. At the very least the one who helped create a written documentation of […]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive