Archives par étiquette : Black Inc.

NEW YORK CITY GLOW de Rachel Coad

A snake, an octopus and the near death of Johnny Ramone. The almost true account of the 1977 New York City blackout.

NEW YORK CITY GLOW: A Long Comic
by Rachel Coad
Upswell Publishing/ Black Inc., July 2023

Set in the 1970s, the story’s capstone is the 1977 New York City blackout. Ray the snake is a sad, lonely, middle aged insurance salesman from Midway Kentucky, looking for a better life. Strawberry is a Glow Octopus (Stauroteuthis syrtensis) with an inability to control her glow. Strawberry finds herself in constant trouble; she has a prison record and an FBI file to prove it.
The unlikely pair embark on a road trip to New York City, where they rub shoulders with rock royalty, things get electric – in more ways than one.
A tribute to all kinds of music, from elevator to opera.

In a painting career spanning 20 years, Rachel Coad has exhibited in both Australia and the UK. In 2016 she was awarded The Lester Prize for portraiture. A former newspaper artist and designer, this is Rachel’s first graphic novel. Or as she likes to call it: ‘A long comic’.

HALF DEAF, COMPLETELY MAD de Tony Cohen & John Olson

This exuberant, tragic memoir of master music producer-engineer Tony Cohen is an extraordinary cultural message in a bottle.

HALF DEAF, COMPLETELY MAD
by Tony Cohen & John Olson
Black Inc., November 2022

This is a book about making art and the transgressions that might occur in doing so. Tony helped define the sounds of innumerable Australian bands from the 1970s through to the 2000s, and his always entertaining stories are hilarious, incisive and self-deprecating. Tony’s work with Nick Cave and his three bands – The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party, The Bad Seeds – comprises a large part of this memoir. There are also indelible stories of: Chrissy Amphlett/Divinyls, Beasts of Bourbon, Blondie, Cold Chisel, The Cruel Sea, Dirty Three, The Go-Betweens, Hoodoo Gurus, Michael Hutchence, Paul Kelly, Men at Work, Mixed Relations, The Saints, Split Enz … This is vastly entertaining fly-on-the-wall account of a life lived LOUD.

“Like many geniuses, [Tony] was a nightmare to work with. But you came back again and again because he was just so good, everything he did was so unique and bold and startling. He was a master at both what not to do in the studio and what to do in the studio. For example – don’t set fire to the studio, don’t sleep in the air-conditioning vents, don’t not show up to the sessions for days at a time, but conversely – do record music like your very life depended on it, do create sounds that no-one has ever heard before …” —Nick Cave

Tony Cohen was perhaps Australia’s most original and influential record producer. He helped define the sounds of innumerable Australian bands (many of whom went on to find new lives in the UK and Europe) from the 1970s through to the 2000s, until his untimely death in August 2017.
John Olson is a producer and engineer, who interviewed Tony Cohen and assembled this account of his life and times.

CHILDREN OF TOMORROW de J.R. Burgmann

An imaginative tour de force and an unforgettable family saga by a new voice in climate fiction.

CHILDREN OF TOMORROW
by J.R. Burgmann
‎ Upswell Publishing/Black Inc. Australia, March 2023

CHILDREN OF TOMORROW is an episodic saga, a sweeping history of family and friendship, spanning multiple generations and geographies across the twenty-first century. This web of characters struggle, both individually and collectively, through a time of unprecedented, escalating change.
Beginning in 2016, Arne Bakke witnesses the historic devastation of that summer’s bushfires across the ancient wilderness of Tasmania. Elsewhere, Londoner Evie Weatherall witnesses extreme climate events in her travels. They each see a dangerous future forming. When their paths collide in Melbourne, Australia, where they are both enrolled in a PhD, they and their group of close friends are set on course to witness and struggle together against the coming century, an age of great individual and planetary loss.
CHILDREN OF TOMORROW depicts an all-too-real future history, rushing on at an unstoppable speed and fracturing the lives of its many characters, the effects of which ripple throughout subsequent generations and the earth they inherit.

J.R. Burgmann is a writer and critic. He is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and received his PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies from Monash University, where he is based at the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub. CHILDREN OF TOMORROW, his debut novel, was highly commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2021 in the category of unpublished manuscripts. In 2022 he was awarded a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship.

THE LAUGHTER EFFECT de Ros Ben-Moshe

A transformative body-mind guide to turbocharge humour, laughter and joy in your life.

THE LAUGHTER EFFECT
by Ros Ben-Moshe
Nero/Black Inc. (Australia), May 2023

In THE LAUGHTER EFFECT positivity resilience expert Ros Ben-Moshe offers practical guidance on how to get more joy in your life. THE LAUGHTER EFFECT is a powerful body-mind philosophy that enhances wellbeing and provides a humorous lens through which to view the world. It’s no laughing matter. Well maybe a little. In this book, Ros shares diverse techniques to tap into the lighter side of life, to awaken both your inner and outer smile. Drawing on research and wisdom from humour and laughter therapy, along with positive psychology and neuroscience, THE LAUGHTER EFFECT offers a new dimension to self-care, elevating mindfulness, gratitude and self-compassion practices.
Enriched by case studies from around the globe and the latest scientific research, Ros shares how the highly accessible laughter effect enhances resilience to stress, enabling you to respond to adversity by bouncing forward with humour, levity and grace. Living THE LAUGHTER EFFECT will awaken a positive change in how you respond to the world around you, and, in turn, how the world responds to you.

Ros Ben-Moshe is one of Australia’s leading laughter wellness and positivity resilience experts and founding director of LaughLife Wellbeing Programs. She is an adjunct lecturer at the School of Public Health and Psychology at La Trobe University and a global Laughter Ambassador for Laughter Yoga International. Ros writes for and appears regularly in the media, speaking about laughter, positivity, resilience and wellbeing. She is the author of Laughing at cancer: How to heal with love, laughter and mindfulness.

BASIN de Scott McCulloch

A dark and compelling work by a new voice in Australian – and world – literary fiction.

BASIN
by Scott McCulloch
Black Inc. (Australia), June 2022

A nomad swallows poison and drowns himself. Resuscitated by a paramilitary bandit named Aslan, Figure is nursed back into a world of violence, sexuality and dementia. Together, Figure and Aslan traverse a coastline erupting in conflict. When the nearest city is ethnically cleansed, Figure escapes on the last ship evacuating to the other isle of the sea. Crossing village to village largely on foot, a slew of outcasts and ghosts guide him as he navigates states of cultural and metaphysical crisis.
Scott McCulloch’s debut novel, BASIN, explores the axis of landscape and consciousness. Echoing the modernist tradition, and written in an incendiary yet elliptical prose style, BASIN maps the phenomenon of a civilisation being reborn – a hallucinatory elegy to the inter-zones of self and place.

Born in Melbourne, based between Ukraine and the Caucasus since 2014, and having recently moved to the Mediterranean, where he divides his time between Greece and Lebanon, Scott McCulloch works with prose, essay and sound. His writings have appeared in Southerly, Australian Book Review, Art & Australia, Magazine, Kill Your Darlings and elsewhere. BASIN is his

debut novel.