Paul Rekret
paulrekret.bsky.social
Paul Rekret
@paulrekret.bsky.social
Write and research music, media and popular culture. Latest book, 'Take This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis'. Teach in School of Media and Communication, University of Westminster
Sorry, one more post: in this new article I try to connect the abstracting power of money through social crises of the late 1990s by way of rap music aesthetics in that era www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Sensuous Abstraction: hip-hop, money and the popular
This article examines the absorption of hip-hop into the upper echelons of the popular music charts. It identifies 1997 as a pivotal turning point in this history and focuses on three albums releas...
www.tandfonline.com
September 30, 2025 at 4:31 AM
Reposted by Paul Rekret
This article is great! It offers a contribution to conceptualisations of "real abstraction" by asking how music helps us come to *feel* exchange value.

MORE IMPORTANTLY it genuinely provides an answer to this age-old question:
September 27, 2025 at 12:06 AM
Just published open access @jcultecon.bsky.social. On the aestheticisation of money in hip-hop; a cultural logic since generalised. Its also a theorisation of mediations of political economy and cultural form operating across scales of time and space www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Sensuous Abstraction: hip-hop, money and the popular
This article examines the absorption of hip-hop into the upper echelons of the popular music charts. It identifies 1997 as a pivotal turning point in this history and focuses on three albums releas...
www.tandfonline.com
September 23, 2025 at 3:37 AM
FIVE HUNDRED ISSUES! I've been reading since I was 19 and my roommate would bring em back from the bookshop he worked at.. alot of issues ago. Anyhow, I wrote about a new film on Irish folk music for this issue
The Wire 500 is out now!

Featuring a special commemorative silver gatefold Wire 500 artwork by Savage Pencil, plus features on Natural Information Society, Fay Victor, OvO, Weston Olencki, Bitchin Bajas, Lea Bertucci, and many, many more.

Available to buy here:
www.thewire.co.uk/shop/
September 2, 2025 at 3:03 PM
For this issue I wrote about Gaza Sound Man, a film about Mohammad Yaghi. The film is extraordinary and Yaghi is the most important sound artist working today
The Wire 499 is out now!

Featuring a 10-page Cabaret Voltaire special, plus DJ Haram's Invisible Jukebox, Earshot, Moreskinsound, SANAM, Michael Hurley, Chris Burn, 40 pages of reviews and more.

Copies are available to buy from our webshop now, & on newsstands from 7 Aug:
www.thewire.co.uk/shop/
August 5, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Reposted by Paul Rekret
The Saint Monday Mixtapes
Mix 2: Dance, Dance Refusal
Mixed by Paul Rekret
www.spreaker.com/episode/danc...
‪@paulrekret.bsky.social
June 16, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Paul Rekret
Critical Thought Maintenance: or, How to mediate intellectual and organisational form (and get away with it!)

Two sessions exploring how the conditions for collective critical thinking get put together.

London Conference in Critical Thought @ Birkbeck, 20-21 June

More: www.londoncritical.co.uk
June 6, 2025 at 11:16 AM
!!!
Join us for our final seminar of the academic year:

Dubravka Sekulić (‪@dubravka.bsky.social‬)
'On Yugoslav Construction Industry, Non-alignment, and Architecture'

Friday 20 June, 5:30–7:30 pm

‪@ucl-ias.bsky.social‬ Common Ground, G11, South Wing, UCL, WC1E 6BT

www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...
On Yugoslav Construction Industry, Non-alignment, and Architecture
We welcome you to this Marxism in Culture seminar with Dubravka Sekulić, who will discuss the Non-aligned Movement in Belgrade, focussing on the Energoprojekt and the central role the architecture dep...
www.ucl.ac.uk
June 4, 2025 at 3:39 PM
New Wire! For this issue I reviewed a new book on improvisation... Excited to read the Hosono interview
The Wire 497 is out now!

Our brand new issue features Haruomi Hosono on the cover, plus Bromp Treb, Christer Bothén, Crystabel Efemena Riley, Blackhaine, DJ Scotch Egg's Invisible Jukebox, plus 40 pages of reviews and much more.

Get it here: www.thewire.co.uk/issues/497
June 4, 2025 at 3:19 PM
This is very exciting
Moving towards a trade dispute with the Secretary of State for Education!

UCU Congress voted to support a national trade dispute with the government over the Higher Education funding crisis.

Motion & further info: lu.ma/a0vv0sjb?tk=...

JOIN to discuss next steps 3 June, 6pm: lu.ma/zs6bklhz

🧵
May 26, 2025 at 9:09 PM
This should be great. All welcome
Join us for our first seminar of the Summer:

'Music and Revolution in the Age of Disco', with David Grundy

Friday 23 May, 2025, 5.30pm

@ucl-ias.bsky.social‬ IAS Forum, G17, ground floor, South Wing, UCL, Gower St, London, WC1E 6BT

Free. All welcome. Details: www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...
Music and Revolution in the Age of Disco
We welcome you to this Marxism in Culture seminar with David Grundy, who will show how Amiri Baraka’s music and ideas might be useful for an idea of what popular music is, how it can be used, and how ...
www.ucl.ac.uk
May 19, 2025 at 4:12 PM
Reposted by Paul Rekret
📢 The Internet Archive needs your help.

