For several years audiovisual analysis has been a growth area in musicology and cultural studies. And yet, very little has been published that recognises its relevance to a wide range of practices, including music videos, film and television music, video art, and gaming music. A thread that runs through the chapters is the recognition of audiovisual performance as a central theoretical category. The focus of the essays is exclusively contemporary. In this way, the book addresses a cluster of concerns that pertain to audiovisual production, performance and consumption in a variety of present day contexts. Chapters are organised thematically around the headings Avant-garde aesthetics, Re-sounding soundtracks, Televisual intertexts, Interrogating the mainstream, and Personal politics and embodied performance. What we attempt to put forward in this book is not a solution to the analysis of sound and vision, but rather, a list of possibilities and approaches through which interpretation can be undertaken. Thus, the essays collected provide critical readings through which the authors provide answers to questions, such as What is the relationship between sound and vision? And what is music's potential for communicating meaning into understanding? John Richardson is Research Fellow and leader of the Academy of Finland research project Contemporary Music, Media and Mediation in Jyväskylä. He is author of Singing Archeology: Philip Glass s Akhnaten (Wesleyan University Press, 1999) and has published articles on popular music, avantgarde music, audiovisual culture and contemporary Finnish music. Stan Hawkins is Professor of Musicology at the University of Oslo and adjunct professor at Agder University College, Norway. He is author of Settling the Pop Score: pop texts and identity politics (Ashgate, 2002) and co-editor of Music, Space and Place with Sheila Whiteley and Andy Bennett (Ashgate, 2004). He has published numerous articles and contributed to major anthologies in the field of popular music.