Quotes by David Toop - Page 1

Sound: always in a state of emergence or decay
David Toop / Musician
Decay
Sound
States
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I had the idea to do an anthology about instrument-making.
David Toop / Musician
Anthology
Ideas
Instruments
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New ideas emerge of their own free will if they are allowed to.
David Toop / Musician
Free Will
Ideas
New Ideas
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Being a critic is a terrific method for killing your love of art.
David Toop / Musician
Art
Criticism
Killing
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I do still have dips of confidence or [can think] everything I do is rubbish.
David Toop / Musician
Dip
Rubbish
Thinking
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The longer we live, the more we are obliged to confront the deeper meaning of what it is we do.
David Toop / Musician
Deeper
Deeper Meaning
Obliged
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Logically there is nothing new to say about the New. Or maybe it's just a problem of articulating unfamiliar perceptions.
David Toop / Musician
Nothing New
Perception
Problem
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Dub music is like a long echo delay, looping through time...turning the rational musical order into an ocean of sensation.
David Toop / Musician
Ocean
Echoes
Long
Order
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If I'd thought, "I can't really play this instrument," I wouldn't have done it! But I didn't care, you know. I didn't care!
David Toop / Musician
Care
Done
Play
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One of the things about grief - I wouldn't generalise, because everybody responds to tragedies in different ways - but I had a huge amount of energy.
David Toop / Musician
Grief
Tragedy
Way
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Sometimes I'd like everybody who is stuck, or lost, or vacant to stay that way and keep silent for as long as it takes, but that's the critic in me talking.
David Toop / Musician
Long
Talking
Way
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People don't have to put you in a box. You can have the confidence to move across, and combine and learn from each different practice. They inform each other.
David Toop / Musician
Moving
People
Practice
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Like a fly bouncing uselessly off a closed window, I'm caught at a moment when the effort of finding new ways to perceive the world feels just out of reach for me.
David Toop / Musician
Effort
Feels Just
World
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I needed a huge amount of energy to cope with my life. I had a huge amount of energy where stuff was concerned: it was as if all this unconscious material had been unleashed.
David Toop / Musician
Energy
Needed
Stuff
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I don't mean I give the same intensity to everything I do - if I did that, I'd be dead, but I'm very conscious, I make notes, and I have a fairly good idea of what's happening in my life.
David Toop / Musician
Giving
Ideas
Mean
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Paul [ Burwell] and I had also got interested in making books. We'd been working with Bob Cobbing, the sound poet, since the beginning of the 70s, and Bob had this press called Writers Forum.
David Toop / Musician
Bob
Book
Sound
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One of the nicest things is that I still get, very ambiguously, people saying to me, "Oh, I'm just reading your book." And I say, "Which one, for God's sake, I've done six now!" "Oceans of Sound".
David Toop / Musician
Ocean
Book
Reading
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I think I was like [a game of] skittles, knocked apart by this wooden ball, and there's a strength to that: you're not too self-conscious about what you're doing, so you're not too worried about it.
David Toop / Musician
Games
Self
Thinking
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There's a sense of trajectories that are extraordinary about a life like this. You can reconnect with people and go back to playing with them after years and years of not even knowing if they're alive.
David Toop / Musician
Knowing
People
Years
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I was at a time of my life of making choices, I suppose: am I a writer, am I a visual artist? And when I was a teenager. I thought I would be a film-maker. Am I a musician? If so, what kind of musician am I?
David Toop / Musician
Artist
Choices
Teenager
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I guess we all had that work ethic. None of us were rock stars, so if you had time in a studio, it was a big, big deal: you're not going to sit around taking drugs and drinking and waste it, you'll do something.
David Toop / Musician
Drinking
Rocks
Stars
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Every time when it comes to writing a book, I think, "I'm the last person in the world that should be doing this, I don't know anything, I can't do this." And I went through years of that with Into The Maelstrom.
David Toop / Musician
Book
Thinking
Writing
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I had ideas about music and sound and listening and time and so on that I wanted to pursue as an individual, and by doing that book, Brian [Eno] opened the door, and he decided to do a record based loosely on the book.
