Monolithic Undertow: In Search Of Sonic Oblivion

★★★ Harry Sword WHITE RABBIT. £20

Good vibrations: an ambitious history of drone.

Sound is the vibration of matter, and all matter vibrates. In Hindu philosophy that vibration is regarded as God, AKA the meaning of it all, and this is journalist Harry Sword’s startpoint for his discussion of the drone: a changeless yet changing low-frequency tone that forms the background chord of life and that many of us seek out in music, as either soothing ambient hum or high-volume conscious-altering somatic presence. Structured as historical sonic journey, from the sound chambers of Malta’s Neolithic Hypogeum to the heavy subbass physicality of SunnO))), with enjoyable interviews (Brian Eno, Manuel Göttsching) along the way, Sword’s book is always entertaining but rarely enlightening. Thanks largely to a heavy metal lexicography where “teeth cavities rattle” and “sweat drips from the ceiling”, Sword’s analysis appears as guileless hyperbolic screed in which this mysterious and ancient harmonic force is repeatedly eulogised but never adequately explained.