About | Sinecure Books

Sinecure Books is an independent publishing house dedicated to producing books and records of 20th/21st Century popular art, music, and photography.

Started by Johan Kugelberg and Eothen Alapatt, Sinecure has offices in New York and Los Angeles.

Sinecure Books has been featured in such venues as Rolling Stone, Details, NPR, Dazed & Confused, Pitchfork, BBC, Esquire (UK), The Guardian, Mojo, New York Times, Spin.com, Time Out NY.com, Vice.com (US and UK), and Frank 151.

Photo above: Johan (left) and Egon (right) shot by Carl Johan De Geer in Los Angeles, 2014.

Johan Kugelberg has created comprehensive collections in the fields of punk, hip hop, and counter-culture, focusing on printed works, ephemera, photography, and book arts. He teaches and hosts symposiums at Yale University, Cornell University, and Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. He has lectured at the University of Wisconsin, the Grolier Club, New York Public Library, Century Club New York, Union League Club New York, University Club New York, the Hayward Gallery in London, and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Johan is a board member of Printed Matter, the Cornell University Library, and the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia.

In addition to his work with the Boo-Hooray Gallery he owns in New York City, Johan has curated major exhibitions for the Hayward Gallery in London, Galleri Operatingplace in Stockholm, Colette Paris, Hysteric Glamour and United Arrows in Tokyo, New York Public Library, and Milk Gallery in New York.

Johan has also been writing, editing, and publishing books since 2005. As author and editor, Johan’s books include Born In the Bronx (Rizzoli), The Velvet Underground: New York Art (Rizzoli), True Norwegian Black Metal (Vice), Beauty Is In The Street: A Visual Record Of The May ’68 Paris Uprising (Four Corners) and Punk: An Aesthetic (Rizzoli).

Johan’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, Rolling Stone, BBC News, Vice, Pitchfork, Esquire UK, NPR, the Huffington Post, Arts & Antiques, The Guardian, Libération, Mojo, Details, Print, HUGE, Free & Easy, and Austin Chronicle.

Eothen Alapatt, aka Egon, was Stones Throw Records’ general manager from 2000 until 2011. During his tenure at Stones Throw, he oversaw the label’s transformation from a boutique hip-hop imprint to a globally-renowned bastion of good music; from 2001 until 2010 he produced, A&Red or managed the majority of Stones Throw’s albums – including Madlib and DOOM’s Madvillainy, J.Dilla’s Donuts and Aloe Blacc’s breakout album Good Things.

The success of Egon’s first Stones Throw anthology, 2001′s The Funky 16 Corners, inspired him to found his own label, Now-Again. Now-Again’s original mission was to focus on similar reissues of regional American funk and soul, but, in recent years, Egon has taken Now-Again on a journey across the world, tracking down artists, brokering licenses and issuing anthologies of what he terms “psych-funk” from countries as varied as India, Indonesia, Zambia, Nigeria and Iran as well as new artist development with bands such as Seu Jorge and Almaz, Malcolm Catto’s Heliocentrics, the Whitefield Brothers and Dimlite.

Egon is the creative director of the J. Dilla Estate and oversees the Estate’s Pay Jay imprint. He is long time partners with the hip hop producer, and the two founded the Madlib Invazion label and production company, which has issued albums as varied as Freddie Gibbs’ Piñata and the Madlib Medicine Show thirteen-volume series.