At a time when information is being rewritten or erased online, a $700 million lawsuit from major record labels threatens to destroy the Wayback Machine.

Tell the labels to drop the 78s lawsuit.

👉 Sign our open letter: www.change.org/p/defend-the...

🧵⬇️
April 17, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Oh ffs, not again
Home Office once again seeking to reduce UK exports of higher education. As if the sector wasn't in enough trouble already (and not getting the attention such as important one should get). www.ft.com/content/f441...
UK Home Office’s reform of graduate visas runs into opposition
Education department at odds with plan to curb number of overseas students allowed to stay in Britain
www.ft.com
April 8, 2025 at 7:26 AM
This discussion of Trump etc with @jamiemerchant.bsky.social is by far the best and sharpest account of the current faultlines among the American capitalist class I've come across itsgoingdown.org/trump-the-te...
Trump, the Tech-Right, and the Post-Neoliberal Order
In this episode of The Beautiful Idea, we present an interview with author Jamie Merchant, author of Engame: Economic Nationalism and Global Decline and numerous articles at The Brooklyn Rail. Merchan...
itsgoingdown.org
April 7, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Nice write up in Tribune about music and 'lost futures' happens to call my book "the most successful attempt to reposition music and critique within a radical project fit for the current conjuncture." 😎😎😎 tribunemag.co.uk/2025/04/no-m...
No More Lost Futures
A new book making the case for internet-centric electronic musicians like SOPHIE, FKA Twigs and Oneohtrix Point Never is part of a growing wave of thinkers consigning the ‘lost futures’ discourse of t...
tribunemag.co.uk
April 3, 2025 at 11:22 AM
Sam Fisher on Samuel Delany as a theorist of racial capitalism, at ucl this Friday. Will be very good. All welcome www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...
3 Model of Form: Samuel Delany as a Theorist of Racial Capitalism
We welcome you to this Marxism in Culture seminar with Samuel Fisher, who will discuss the paraliterary writings of Samuel R. Delany as occasions to think about how the literary mediates social form.
www.ucl.ac.uk
March 24, 2025 at 10:42 PM
Reposted by Paul Rekret
Dive deeper into music. Join The Wire's online magazine library & get more than 490 issues of the best music magazine in the world to read on the web or in the app, plus download more than 90 albums compiled by Wire staff.

All from just £12 (or $16 or 14 Euros).

shop.exacteditions.com/gb/the-wire
March 12, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Reposted by Paul Rekret
We’re looking forward to contributing to the CAMRI research seminar series next Thurs 27 Feb at 17.00. We’ll be talking about our research on meanings and practices of redistribution in the context of digitalization.

All welcome; details in the link.

Thanks to @tgpb.bsky.social for the invite!
February 17, 2025 at 4:45 PM
Reposted by Paul Rekret
📢Our next Seminar:
'The Working Day in Contemporary Art',
Kirsten Lloyd.

Friday 28th February, 5.30-7.30pm, @UCL_IAS .

IAS Common Ground, G11, ground floor, South Wing, UCL, Gower St, London WC1E 6BT.

www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...
February 17, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Reposted by Paul Rekret
📢Our March Seminar:
'3 Model of Form: Samuel Delany as a Theorist of Racial Capitalism,
With Samuel Fisher.

Friday 28th March, 5.30-7.30pm, @UCL_IAS

IAS Common Ground, G11, ground floor, South Wing, UCL, Gower St, London WC1E 6BT.

www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...
3 Model of Form: Samuel Delany as a Theorist of Racial Capitalism
We welcome you to this Marxism in Culture seminar with Samuel Fisher, who will discuss the paraliterary writings of Samuel R. Delany as occasions to think about how the literary mediates social form.
www.ucl.ac.uk
February 17, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Paul Rekret
Issue-17 Woman, Life, Freedom: The Sounds of A Revolution
darkmatter-hub.pubpub.org
December 19, 2024 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Paul Rekret
We @camri.bsky.social are hosting a reading/thinking group with @ericdrott.bsky.social.

Discussing Eric's excellent working paper on the Political Economy of Music AI. Please contact me or @paulrekret.bsky.social for a copy.

4th March, 3.30-5pm, Central London (Regent Street) - in person only.
February 12, 2025 at 9:49 AM
Reposted by Paul Rekret
Here it is guys, finally you can hear me, on the brilliant @notesfrombelow.bsky.social podcast, complaining about working in restaurants

open.spotify.com/episode/108Q...
Ep 2: Cooking up a Storm
Workers' Inquiry · Episode
open.spotify.com
January 6, 2025 at 9:05 PM