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Paul Rekret

@paulrekret.bsky.social
266 followers 271 following 40 posts

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

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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 13/12/2025
I've got some stuff in here, including an essay on contemporary radio
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Journal of Cultural Economy @jcultecon.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
NEW: Sensuous Abstraction: hip-hop, money and the popular - @paulrekret.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
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...
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
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....
tandfonline.com
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...
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Toby Bennett @tgpb.bsky.social · 27/09/2025
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:
Image of what appears to be a shiny room, lit from multiple directions, as in a Hype Williams video - but is on closer inspection a handy kitchen appliance. Caption reads:
"Why does the inside of a cheese grater look like every rap music video from the early 2000s?"
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
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....
tandfonline.com
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...
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
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
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
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
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Jeffery R Webber @jefferyrwebber.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
@toddgordontoronto.bsky.social and I have a piece out in @journalspectre.bsky.social on Trump. spectrejournal.com/water-on-the...
spectrejournal.com
Water on the Brain – Spectre Journal
Gordon and Webber argue that Trumpism exemplifies the antidemocratic authoritarianism characteristic of the liberal tradition, rather than interwar fascism.
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minor compositions @minorcompositions.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
The Saint Monday Mixtapes Mix 2: Dance, Dance Refusal Mixed by Paul Rekret www.spreaker.com/episode/danc... ‪@paulrekret.bsky.social
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Toby Bennett @tgpb.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
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
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
!!!
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
New Wire! For this issue I reviewed a new book on improvisation... Excited to read the Hosono interview
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
This is very exciting
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
This should be great. All welcome
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Internet Archive @archive.org · 17/04/2025
📢 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... 🧵⬇️
Defend the Internet Archive.
Protect the Wayback Machine.
Tell the music labels: Drop the 78s lawsuit.
Sign our open letter on change.org
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
Oh ffs, not again
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
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...
itsgoingdown.org
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...
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
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...
tribunemag.co.uk
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...
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
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...
ucl.ac.uk
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.
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The Wire Magazine @thewiremagazine.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
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
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Rebecca Bramall @rfbramall.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
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!
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Marxism in Culture @marxisminculture.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
📢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...
Image credit: Eastern Surf, ilovemyjob! (2017) Image courtesy of the artists
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Marxism in Culture @marxisminculture.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
📢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...
ucl.ac.uk
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.
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Ash Sharma @ashdisorient.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
darkmatter-hub.pubpub.org/issue-17-wom... Special Issue darkmatter journal #darkmatter
darkmatter-hub.pubpub.org
Issue-17 Woman, Life, Freedom: The Sounds of A Revolution
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Toby Bennett @tgpb.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
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.
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Arbeitology @arbeitology.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
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...
open.spotify.com
Ep 2: Cooking up a Storm
Workers' Inquiry · Episode
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
There's a nice review of my book in the latest issue of Critical Inquiry, "It is Du Bois’s tradition of aesthetics, which takes seriously the unstable vessel of music in the context of racial capitalism, that Paul Rekret’s Take This Hammer corresponds to." www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...
journals.uchicago.edu
Paul Rekret. Take This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024. 200 pp. | Critical Inquiry: Vol 51, No 2
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
There's a really thoughtful review of my book in here alongside all this other good stuff
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
