Amidst all the inflated rhetoric that either denounces technology for making music "inauthentic" or celebrates it for creating new postmodern forms of community, Paul Theberges "Any Sound You Can Imagine" is a welcome oasis of intelligence. Rather than choosing sides in what often becomes a simplistic debate, Theberge provides a balanced account that, uniquely, puts digital instruments in a broad social and historical perspective. This book has much to recommend it, but the high points for me are the last several chapters, in which Theberge formulates a theory of how instruments work not only practically but symbolically, that goes beyond almost any other book on the subject. As such, "Any Sound You Can Imagine" is heady stuff, but its also accessibly written. Anyone who thinks they know something about electronic music, whether it be techno or the electronic avant garde, should read this book and see how many of their assumptions are left standing at the end.
