The Association for Recorded Sound Collections has short-listed Musicology Professor Arved Ashby's Absolute Music, Mechanical Reproduction for its annual book awards. The book, published last year by University of California Press, has also been garnering positive reviews in major U.S. and U.K. publications. "This formidable work of scholarship has the capacity dramatically to change thinking," says Classical Music magazine

. In the words of the Times Literary Supplement, "Ashby's refreshing reading gives... a chance to re-engage with classical music in the vernacular." According to the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, "Ashby really stakes out the place of instrumental art music in a digital world, never backing away from hard questions that make us examine the very nature of musical performance itself." And by The Wire's description, "Ashby raises crucial and often agonising issues for those who care about the marginalisation of classical music."