David Toop
David Toop (born 5th May 1949, Enfield, London, England) is a musician, writer and sound curator. He has recorded shamanistic ceremonies in Amazonas, appeared on Top Of The Pops with The Flying Lizards, worked with musicians including Brian Eno, John Zorn, Prince Far I, Jon Hassell, Derek Bailey, Talvin Singh, Evan Parker, Max Eastley, Scanner, Ivor Cutler, and collaborated with artists from many other disciplines. As a critic and columnist he has written for many publications, including The Wire, The Face, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The New York Times and The Village Voice.
David Toop (born 5th May 1949, Enfield, London, England) is a musician, writer and sound curator. He has recorded shamanistic ceremonies in Amazonas, appeared on Top Of The Pops with The Flying Lizards, worked with musicians including Brian Eno, John Zorn, Prince Far I, Jon Hassell, Derek Bailey, Talvin Singh, Evan Parker, Max Eastley, Scanner, Ivor Cutler, and collaborated with artists from many other disciplines. As a critic and columnist he has written for many publications, including The Wire, The Face, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The New York Times and The Village Voice.
The Middle Matter – Sound as interstice (Book)
*2024 Stock* This reader brings together artistic and theoretical contributions on the instertitial nature of sound. This issue is addressed through a variety of prisms, such as format, language, politics, or new technologies. The Middle Matter is a reader which brings together thoughts on the nature of sound; its substance, specific qualities, and potential—with a specific curiosity to its propensity to occupy the spaces in-between, the instertitial gaps between different spaces, times, cultur…
The Complete Obscure Records Collection
** CD edition ** We’re thrilled to announce the first ever box set gathering the entire ten album collection of Brian Eno’s Obscure Records, originally issued between 1975 and 1978. Containing the debut releases of Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman, John Adams, David Toop, Max Eastley, Harold Budd, Christopher Hobbs, Jan Steele, and Simon Jeffes / The Penguin Café Orchestra, in addition to important works by John Cage, Tom Phillips, and John White, not to mention Eno’s seminal “Discreet Music”, the la…
The Shell That Speaks The Sea
*100 copies limited edition, slightly discounted - Please note sleeves have a seam split on the top side* "I first met David Toop some 20 years ago. I think we were in touch shortly before that, but our first meeting took place when I invited him to Australia to perform and to speak as part of REV, a festival held at Brisbane Powerhouse. It was a memorable meeting, I vividly remember his solo performance and the edition A Picturesque View, Ignored, documents an improvised meeting during that tim…
Haunted Tape Found in the Attic, All Covered in Dirt and Spells
"David Toop and Avsluta are friends, collaborators and occasional co-performers in various constellations. This live recording from their 2021 set at Next Festival in Cafe OTO is from their first concert together following a pandemic-enforced pause, and provides a glimpse of their mystical practice of object-oriented improvisation and sonic dialogue. On a blog post from late November 2021, David Toop recalls how he utilised a gift from Ecka Mordecai – a collection of eggflutes – in several conce…
Danger In Paradise
Killer! 2023 repress. General Strike's legendary album from 1984, for the first time available on vinyl and as a download. Fully remastered by David Cunningham. These 1979-84 recordings were recorded for the most part in the quiet village of Brixton, South London – three tracks at This Heat’s Cold Storage, the rest in Cunningham’s own studio just along the street - and originally released on cassette by Touch in 1984 with the exception of "Parts Of My Body," released on a single by Canal Records…
Quartz Mirliton Cassettes
Biggest Tip! Last copies... Quartz-Mirliton Cassettes has been among the most obscure of 1970s experimental music labels. This forthcoming VOD release, presented in two boxes, throws light on this mysterious cassette venture, its context and associated recordings. Closely associated with the London Musicians Collective, Quarz was launched by Paul Burwell and David Toop in 1977. Produced in tiny editions with handmade covers, the cassettes largely documented live sessions and field recordings mad…
Ocean of Sound
Italian Edition. 384 pages «Negli anni mi è capitato spesso di descrivere Oceano di suono come «uno dei libri di musica più importanti mai scritti» e ogni volta la definizione mi è sembrata fuorviante, imprecisa, non in grado di restituire il respiro di un’opera che, in un impeto di entusiasmo, il mensile «The Wire» arrivò a paragonare nientemeno che alle Città invisibili di Italo Calvino». - dalla prefazione di Valerio Mattioli. La straordinaria storia sonora di David Toop inizia nelle foreste…
Life On The Inside
Limited edition of 300. David Toop's environmental beauty Life on the Inside is the audio companion (created and recorded in 2015) to French sculptor Pierre Besson's 2014 exhibition D'objets noires et de Choses carrées (Black Objects and Square Things). This 34-minute ambient track was diffused inside of the sculpture and has never been published before. An excellent addition to the David Toop discography and a must for any wide-ranging ambient fan.
