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Author Archives: davidtoop
and so it was the blues falling upon us
and so it was the blues falling upon us . . . like a lot of other people, my head was burning and turning from the reality of an American president in 2017 unwilling after Charlottesville to fully distance himself … Continue reading
Posted in writing sound
Tagged blues, Exotica, J. B. Lenoir, Lightnin' Hopkins, Paul Oliver, Rap Attack, Richard Wright, vernacular architecture
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raw materials
The late-19th century spiritualist and campaigner Louisa Lowe was unjustly, if legally, incarcerated because her husband claimed she was mad. Giving evidence against her, the proprietor of Brislington asylum – Dr Charles Henry Fox – had this to say: “She … Continue reading
the sweat of toads
“I was in search of something – a small detail which I remembered with special intensity as part of my vision.” George Eliot: The Lifted Veil (1859) The man whispers in Spanish as he pisses, sniffs, sighs, washes his … Continue reading
Posted in instrumentality, live sound
Tagged C. G. Jung, Guy Brett, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Tania Chen, Victor Grippo
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many private concerts
I was obsessed with the slippery, unstable nature of the categories through which we learn to divide experience: time, the materiality of objects and the imperceptible slide into intangibility, what some called spirit though I would reject the word for … Continue reading
Posted in instrumentality, live sound, silent sound
Tagged David Toop, Eva Karczag, London Contemporary Music Festival, Miranda Tufnel
Comments Off on many private concerts
a voice, uncanny instrument
The Quiet Coach on a train is often a site of tension. So when three male off-shore workers, all of them drunk as wasps drowning in a whiskey vat, decided to occupy a table just by the sign that said … Continue reading
Posted in into the maelstrom, live sound, live talk
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stick, spit, reed and tubing
“Or maybe the music we are hearing tells us about the unconscious, coming from some place of archetypes or from the trauma of unspeakable secrets.” Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, Timothy Morton. There … Continue reading
that lead beneath brambles to the bodies and minds of others
The book jacket is designed by Vanessa Bell, sister to Virginia Woolf. Her drawing for the front of the jacket is of trees and grasses, many black pen lines pulling and curling in vortical movement, little differentiation made between figure … Continue reading
Automatic writing
Robert Ashley’s death last week gave me the odd feeling that I should have been listening to more of his music. Absurd really, to self-impose a kind of obligation to consume. The truth is I loved his work but never … Continue reading
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