“Not just a deeply thoughtful and richly populated survey of modern experimental music, it’s a meditation on hearing itself.”—Guardian
Digital technology has changed the ways in which music is perceived, stored, distributed, mediated, and created. In the eye of the storm stands David Toop, shedding light on the most interesting music now being made, wherever he finds it. Haunted Weather is an intensive survey of recent developments in digital technology, sonic theory, and musical practice.
Nine years after he published the epochal Ocean of Sound, David Toop returned to further explore ideas about “immersive music”—ambient, minimalism, improvisation, and electronica—in Haunted Weather. But if Ocean of Sound was Toop’s “pop” book, crafting a history of sound-as-an-environment that could include the Beach Boys along with La Monte Young, Haunted Weather leaves the familiar world of songs and stars far, far behind.
Prompted by the author’s work as both musician and critic, the book is the result of both his participation in and observation of the further reaches of experimental music around the turn of the millennium. And if that sounds forbidding, just know that it’s the most readable journey possible through the tangled history of some of the most difficult modern sounds. Toop traces a radical shift toward music that’s barely there (compositions that make use of mostly silence, the density of free jazz giving way to extremely delicate improvisation), and music that seems to construct itself as much as it’s guided by musicians (artists who use software to let sounds seemingly mutate on their own). As music, it’s the definition of not-for-everyone, some of it quite beautiful and intriguing, some of it more interesting to read about than listen to, but Toop has a unique ability to write evocative descriptions about this sort of music without lapsing into either purple poetry or musician’s jargon. I can still recall lines from his daydream revolving around a Patrick Pulsinger piece, or his sensitive and nuanced description of how Morton Feldman’s ultra-minimal music works, without pulling the book off the shelf. And as a working musician, his insider’s knowledge gives you a realistic sense of how this seemingly formless music actually gets made. –Jess Harvell