Alterations
Never released before recordings from Logos Foundation live sessions at Logos Foundation, Gent, Belgium on January 3, 1981. "The music is free-improvisation -- that is we make our music co-operatively while playing: by listening, reacting, throwing in new ideas, not by following preplanned schemes. At its simplest the group's intention can be said to be to play together as well as possible and to enjoy ourselves while doing so. We are very interested in the result and intend that the audience is…
Alterations Live
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* "Alterations on record is a bit like listening to the soundtrack to a movie without the picture show. Essential to their 'performance' was the aspect that making music can be both visually & musically entertaining; which hints at the notion of entertainment as a valid musical form - and suggests that 'High Art' can be born from "playing for laughs" - (which the Alterations perfected to such a fine art as to become 'flavour of the month' for a year or two).
At…
Pink Spirit, Noir World
We are proud to launch our new library series with an incredible 12-track selection of music from David Toop. By compiling our favourite pieces from the albums originally released on Virgin, Pink Noir (1996) and Spirit World (1997), we have distilled the essence of this fruitful period into a new form: Pink Spirit, Noir World. Following the release of his debut solo album Screen Ceremonies (1995), David turned to a more expansive palate to record his next two LPs. Enlisting the help of a whole h…
Exploring Gongs Culture In Southeast Asia, Mainland And Archipelago
Tip! *In process of stocking* 'Gongs have played an integral role in the mythogeography of Asia. This is not music that aligns with national borders or ideas of homogenous populations, let alone racial stereotypes and exotic clichés. What connects all of these tracks is a simultaneous feeling of entrancement and social cohesion. Communal and collaborative, its form is hypnotically repetitious, melodies and rhythms spread out among the players using the technique of hocketing in which a flowing l…
Breathing Spirit Forms (Book + CD)
* Matt laminate and embossed sleeve, insert card, CD and24-page book with text by David Toop, drawings by Akio Suzuki and photography by Lawrence English * In August 2013, David Toop and Akio Suzuki visited Australia. During a residency on Tamborine Mountain (an anglicized version of the Yugambeh word Jambreen), the pair were joined by Lawrence English for a series of site specific, environment-led improvisations created around the fringes of the Tamborine plateau. Embedded in place, these reco…
Garden of Shadows and Light
Garden of Shadows and Light is the first collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Toop, presenting the entirety of a concert performed in London in August 2018. With their collective musical experience encompassing collaborative work with figures as diverse as Evan Parker, Akiko Yano, Arto Lindsay and Christian Fennesz, in contexts ranging from pop session work to film scores to sound installation, no one could be sure how Sakamoto and Toop would approach their first concert together as …
Apparition Paintings
**Clear blue swirl vinyl, matte laminate sleeve, printed inner void** Maybe these titles, torn as they are from cinema screens and the pages of literature and philosophy, give a feeling of romantic or sexual love or some dark pool of nostalgia but that’s not it, or it could be if you want it for yourself but not for me, not now; for me it’s about the teeming proliferation of complex events in the world, their vivid, hyperreal intensity as this human life steps closer to its end and their sense o…
Field Recording And Fox Spirits
What are field recordings? “My memory is not what it used to be, David,” my grandfather, Syd Senior, said to me as we huddled round a fireplace in 1979. Thanks to a cassette tape I have the memory of his gradual loss of memory, hearing him speak of Queen Victoria’s funeral and the severity of patriotism back in those old days, 1901. Syd Senior is long dead, no longer part of the field of living relations but still within the field of memories that can be revived by technology, albeit an old one …
Collected Writings on Art and Sound, 1976–2018
**Beautiful hard-cover edition, 300+ pages ** A rich collection of essays tracing the relationship between art and sound. In the 1970s David Toop became preoccupied with the possibility that music was no longer bounded by formalities of audience: the clapping, the booing, the short attention span, the demand for instant gratification. Considering sound and listening as foundational practices in themselves leads music into a thrilling new territory: stretched time, wilderness, video monitors, s…
Wounds
"Song Cycle is delighted to present the first reissue of Wounds by David Toop and Paul Burwell. Originally released in 1980 on Toop’s Quartz! label, the album is representative of a seminal moment within the British music scene evolved around the London Musicians Collective in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Founded in 1976 by a group of improvising musicians and sound artists including Evan Parker, Peter Cusack, Lol Coxhill, Sylvia Hallet, Max Eastley, the LMC contributed to shape a new generat…
Dirty Songs Play Dirty Songs
Directed and produced by David Toop, Dirty Songs Play Dirty Songs reacts against our poisonous present, inspired anti-nostalgically by similarly reactive records and live performances from the 20th century: Soft Machine and Pink Floyd 1967-68, The MC5’s Kick Out the Jams, The Stooges, Sun Ra’s Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy and The Heat Is On by The Isley Brothers. Dirty Songs Play Dirty Songs is the musical offshoot of a project conceived by artist Maxime Rossi, originating in (among other thi…
Flutter Echo: Living Within Sound
Ecstatic Peace Library are pleased to announce to the publication of Flutter Echo: Living Within Sound by English musician, composer, writer and sound curator David Toop. His thoughtful studies on listening and sounds have become significant touchstones of contemporary music writing, revealing the breadth of his musical tastes and the immensity of his sonic world. For the first time David Toop has opened up about his own experiences, musical journeys, bands, collaborations, studies, travels, edi…