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.
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 Q…
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: t…
Wounds
Temporary super offer! Long-time sold-out at source, very few copies "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…
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 MC…
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 touchsto…
Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedo
**2019 stock** In this first installment of acclaimed music writer David Toop's interdisciplinary and sweeping overview of free improvisation, Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom: Before 1970 introduces the philosophy an…
Whirled Music
Black Truffle present a reissue of a landmark UK release, Max Eastley, Steve Beresford, Paul Burwell, and David Toop's Whirled Music, originally released on Quartz in 1980. Remastered and cut at 45RPM by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering Berlin.…
Suttle Sculpture
Never before released recordings from Logos Foundation live sessions with David Toop and Paul Burwell in Brussels, on May 7, 1977. David Toop on the recordings: "When Paul Burwell and I started playing together just after Christmas, 1969, we found ou…
Live at White Cube
In collaboration between Christian Marclay and the London Sinfonietta, some of the world’s most renowned contemporary musicians have been invited to stage performances, including new compositions and live improvisation sessions inside the White Cu…
Lost Shadows: In Defence of the Soul - Yanomami Shamanism, Songs
2016 repress. Recordings from 1978 by David Toop of Yanomami ritual songs, shamanistic ceremonies, and rainforest sounds. The voices of spirits and animal familiars, ventriloquial illusions of sound in dark spaces, secret spirit languages, the cla…
Entities Inertias Faint Beings
"The music existed already, spores maybe or dormant clusters of digital files. Out of three periods of solitude the germination began. The first was in Queensland, on Tamborine Mountain (an aboriginal name), so silent at night that I listened to reco…
Lost Shadows: In Defence of the Soul - Yanomami Shamanism, 1978
Mixed by Lawrence English. Recordings from 1978 by David Toop of Yanomami ritual songs, shamanistic ceremonies, and rainforest sounds. The voices of spirits and animal familiars, ventriloquial illusions of sound in dark spaces, secret spirit langua…
Life on the Inside
Limited edition of 300, already sold out at source. 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 (Bl…
Deadly Weapons
Recent digipack CD reissue "This collective of jazz improv weirdoes banded together for a one-off in 1986 to riff on the deep vibe of all things French and cinematic. Backing vocalist Toni Marshall, Zorn, Beresford, and Toop created a virtual and hig…
Sound body
2006 release, first time in stock: David Toop populates the five strung-out and diffuse compositions on Sound Body with sonic events captured all over the world. The Japanese sound artist Haco plucks rubber bands in Kobe; guitarist Rafael Toral captu…
Wunderkammern
David Toop laptop, steel guitar, flutes, percussive devices. Rhodri Davies harp, ebows, electronics, preparations. Lee Patterson amplified devices, field recordings. Recorded by Dave Hunt at Dave Hunt Studio, London, 24 July 2006. Magnificent, tight …
Haunted Weather
Digital technology has changed the ways in which music is perceived, stored, distributed, mediated and created. The world of music is now a vast and complex jungle, teeming with CDs, MP3s, concerts, clubs, festivals, conferences, exhibitions, install…
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden - A Portrait
A fascinating ninety-minute film capturing David Toop at home with his record collection, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden not only gives an insight into the sounds most important to the renowned composer, author and Wire journalist, it also lets y…
Cholagogues
Here is an extraordinary excavation from the buried history of improvised music, “Cholagogues” is a re-issue of the LP released by the musicians’ collective label Bead in 1977 and, since then, out of stock. The re-mastered album is composed of a sing…
Breath - taking
Since an appearance at Derek Bailey’s Company Week in the late 1970s, Suzuki’s visits to the UK have been few. The day after his British Museum show he played an improvised duo with David Toop at the Sound 323 record shop in Highgate. This was a deli…