Haunted Weather: Music, Silence and Memory

by David Toop

Is it possible to grow electronic sounds, as if they were plants in a garden? Can the resonance of an empty room be played like a musical instrument? Why are childhood memories of sound and silence so important to our emotional development? Is it valid to classify audio recordings of wind or electrical hum as musical compositions? Can computers replace more conventional instruments like the piano or the electric guitar? How can improvisation coexist with computer software? Why have the sounds of our environment become so vital to sound artists and why is atmosphere so important in music?

In Haunted Weather, David Toop asks these questions and gauges the impact of new technology on contemporary music. Partly personal memoir, partly travel journal, the book explores ways in which the body survives and redefines the boundaries in a period of intense, unsettling change and disembodiment. At the heart of the book is how sound and silence in space, in memory and in the action of performance acquire meaning. Haunted Weather is a book that maps the 21st century sound just as Toop's Ocean of Sound mapped the sound of the 20th century.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Art, Canon, Theory, Philosophy

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

David Toop is a musician, writer, and Professor of Audio Culture and Improvisation at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He is the author of Ocean of Sound, Sinister Resonance, Into the Maelstrom, and other books.

Reviews

[Evan Pincus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard for me to truly dismiss, containing as it does lots of good writing about lots of good sound work and serving as a pretty indispensable reading/listening list, but good lord does this suffer hard from all three of my biggest pet peeves in late-20th-early-21st-century new media criticism - the Mark Fisher-ish treatment of criticism as navel-gazing exploration of personal nostalgia first and foremost (often putting it before any direct engagement with the work being discussed), the post-William Gibson fetish for the newest corporate technological developments and obsession with keeping up to date with the cyber-culture (Toop’s prediction about the imminent obsolescence of the word “album” in favor of calling them CDs obviously didn’t come to pass, and his insistence on naming the make and model of any digital device - portable media players must always be specified as iPods or Sony Diskmen, the laptops tend to be Macs - seems to come out of a desire to be contemporary and relevant rather than a desire to be insightful), and most inescapable of all, a near-complete refusal or inability to discuss art and artists from Japan as anything other than mystical reflections of some untranslatable aspect of national character or culture while steadfastly refusing to apply that nationalistic/hyper-localized context to art from literally anywhere else. At one point Toop quotes extensively from an essay comparing the Danish and Swedish national dispositions and discussing the way they might struggle to interact before stopping himself and saying explicitly that it likely isn’t particularly productive for him to look to nationalized/culture-specific descriptions like this to inform his view of sound art, and then a few pages later he’s immediately back to contextualizing contemporary Japanese improvisers in the centuries-old lineage of imperial court musicians and comparing them to zen gardeners - as a friend joked, white western critics like Toop could stand to shut up about mono no aware and read up on mono no self aware! I am sure his book on exotica is nearly unreadable, but as an ambient musician, I’m sure I’ll inevitably read Ocean of Sound; until then I’m excited to explore the albums and books he cites here and I hope that at least one of those books can be normal, or, barring that, willing to take this tone with other culture’s art - give me some nonsense like “John Cage’s distinctly American innovations trace back to the revolutionary spirit of the colonial era,” at the very least!

[Joe Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Haunted Weather' serves as something between a travel diary, rich with descriptive examples of fascinating and unique performances, compositions, interviews, observations and memories, and a meditation on the relationships between sound, silence, performer and audience.

A heady subject reach, full of wonder, analysis and reflection, Toop's delivery is nonetheless relatable and involving. It's hard to finish a chapter without stopping to research the composition or performer as they are described. It is relentlessly interesting.

As an introduction to David Toop, it has been a deeply impressionable one. His thoughtful and incredibly aware listening abilities are eye-opening, and his breadth of knowledge and cultural awareness is inspiring. Recommended.

[Jude Noel · Rating 3 out of 5]

When it’s good, it’s really good, though a lot of the writing tends to be meandering and dense. Loved the essays about glitch music and onkyo. Toop’s descriptions of sound and performance are evocative, but he was able to do so while maintaining consistent flow in Rap Attack. Worth the peep in the end.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toop’s writing moves far outside the bounds of what I would consider “traditional” music writing; he intertwines personal observations with philosophical musings all while describing music in the most ethereal terms. This is another fantastic exploration of sound, and is highly recommended.

[sphamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dipping again into this fantastic book about music and sound, and how they are affected by the body and the environment. If that makes it sound dry, it's not: Toop has a beautiful, slightly eerily deadpan prose style, and an extraordinarily wide range of reference. He's been a music journalist and musician for decades, and has also done ethnographic work collecting music and sound. Fantastically wide-ranging - covers everything from the emotional charge of sound memories, to how places shape sound (looking at objects like Japanese garden noise-makers which use irregular water drops).

There's also an interesting bit about how mechanisation and the industrialisation of the city led to a whole new industry devoted to suppressing sound: he has a wonderful list of Edwardian products which emerged from this industry, of which my favourite is 'Tomb' Brand Deadening Felt.

[German Chaparro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informative, and full of nice revelations on the nature of our perception of sounds and their connection to the way we see and remember the world. However, it's far too anecdotical and dwells too much on japanese sound artists which leads to long, adoring, and repetitive paragraphs surrounding a single "untranslatable" japanese concept.

[Thordur Arnarson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book. Read it years ago, need to read it again.

[Maddie · Rating 3 out of 5]

David has many things to say and its endearing to read, the enthusiasm reads through.
But sadly theres too much endearing, too many artists to display that it all comes as a bit of a mess. youre using more of your time trying to cram a dozen different artist names + their works into their heads if you dont know them rather than focusing on the point of the book, that also finds itself completely lost in Davids eagerness to talk about the many artists. (which all contributed really interesting work might I add).

overall an interesting project that gets dragged down by being unfocused and seemingly without a bigger point that ties it all together.

all in all, read it for the cavalcade of artists and fun tidbits from interviews and interesting ways of recording, because sadly if there ever was a point to be discovered and talked about, it got completely lost in the process

[Mark Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Toop's almost journalistic style is growing on me, as it's packed with ideas and references,and a fascinating ride.

This one in particular- he records the impact of a way of thinking about sound on how experimental music was made, particularly after John Cage.

For example...... the influence of recorded acoustic environment soundscapes by  R. Murray Schafer ) on a list of sound artists too numerous to mention but to give one as an example, Akio Suzuki , performing here at an art gallery, who ends his performance by walking out of the gallery, simply striking two stones together,cupped in his hands:
https://youtu.be/bYAFHDbzIr4


....or how what led 'post-jazz' improvisers (such as Derek Bailey,early Gavin Bryars ) focus on texture rather than tonal harmony.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/200...

[Ray Dunsmore · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fairly interesting exploration into experimental music, improvisation and the further edges of avant-garde sound. Much like the prior Ocean of Sound, this is a collection of loose, spur-of-the-thought essays on various topics dancing around the loose theme of the possibilities of vanguard art in music. Sort of like John Cage's Indeterminacy record, but you supply your own random noises. Good stuff if you want to venture further into the outer edges of outsider music - onkyo, free improvisation, plunderphonics, that sort of thing.

[Emily K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read, got it through ILL which means I should've made it a priority but I was happy to dip into it when I could. So much more enjoyable to read with a search engine, YouTube and Spotify handy to actually hear the things Toop's talking about.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A far more complex read than Oceans of Sound. I found I enjoyed it more at a very slow reading pace. I'm also fairly convinced some of the music mentioned isn't worth making too much effort to track down.
Go and throw some your mum's cutlery down the fire escape- job done.

[severyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

No passion. Compare Alex Ross, Evan Eisenberg.

[Abdul Muhaimen · Rating 1 out of 5]

1

[Cleo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite as cohesive as Ocean Of Sound

[Nathan Skinner]

“‘Don’t pay too much attention to the sounds. If you do, you may miss the music.’”

“My awareness changes; the sound is constant.”

[Neugestalt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my all time favourite book on music. David Toop eloquently and mindfully discusses what are, for me, the most interesting aspects of experimental music across countries and time. Several years after I first read it, I still pick it up continuously to read sections at random.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps one of the best books on music I've read, Haunted Weather offers insight into the diverse worlds of digital music, found sounds, soundscapes and improvisation. Toop discusses the way these are interpreted by the mind and body in a sophisticated though not convoluted manner.

[Penny · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too anecdotal ultimately. BUMMER.

[Loren]

Horrid cover graphic but, as always with Toop, interesting anecdotes about sound art take priority over pretentious theorizing and its cliches.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great. Now I have to spend another two weeks searching for out-of-print cd's. I never found more than 5% of my list from Toop's Ocean of Sound. But it's all worth it.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know I'll be coming back to this.

[Erik Van]

Brilliant