Category Archives: Uncategorized

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 →

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In the Cave of Sound

Posted on August 5, 2021 by davidtoop

“To him who is a cave in which my shout echoes.” Victor Segalen, from Stèles (1912). How was it, and when was it, that I encountered Victor Segalen’s peculiar little novel, Dans Un Monde Sonore, published in 1907? Probably when … Continue reading →

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head peelers

Posted on July 20, 2021 by davidtoop

Extracts from a collaborative text written by David Toop and Marie Roux, published in Marie Roux’s photobook, The Head Peelers, published in an edition of 40, 2021. A wandering adventure was my starting point. This is what I find exciting. … Continue reading →

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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 →

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Who will go mad with me

Posted on November 24, 2013 by davidtoop

We were on Dartmoor, Brent Fore Hill at Ball Gate to be exact. The date was the 29th July, 1971, though there was little evidence of summer to be heard in the howling wind. During the same year I was … Continue reading →

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FLAT TIME/sounding: the absent desire object

Posted on December 11, 2012 by davidtoop

A question to be asked: why compose for improvisers? Questions are directed at time: what are the possibilities for articulating time? Improvisations splinter time. Hit a sheet of glass with a hammer and if the tap achieves the right velocity … Continue reading →

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Why do we have to be quiet tonight: Christian Marclay’s Everyday

Posted on October 15, 2012 by davidtoop

Everyday, a struggle with language, with time. Just to say something simple: on Saturday night I went to a concert, but to see it, to hear it? What we have learned from gender and language is that these problems are … Continue reading →

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falling under a charm: Rie Nakajima

Posted on August 23, 2012 by davidtoop

Café Oto, London, 22 August 2012, after 9.00pm: a warm night; the place is quite full. A low table, facing the stage area. Sometimes children lay out old and unwanted toys on the pavement, sit together and hope to sell … Continue reading →

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to rush down

Posted on July 5, 2012 by davidtoop

“Any old wood will do,” wrote Henri Michaux in 1949. The drum needed no skin. Just as long as your whole life could be concentrated into the impact of fingers, hand, fast, faster, less fast, slowly, very slowly. Silence was … Continue reading →

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mouth of shadows

Posted on July 4, 2012 by davidtoop

Andre Masson: Automatic Drawing (1920s) “she speaks to me a language so soft that at first I do not understand . . .” (Aimé Césaire, Son of Thunder, 1948) “I have always wondered why automatic writing has not been invoked … Continue reading →

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