RIP. Here's Simon on rank and file organising in Poland in the early 80s libcom.org/article/pola...
libcom.org
Poland 1980-1982: Class struggle and the crisis of capital - Henri Simon
Henri Simon's brilliant and detailed account and analysis of the militant working class struggles in Poland from 1980 to 1982 which were a major contributing factor to the downfall of the USSR.
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
Good on Netflix, the distracted viewing model and what its doing to cinema www.nplusonemag.com/issue-49/ess...
nplusonemag.com
Casual Viewing | Will Tavlin
A decade before Airbnb persuaded homeowners to transform their homes into hotels, Netflix convinced its users to turn theirs into mini Netflix warehouses. Customers who held onto their DVDs for longer...
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Brian Edwards @brianftang.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
How to turn off MS Word scraping your writing to train its AI medium.com/illumination...
medium.com
MS Word is Using You to Train AI
How to turn off AI-scraping from your Word documents
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
I have a chart in here alongside alot of brilliant critics...
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UK Prime Minister, Some Say Sinister @joemuggs.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Jotted down some hard won knowledge about how to get started in music journalism. If you think this is useful to anyone, please share.
joemuggs.tumblr.com
How To....
A couple of years back on Twitter, someone was asking me if I had practical tips for anyone who wanted to start music reviewing – as I started to reply I realised they’d be worth saving so I posted...
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
Nice to see Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, the documentary about the intersections of American jazz and the Lumumba assassination, is in cinemas now... I reviewed it last Spring here www.thewire.co.uk/issues/482
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Toby Bennett @tgpb.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Me and my mate Dave had a quick chat about music and what it has to do with systems, hybridity, professionalisation, and changing spirits of capitalism. You can eavesdrop on us if you're into that. @drdaveobrien.bsky.social @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social newbooksnetwork.com/corporate-li...
newbooksnetwork.com
Toby Bennett, "Corporate Life in the Digital Music Industry: Remaking the Major Record Label from the Inside Out" (Bloomsbury, 2024) - New Books Network
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
I wrote about Ultra-red's latest project for this issue and contributed some year-end reflections.
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
Loved alot of these, wasn't so into a bunch of these, but I really liked the Ex-Easter Island Head record that's #1 thequietus.com/tq-charts/al...
thequietus.com
The Quietus Albums of the Year 2024 (In Association with Norman Records)
The Quietus Albums Of The Year 2024
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Jenny Hunter @jennyhunter.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
I wrote about UNION, the gripping and much-needed documentary about the Amazon Labor Union, and why it hasn't gotten a distribution deal (spoiler: Bezos has too much money/power). You can stream it on Gathr this weekend and you should! slate.com/culture/2024...
slate.com
Amazon Doesn’t Want You to Stream This Gripping New Documentary. This Weekend, You Can.
Union won raves and an award at Sundance, but executives have been afraid to make it available. Now it is.
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
a tariff should always slap
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
A hyper-carceral model of schooling has been championed by successive British governments as they've handed primary education over to the private sector with predictably horrifying results www.theguardian.com/education/20...
theguardian.com
Teachers at top academy in Hackney ‘screamed at’ and humiliated pupils, say angry parents
Mossbourne academy accused of bullying and damaging children’s mental health as local authority asked to step in
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Budget Motel Abyss @budgetmotelabyss.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
Here is the video of the BSA panel on The Frankfurt School Beyond Its Centenary: Exploring Contemporary Critical Social Theory and its Critique of Political Economy I participated in alongside Stephan Lessenich, Cecilia Sebastian, and Esteban Torres. m.youtube.com/watch?si=KIz...
m.youtube.com
The Frankfurt School Beyond Its Centenary
YouTube video by britsoci
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
Some PhD studentships available at Westminster. Happy to speak to anyone interested
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
The next Marxism in Culture seminar is this Friday at UCL Institute of Advanced Studies www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...
ucl.ac.uk
The Blonde Bombsite: Towards a Cultural History of Working-Class Femininity in Britain
We welcome you to this Marxism in Culture event with Jennifer Jasmine White.
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Mikkel Flohr @mflohr.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
The initial “Marx, Marxism, Critical Theory, etc.” starter pack is now full, so I have created “Part II,” which is growing rapidly. Please share if you find them helpful and if you think I should add someone or missed you, please reach out. go.bsky.app/5GR8AAt
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
I'm in here with a little bit on audio essays
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Paul Rekret @paulrekret.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
This Thursday my colleague Toby Bennett and I will be discussing our recent books on music and work at the University of Westminster. All welcome www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/popular-mu...
eventbrite.co.uk
Popular Music, Work, Crisis
Launching two new books from CAMRI researchers Paul Rekret and Toby Bennett.
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