Probably best known for being home to the poetry of TS Eliot, publisher Faber's increasing commitment to music literature begins a new chapter on 29 March with the appointment of Scritti Politti singer Green Gartside as its artist in residence.
Editor Lee Brackstone, who has spearheaded the publisher's new specialism, said he hoped the artist in residency would involve "the coming together of music and literature, holding a conversation between the two things" that will "look through the prism of music into the wider culture [and] how music has created the cultural world we're in today".
Gartside, whose music is famously informed by academic philosophy, said of the project: "I'm expecting that Faber will issue me with a laminated card, with my title in full, the mere mention of which will gain me an audience with theoreticians like Jeremy Gilbert, practitioners like Young Thug, and critics like, say, Sasha Frere-Jones. I'm imagining book launches and literary festivals at which conversations will lead to collaborations and pleasures and plaudits. And a year's worth of excuses to DJ and argue about pop music and writing and politics."
Of the kind of writing he'd hope might emerge from the project, he said: "The kind of music writing that interests me most tends to be of the theoretical kind, starting with the Frankfurt School and on to those that have come in its wake and proliferated over the last 30 years."
The publisher began its artist-in-residence project last year with the appointment of acid house DJ Andrew Weatherall, whose output included an annotated edition of Michael Smith's Unreal City featuring his own linocut illustrations.
To tie in with the publication of singer Julian Cope's first novel, One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel, in June, Weatherall has also recorded a soundtrack to its story featuring songs by the fictional bands who appear in it.
Forthcoming books on Faber's list will include memoirs from hip-hop legends the Beastie Boys (next autumn) and Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon (in February 2015). A book of Van Morrison's lyrics, with an introduction by Ian Rankin, will be published this autumn.
Gartside's appointment is being formally ushered in with an event at London's House of St Barnabas, featuring a string of musicians who have or will be involved with Faber publications: alongside Gartside and Weatherall, the event will include St Etienne's Bob Stanley and Can's Irmin Schmidt.
Faber's classical music publications were initiated by Benjamin Britten, who donated all of his later works to the publisher, and Gartside and Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor will be performing some of Britten's arrangements of folk songs at the event.
