CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/4/2021

In new release 'Ten Cities,' an exuberant document of international clubbing, from 1960 to March 2020

Featured spreads are from staff-favorite mood elevator, Ten Cities: Clubbing in Nairobi, Cairo, Kyiv, Johannesburg, Berlin, Naples, Luanda, Lagos, Bristol, Lisbon, 1960–Present, Spector Books' ultra-dynamic 560-page nocturnal journey through local histories of clubbing in Africa and Europe collected just before the pandemic changed the way we have fun now. Featuring writing by three editors and more than twenty additional contributors from all walks of life, plus pictures and playlists from more than fifteen photographers, this is the richest history of international clubbing ever published, and a particular joy to behold at this time, when we are all so tired of holding back and staying in. Editor Johannes Hossfeld Etyang concludes his introductory essay with an eerie evocation: "The sphere of urban club cultures and its musical archives are limitless—and in its unforeseeable local and translocal dynamics, it is always one step ahead of any attempt at cataloguing it in a publication. Even the most contemporary moments referred to in this book will already be outdated and sampled as an archive by the time it reaches its public. This is unavoidable, and joyously so. 'You and I know there’s no stopping the music,' says club manager Faith to Taneba, the night runner and first-person narrator of Nigerian author Maik Nwosu’s 2001 novel Alpha Song about the 'believer[s] in the rhythm of the night' in Lagos. 'Music wants to go on and on, beyond all of us. Even when God decides to end the world, if Armageddon is not a fable, the water or whatever will make music on the bodies of the dead.'"