Hardback, Softcover, Ebook, and PDF, 2025, New York City and London: Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Publishing Inc. www.bloomsbury.com.

Reviewed by Ross Feller
Gambier, Ohio, USA

Semi Conducting: Rambles Through the Post-Cagean Thicket is an apt title for Nicolas Collins’ recent book published by Bloomsbury Academic, a subsidiary of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc. In the guise of a memoir, it is also chockfull of useful information about the developing histories and procedures of electronic and computer music, written by a longtime practitioner whose personal practice has shaped these fields, inspiring countless numbers of hackers, programmers, and sound designers. Collins has contributed to this history in a variety of ways – as a composer, performer, producer, hacker, programmer, inventor, curator, director, and educator.

Simply put, this book provides a delightful and informative reading experience. The author presents first person accounts of his encounters with experimental and electronic music giants such as John Cage, Christian Wolff, David Behrman, David Tudor, and his teacher Alvin Lucier, who taught for many years at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, one of the centers of experimental music in the United States. Lucier’s composition “I am sitting in a room” was, of course, a pivotal work for electronic and computer music composers interested in minimalist processes to generate specific textures. But Lucier created many other important works in order to probe the physicality of sound or the soundness of a concept. He was also a beloved and insightful teacher, as described in Collins’ book. Perhaps most interesting and timely is Lucier’s connection to current biomusical practice. In late 2023, two years after the composer died, the Venice Biennale presented a concert featuring sounds controlled by the late composer’s neurons that he had donated for this purpose. These neurons live in a petri dish connected to electrodes used to trigger analog synthesizer modules. A more radical version was presented in earl 2025 by a group of Australian scientists and artists. Both events conjure up Ray Kurzweil’s concept known as the singularity. Interestingly, neither event was mentioned in Collins’ book. Late in the text the author mentions a massive writing project he had embarked upon that involved a thousand entries. His partner, Susan Tallman, requested the text files for these entries as a Christmas present, which she commented upon, making suggestions about content and whether to include materials in a publically available format. It is possible that in the discard pile are notes about Lucier’s neurons making music.

Semi Conducting contains 23 chapters and six Interludes. The Interludes contain brief, numbered comments or miniature stories. Each chapter can be situated chronologically, as well as topically. They generally follow a winding pattern from the author’s early days through the present day. The topics range widely from the author’s early work with tape recorders and homemade circuits to more recent tactile electronic components. Along the way we also learn about Collins’ college years at Wesleyan, his post-graduate adventures on the east coast, travel to Europe as a Watson Fellow, encounters with the experimental music scene in the UK, and much more.

Each chapter is well crafted, and only as long as it needs to be. Collins doesn’t waste words or our time as readers. Within this efficient packaging we encounter additional themes, generally based upon place, such as New York City, Wesleyan, Connecticut, UK, Germany, San Francisco, the Netherlands, and Chicago. Each place is showcased with respect to various scenes with which Collins interacts, and the tools that he invented. His anecdotal stories are remarkable for their detail, conceptual continuity, and personal meaning.

The early chapters are replete with details, accounts, and impressions of the author’s encounters with the Who’s Who of the experimental music world, especially the branches attached to the electronic, computer, and conceptual music side of that tree. In the first chapter we learn that the author’s father taught him how to change fuses, saw wood, use the correct kind of glue for every job, and to use a soldering iron. These practical skills would prove very useful later when realizing the creation of custom made sound makers and various DIY instruments. Furthermore, his parents had a book of Rube Goldberg drawings that made a significant impact on the young Collins. In Collins’ words it was the “physical logic and sublime absurdity, their parkour-runs from parrots to pulleys” that most impressed him.

According to the author, the Collins’ household did not have any musical instruments, but had record players, transistor radios, and a hi-fi system. Wishing to use them in active, musical ways, he came up with early examples of audio hacking, some involving drinking cups and needles.

Not only did Collins make his own instruments, from an early age, he had a knack for figuring out how to make commercially available devices such as reel-to-reel tape decks, behave in ways they were not necessarily designed for. For example, he figured out how to harness the power of a three-head tape deck to produce signal delay. But more importantly he discovered a ‘secret’ button (not mentioned anywhere in the user’s manual) in the back of the machine that could be used to create the sound on sound effect, along with machine feedback – a concept that would bear much conceptual fruit later on in his career. The author’s first homemade circuit, which he created in 1972, was an oscillator powered by a 9-volt battery, created from a touch-tone telephone chip. Unbeknownst to him the very same chip (the Signetics SE/NE566) was being used by others, including Sonic Arts Union member David Behrman, to create homemade synthesizers. According to Collins, “the 566 may have been to the development of experimental electronic music what the Stratocaster was to the rise of rock and roll.” This sentence clearly points to the significance this chip had for the author.

After arriving to Wesleyan, Collins met with his faculty advisor to discuss his course plan. After reciting a long list of classes from a variety of disciplines (in true liberal arts fashion) he mentioned a class on electronic music. His advisor asked Collins if he knew the composer Alvin Lucier. He replied that he did not. The advisor told Collins to call Lucier since “he makes music with bats.” After meeting Lucier, Collins was smitten for life. Thus, follows several book chapters and conceptual threads devoted to Lucier’s thought and compositions. These are some of the most powerful chapters in the book, especially considering the relative dearth of material written about one of the most unique, experimental composers from last part of the previous century. In short, Collins was most inspired by Lucier’s can do spirit, love of analog systems, profound sense of curiosity and inventiveness, appreciation of the tactility of sound, and ability to not only ask important questions but address them in unique ways.

Other chapters describe Collins’ adventurous and specialized use of positive and negative feedback, live electronics, and working with unpredictable, malfunctioning, or faulty systems requiring a degree of improvisation in order to harness their capabilities. Additionally, the author outlines his early work with technology to produce simultaneous work from different geographical locations.

Ultimately, the distinction between the author’s DIY compositional work and that of more established practices, can be summed up in what Collins has to say about two institutions: STEIM in Amsterdam and IRCAM in Paris. First, there is the question of gatekeepers – multiple levels for the latter and one for the former. In one chapter Collins humorously describes his attempts to tour both facilities. At IRCAM he faced an onslaught of questions designed to match people with their ‘correct’ experts. Creators as widely diversified as Collins pose problems for this type of placement. On the other hand, STEIM’s one gatekeeper might be difficult to locate in order to set up a meeting. IRCAM focuses on software and research, while STEIM sought people that were interested in collaborating on making external controllers or devices such as gloves used as triggers in live performances. STEIM was a natural fit for Collins, and eventually he served the institution as its artistic director for several years.

The same fitness applies to Collins’ stint as the editor-in-chief of the Leonardo Music Journal. As he states in the book: “Popular music was documented in periodicals and fanzines; classical music had academic journals that addressed both historic subjects and current developments, but experimental music was pretty much absent from the library. This was partly because extant musicology had no analytical tools suited to compositions based on echolocation, computer networks, CD error correction, Doppler shift, or speech patterns, rather than melody and harmony.” It was these kinds of issues, and many more, that Collins focused on during his long tenure teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he served as an instructor and eventually chair of the sound department.

This book is clearly a labor of love. Collins covers a wide range of topics and memories relevant to practitioners of composition, improvisation, and live electronics. For the latter group, the author offers up much food for thought, as well as numerous examples of DIY instruments and devices. Collins is best known for his work in the world of audio hacking. This hands-on world is currently being challenged by AI. In this memoir, Collins makes a book length argument in support of rough and ready solutions to technology, opposed to quick and easy pathways promised by AI.