Category Archives: instrumentality

An air current striking the edge of a vessel

Posted on May 12, 2024 by davidtoop

It’s not a thing for me to say I make flutes as part of my practice but make them I do, since c. 1971, in fact, when I began to search for new sounds, tunings, a reduction down to the … Continue reading →

Spheric resonances / eggflutes

Posted on November 25, 2021 by davidtoop

Last September, when social contact was still a desert landscape, Ecka Mordecai cycled to my home to present me with a gift of eggflutes. To describe them (only) as musical instruments would be to reduce them to a functionality that … Continue reading →

Posted in instrumentality, live sound, Uncategorized, writing sound | Tagged Cafe Oto, David Toop, Ecka Mordecai, eggflutes, Lucie Stepankova, Peter Sloterdijk | 1 Comment

on&on&on&on: Daniel Blumberg

Posted on June 26, 2020 by davidtoop

“And now he was playing, alas, the piano,” the first sentence of Robert Walser’s short prose text written in 1925, “making it sound like a deep and intimate promise, which isn’t at all the way to start a novel.” An … Continue reading →

Posted in instrumentality, Uncategorized | Tagged Daniel Blumber, Robert Walser, Ute Kanngiesser | 1 Comment

emanation, as if by a charm: Ami Yamasaki

Posted on November 19, 2019 by davidtoop

Surprise is a dubious pleasure, cultivated in the search for musical forms that take the listener into realms of impossible/imaginary. Then suddenly, after decades of searching, the surprises diminish in quantity, often in quality, leaving an unavoidable sense of melancholy, … Continue reading →

Posted in instrumentality, into the maelstrom, live sound | Tagged Ami Yamasaki, ASMR, Charlie Collins, vocal improvisation | Comments Off

gone to earth

Posted on September 29, 2017 by davidtoop

Maybe a coincidence but during our Sharpen Your Needles event last night (28.09.17) Evan Parker played “Music for Mbale (Ndokpa)”, from The Photographs of Charles Duvelle: Disques Ocora and Collection Prophet, a sumptuous book and two CDs published by Sublime … Continue reading →

Posted in instrumentality, writing sound | Tagged Andre Schaeffner, Charles Duvelle, Christian Wolff, earth bow, Evan Parker, Hugo Zemp, Humankind, Ilan Volkov, Julia Kelly, Klaus P. Wachsmann, Marcel Griaule, Pit Music, Sharpen Your Needles, Timothy Morton, Wasp Flute | Comments Off

a distributed conglomerate instrument

Posted on September 14, 2017 by davidtoop

While eating shojin ryori cuisine outdoors at Izusen, Daitokuji temple, Kyoto, in spring sunshine, April past, I reflected on François Jullien’s In Praise of Blandness, the appreciation of blandness or insipidity in ancient Chinese aesthetics and ritual practices. Commenting on … Continue reading →

Posted in instrumentality | Tagged Francois Jullien, In Praise of Blandness, Kodatei garden, Pierre Berthet, Rie Nakajima, shojin ryori, sound installations | 4 Comments

Acetylene snares

Posted on August 10, 2017 by davidtoop

“Raygun gothic,” William Gibson called it in The Gernsback Continuum, his term for the ‘tomorrow that never was’ and still the most vivid description of a certain style of retro-futurist, space age classicism exemplified by Frank R. Paul’s 1920s artwork … Continue reading →

Posted in instrumentality, writing sound | Tagged bone conduction speakers, David Bloor, David Toop, Hugo Gernsback, John Latham, John Lilly, listening, Osophone, reminiscence work, smog, William Gibson | 2 Comments

raw materials

Posted on July 31, 2017 by davidtoop

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 →

Posted in instrumentality, live sound | Tagged Alex Owen, Billy Steiger, Calum Storrie, David Toop, Douglas Benford, Emma Kunz, Georgiana Houghton, Hilna af Klint, Hundred Years Gallery, improv, music, stream of consciousness, Sylvia Hallett | 1 Comment

the sweat of toads

Posted on July 21, 2017 by davidtoop

“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 | Comments Off

many private concerts

Posted on December 8, 2015 by davidtoop

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