Title: Sinister resonance : the mediumship of the listener /
Authors: Toop, David.
Publisher: Continuum,
Year: 2010
Subjects: Music Physiological effect; Auditory perception.; Musical perception.
Abstract: "Ǹo work on the subject of listening is as erudite, thoughtful, wide-ranging, and readable as Sinister Resonance. Toop's previous books revealed the astonishing breadth of his musical tastes and the immensity of his sonic world. Here he extends his purview to literature and art, treating paintings, sculptures, novels, and poems as objects with a spectral sonic life discernible through sensitive looking and listening. The result is a profound and thrilling meditation on the senses and their interrelationships.' Christoph Cox" "Ìt's as if contemporary culture has developed a case of hyperacusis in the form of Toop's "perpetual vigilance" as he haunts the permeable boundary between the extremities of sound and the fullness of silence. Ruminating on its unmatched power of evocation, Toop manifests sound after transient sound from the pages of this "silent art", increasing awareness of our own auditory acuity as the walls between inner and outer space collapse around our ears.' David Sylvian" "Tòop hauls out his 233-note Jaws-Harp and plays us ancient Siren's songs, Bloom's farts, Munch's round-the-world scream, the surfaces of Ad Reinhardt's paintings, Virginia Woolf's brooding interiors, Lynch's scary foley designs over an Akio Suzuki inaudible installation, in a seamless, erudite and virtuoso literary performance.' Alvin Curran" "Ìt's all about a sound that no one could hear except those who might listen. And for ears that [can] dream.' Brothers Quay" "Dàvid Toop is the brilliant voyager of our sonic century, for whom music is a map of our dreams. With Sinister Resonance he takes us yet farther and deeper into coordinates uncharted but remembered all the same, beyond the horizon where the listener meets the listened.' Steve Erickson"--Jacket.
Contents: Prelude : distant music -- Aerial : notes toward a history of listening. Drowned by voices ; Each echoing opening, each muffled closure ; Dark senses ; Writhing sigla ; The jagged dog -- Vessels and volumes. Act of silence ; Art of silence ; A conversation piece -- Spectral. Chair creaks, but no one sits there -- Interior resonance. Snow falling on snow -- Coda : distant music.