Category Archives: writing sound

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 →

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and so it was the blues falling upon us

Posted on August 17, 2017 by davidtoop

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 →

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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 →

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that lead beneath brambles to the bodies and minds of others

Posted on September 7, 2014 by davidtoop

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 →

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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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A falling fourth or fifth

Posted on February 24, 2013 by davidtoop

Bitterly cold this morning in Queens Wood but not too cold to hear the woman calling her dogs with a fluting falling call – ooh oooh – that reminded me of the similar calls my mother would sound out over … Continue reading →

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The Woman Seen Sweeping the Sea: Annabel Nicolson escaping notice.

Posted on February 5, 2013 by davidtoop

If a piano becomes silenced through dereliction, keys detached like so much loose kindling, is it still a piano? I asked that question, silently to myself, watching Annabel Nicolson’s Piano Film (Camden Arts Centre, Film in Space, group show selected … Continue reading →

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Can I get a witness?

Posted on June 25, 2012 by davidtoop

my essay for Scanner’s Witness project – David Toop on Witness – can be found online here: http://www.soundandmusic.org/projects/scanner-durham-brass-festival/david-toop-witness

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