Liam Cagney

Liam is an Irish musicologist, writer and experimental musician. His music writing appears regularly in places like the Guardian, DJ Mag, Gramophone, the Telegraph, the Spectator, the TLS, and the Irish Times. As a writer on electronic dance music, Liam’s work straddles literary and academic approaches, notably in his book Berghain Nights: A Journey Through Techno and Berlin Club Culture (Reaktion, 2025).

Liam’s first book was the monograph Gérard Grisey and Spectral Music: Composition in the Information Age (Cambridge University Press, 2024), exploring how information technology in the 1970s began to transform classical composition. His second book was an edited volume bringing together world-leading musical thinkers on this topic, The Oxford Handbook of Spectral Music.

Prior to joining BIMM Berlin, Liam lectured at BIMM Dublin and University College Dublin, and he received a PhD in musicology from City, University of London. His teaching covers research methods, cultural studies, music journalism, collaborative theory, electronic dance music and queer theory, among other areas.

Links:

• Berghain Nights
• Gérard Grisey and Spectral Music
• Berlin Waves