Dark Sound

Reviews / Votes

Finally dark music has a woman's voice to challenge the canon with demoniacal laughter, exuberant sophistication and a deliverance from dry analyses and dualisms. This book gives the reader the writing dark music has longed for and deserves, with innovative alchemy and philosophical wonder. This book changes musicology. * Patricia MacCormack, Professor of Continental Philosophy, Anglia Ruskin University, UK * Intersectional and disruptive, Dark Sound invites us to open our ears to the world that lies in shadows beyond traditional (male, white, heteronormative) listening ranges. The darkened orchestra out there has the power to obliterate the limits of language, ratio and patriarchy, and this fascinating book offers an exciting audio guide to the cacophony of the unsaid and the unheard. * Isabella van Elferen, Professor of Music and School Director of Research and Enterprise, Kingston University London, UK, and author of Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny (2012) * From the sirens who transfixed Odysseus to the 'Dark Lady' who prowls through Shakespeare's sonnets, from the ruthless sonic terrorism of Diamanda Galas to state-of-the-art black metal theory, this extraordinary meditation snakes through centuries of shadowy culture to weave together forbidden philosophies of sound, gender, and creativity. It is by turns symphonic, sizzling, and slinky, driven by a tempestuous intellectual energy that gathers obscurities, mysteries, and insurgencies into an unruly hymn - or an unforgiving lament - for the marginalized and defiant voices of the dark feminine. * Nick Groom, Professor of Literature in English, University of Macau *