Sonic Phantoms: Composition with Auditory Phantasmatic Presence

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In this book, Barbara Ellison and Thomas B. W. Bailey lay out and explore the mystifying and evanescent musical territory of 'sonic phantoms': auditory illusions within the musical material that convey a 'phantasmatic' presence. Structured around a large body of compositional work developed by Ellison over the past decade, sonic phantoms are revealed and illustrated as they arise through a diverse array of musical sources, materials, techniques, and compositional tools: voices (real and synthetic), field recordings, instrument manipulation, object amplification, improvisation, and recording studio techniques. Somehow inherent in all music--and perhaps in all sound--sonic phantoms lurk and stalk with the promise of mystery and elevation. We just need to conjure them.

Reviews

Sonic Phantoms channels the spirits of those artists and theorists who have long understood the instability of our relation to the world while providing its readers with an intensely personal insight into a compositional practice that seeks to enable in others a different form of knowing and being in the world. A vital reminder for our post-truth times that we are active agents in the production of the strange hinterland that lies beyond and between us, and of the critical role of art as an interventionist act. * Greg Hainge, Professor of French, The University of Queensland, Australia, and author of Philippe Grandrieux: Sonic Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2017) *
Sonic Phantoms is full of wonders, describing research and practical matters of great breadth and depth across time and culture. Like one of the sources quoted, the work itself is 'radically inclusive and universalizing,' and a pleasure to read: the book is written in sensible language without compromising scientific accuracy and practical psychological reality. In this book, the 'perceptive' ear finds resources, examples, philosophical techniques, and compositional strategies, discoursing on the real illusions of human perception as it relates to our natural and aesthetic interactions with the world. * Michael Lee Gendreau, Acoustician and Composer, USA *
In plural voices and with great eloquence, the book takes us on a high-speed trip through the hallucinatory landscape of sonic works, revealing the phantasmic potential and intent of music and its listening, and conjuring from locked grooves, loops, and repetitions the composer as 'revealer of new worlds.' * Salom Voegelin, Professor of Sound, London College of Communication, UAL, UK, and author of The Political Possibility of Sound (Bloomsbury, 2018) *

Author Bio

Barbara Ellison is an award-winning composer and artist whose creations have been presented internationally, including her latest 3-hour album, Cyber-Opera. Thomas Bey William Bailey is a recording artist and author of several books on sonic art, including To Hear the World with New Eyes: A Cultural History of the Synesthetic and Cross-Sensory Arts (2016). Francisco Lpez is internationally recognized as one of the main figures in the realms of sound art and experimental music.