Sinister resonance

"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 interio