Adam Harper

Adam Harper is a music theorist, critic, author, and editor. He lectures and teaches at the University of Oxford. He also writes on new underground pop for The Wire, Electronic Beats, Dummy, and The FADER, where he is author of the monthly System Focus column. Harper recently received a PhD from the University of Oxford. In his thesis, he explored fifty years of 'Lo-Fi Aesthetics in Popular Music Discourse.' He defines ‘Lo-fi’ – in opposition to ‘Hi-fi’ - as poorly recorded music, and looks at the ways in which this was heard, written about, characterized and defended in late twentieth popular music magazines, fanzines, and books. His book Infinite Music: Imagining the Next Millennium of Human Music-Making (2011) argues for a new musical progressivism in the contemporary era and speculates how music may sound, and what forms it may take, in the future. Harper gives interdisciplinary lectures and seminars at venues such as the Darmstadt Summer Courses in New Music and All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival, and on The Guardian’s ‘Music Weekly’ podcast series.

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