Ian Biddle is senior lecturer and Head of Postgraduate Studies in Music at Newcastle University, UK. He is co-founder and co-ordinating editor (with Richard Middleton) of the journal Radical Musicologyand the author of Music, Masculinity and the Claims of History (2011).Marie Thompson is a PhD candidate at Newcastle University, UK, based jointly in ICMUS and Culture Lab. Her research interests lie primarily with avant-garde and experimental musics. She regularly performs solo as Tragic Cabaret, in the duo Ghostly Porters, and as part of Newcastle's audiovisual collective, Kira Kira.

• Introduction: Somewhere Between the Signifying and the Sublime Marie Thompson and Ian Biddle SECTION 1 - AFFECTIVE (RE)THINKING: SOUND AS AFFECT AND AFFECT AS SOUND Non-cochlear Sound: On Affect and Exteriority - Will Schrimshaw Felt as Thought (or, musical abstraction and the semblance of affect) - eldritch Priest My Mother’s Scream - Patricia Ticineto Clough SECTION 2 - HEARING, PLAYING, FEELING: MUSIC AND THE ORGANIZATION OF AFFECT So Transported: Nina Simone, ‘My Sweet Lord’ and the (Un)folding of Affect - Richard Elliott (I Can’t Get No) Affect - John Mowitt Listening to the Talking Cure: Sprechstimme, Hypnosis, and the Sonic Organization of Affect - Clara Latham SECTION 3 - AFFECTS OF TURBULENCE Spread the Virus: Affective Prophecy in Industrial Music - Dean Lockwood Brace and Embrace: Masochism in Noise Performance - Paul Hegarty Three Screams - Marie Thompson SECTION 4 - PALLIATIVE SOUNDS AND THE MARKETING OF AFFECTION Music for Sleeping - Anahid Kassabian Relax, Feel Good, Chill Out: the Affective Distribution of Classical Music - Freya Jarman Quiet Sounds and Intimate Listening: the Politics of Tiny Seductions - Ian Biddle

Sound, Music, Affect is not only about these three concepts, but also much more. It weaves together politics and aesthetics and smartly pitches a valuable contribution to the debates in current cultural theory. It gives us great case studies of why thinking through "meaning" is not sufficient--we also need to account for that regime of reality that makes our knees jerk, ears bleed, hands shake and mouths open into a shout.