By Jonny Trunk. Edited by Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell.
An archive of aural sensations past, teeming with rare and previously unpublished vintage hi-fi brochures
Remember roller-skating while wearing your first Walkman? Or relaxing to easy listening in your pure white Philips lounge? Or playing chess on your JVC tabletop radio? All these scenarios can be found in the geeky and rarefied world of the vintage hi-fi brochure, where graphic design and acoustic apparatus make magical music together. From austere postwar Britain to poppy pre-millennium Japan, Audio Erotica presents a nostalgic nirvana of the strangest and most significant period hi-fi brochures. The volume acts as a companion title to the delightful Jonny Trunk/FUEL publication, Auto Erotica: A Grand Tour through Classic Car Brochures of the 1960s to 1980s and is manufactured in the same format. Alphabetically listed, from Aiwa to Zenith, with Braun, JVC Nivico, Nakamichi, Sony and everything in between, this book will resonate with any music fan. Setting the tempo are the pipe-smoking, high-end separates (amplifiers, speakers, turntables) of the 1950s, followed by the swinging Dansette record players of the 1960s, the prog-brushed-metal music centers of the 1970s and the sleek capitalist cabinet stack systems of the 1980s—not forgetting the aerobic stereo sound portability facilitated by the boombox, and that final high-fidelity, hardware hurrah: the compact disc. The evocative brochures in Audio Erotica track the technological development of audio equipment before the digital download, while simultaneously revealing the way hi-fi was marketed to the listening public. With knobs on. A striking screen-printed graphic cover on "brushed aluminum" paper echoes the hi-fi systems shown in the brochures.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Audio Erotica'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Hypebeast
Shawn Ghassemitari
A treasure trove for art direction from bygone eras.
Design Boom
Myrto Katsikopoulou
Spanning from austere post-war Britain to vibrant pre-millennium Japan, the 'Audio Erotica: Hi-Fi Brochures 1950s–1980s' book offers a nostalgic journey through the quirkiest and most pivotal period in hi-fi brochure history.
Flaunt
Jake Carlisi
'Audio Erotica' is nothing if not a love letter to music.
The Brooklyn Rail
Colette Gaiter
The book pays homage to a frontier of audio delivery that changed people’s relationships with sound and music to become more personal and customized. That trajectory continues now through personalized playlists and completely portable sound. These products helped fulfill modernism’s promise to deliver more and better everything right to your home.
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It was very hard to choose an image from FUEL’s joy-inducing new release Audio Erotica: Hi-Fi Brochures 1950s–1980s—the newest vintage ephemera revelation from collector and Trunk Records founder Jonny Trunk. Featured here, an ad for “the one and only” Sony Walkman, one of the most ubiquitous innovations of the 1980s. Trunk describes the experience of being hit by a car the first time he wore his. “Wired for sound and deaf to the noise of the traffic, I had simply ‘strutted’ right into the road without looking—or even caring. Bang! Clatter! The Sony Walkman was a magic invention. The perfect poppy, portable, personal sound machine. According to legend, it was invented by the founder of Sony, Masaru Ibuka, when he spotted a guy at a Tokyo station, walking along holding a large ghetto blaster with a pair of headphones attached. He thought to himself: ‘that would be better if the cassette player was smaller.’ This may be an apocryphal story, but I like it anyway. The Walkman II I’d bought with hard-earned, saved-up cash, came with a belt hook—as well as cool-looking, comfortable headphones (these even had a button to mute the sound if you ever needed to hear the outside world). Supremely modern in its styling, it included a spare battery pack, so I could listen for hours on end. The Walkman II was the first piece of audio tech I’d bought myself …” continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 7 x 8.75 in. / 240 pgs / 400 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $34.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $49.95 ISBN: 9781739887810 PUBLISHER: FUEL AVAILABLE: 4/16/2024 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by FUEL. By Jonny Trunk. Edited by Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell.
An archive of aural sensations past, teeming with rare and previously unpublished vintage hi-fi brochures
Remember roller-skating while wearing your first Walkman? Or relaxing to easy listening in your pure white Philips lounge? Or playing chess on your JVC tabletop radio? All these scenarios can be found in the geeky and rarefied world of the vintage hi-fi brochure, where graphic design and acoustic apparatus make magical music together.
From austere postwar Britain to poppy pre-millennium Japan, Audio Erotica presents a nostalgic nirvana of the strangest and most significant period hi-fi brochures. The volume acts as a companion title to the delightful Jonny Trunk/FUEL publication, Auto Erotica: A Grand Tour through Classic Car Brochures of the 1960s to 1980s and is manufactured in the same format. Alphabetically listed, from Aiwa to Zenith, with Braun, JVC Nivico, Nakamichi, Sony and everything in between, this book will resonate with any music fan.
Setting the tempo are the pipe-smoking, high-end separates (amplifiers, speakers, turntables) of the 1950s, followed by the swinging Dansette record players of the 1960s, the prog-brushed-metal music centers of the 1970s and the sleek capitalist cabinet stack systems of the 1980s—not forgetting the aerobic stereo sound portability facilitated by the boombox, and that final high-fidelity, hardware hurrah: the compact disc.
The evocative brochures in Audio Erotica track the technological development of audio equipment before the digital download, while simultaneously revealing the way hi-fi was marketed to the listening public. With knobs on. A striking screen-printed graphic cover on "brushed aluminum" paper echoes the hi-fi systems shown in the brochures.