David Toop / Musician
Book
Doors
Ideas
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If you run out of new ideas when you are very young, then it's a problem of talent; If you run out of new ideas when you get older, it may be that there's nothing left to say, or it may be that core ideas demand repeated attention.
David Toop / Musician
Running
Demand
Ideas
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I was working in, being a single parent with a grieving child of five years old. It was horrendous. I couldn't go out much, because I had my daughter to look after. So people used to come round, and Tony Harrington from The Wire came round.
David Toop / Musician
Daughter
Children
Grieving
Years
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I'd been listening to African-American music since the first record I ever bought, which was by Sam Cooke. And it sounds more like my private thoughts that I never thought I would be able to articulate - I never thought I would be able to express publicly.
David Toop / Musician
African American
Listening
Records
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I'd entirely forgotten about Pass The Distance, and then I went to Japan in 2000, and was asked to do interviews with all these journalists, who were showing up with bootlegs of this record, asking me to talk about it. I was astonished. It kind of gained momentum.
David Toop / Musician
Distance
Japan
Showing Up
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We [with David Cunningham] did do Top Of The Pops. It was an eye-opener. I mean, one of the things that was so interesting - I've talked about this a few times recently, and people can't believe it - they used to do this thing called tape switch with the Musicians Union.
David Toop / Musician
Believe
Eye
Mean
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The Musicians Union declared you couldn't mime on Top Of The Pops, which is obviously impossible, if you've got a studio-based record that you'd worked on for a year or something. And there were a lot of terrible performances. Because on Top Of The Pops, you were just thrown onstage.
David Toop / Musician
Musician
Unions
Years
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At that time, 73 and 74, I became aware that there were a number of us making instruments. Max Eastley was a good friend and he was making instruments, Paul Burwell and I were making instruments, Evan Parker was making instruments, and we knew Hugh Davies, who was a real pioneer of these amplified instruments.
David Toop / Musician
Good Friend
Numbers
Real
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I'd just written the book Ocean Of Sound, and this terrible thing happened in my life: my wife committed suicide. I was a single parent because of that; I was completely shattered. I had a book that I'd just finished that had been produced through a really, really terrible period, but I had managed to finish it.
David Toop / Musician
Ocean
Book
Suicide
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We drank quite a lot and Tony Harrington said, "We're thinking of starting a record label at The Wire; how about you do a solo record?" I said, "Well, how am I going to do that?" I thought about it, and I'd been working on a lot of music in the years before, and I was working as a journalist, full time, really, up until that point; in whatever little spare time I had, I was working on music. So I said yes.
David Toop / Musician
Thinking
Wire
Years
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I think I sent one [book] to Brian Eno. I don't know how I got to know his address, but I sent one to him. He called me up and he said, "I really like the book, and I'm starting a new label, would you liked to do something?" It was a tricky situation for me, because I've always had this thing in my life of a tension between collaboration, which was extremely important to me, and then being alone. Make of that what you will!
David Toop / Musician
Book
Important
Thinking
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I was associated with the Artist Placement Group in the early 1970s and David Hall, the video artist, was an Artist Placement Group artist. I was completely broke at that time, and he said to me, "Come and do some teaching" - he was head of department at Maidstone College of Art. And I went and did a couple of teaching days and practically the only person who showed up was David Cunningham [Flying Lizard's main man], with all of this finished work
David Toop / Musician
Art
Couple
Teaching
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I remember I did quite a lot of interviews when the book and the CD came out, and I did a drivetime interview for Radio London or something. You wouldn't immediately associate the music on Ocean Of Sound with drivetime radio, but people found things that they liked, and the DJ was playing some records at 5 o'clock in the afternoon on a weekday.The man who was playing them said to me, "That Peter Brotzmann track, it's like having your head boiled in acid."
David Toop / Musician
Ocean
Men
Book
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David's [Cunningham] a very interesting character. He has more integrity than is good for him. So, everything he did after that sort of undermined what he'd done. Other people who kind of took life more cheaply, would have really gone for it. David almost did everything he could to scupper the whole thing, which I very much admire, but of course it was deeply irritating then, because we wanted to make a bit of money! So we made this very catchy tune and then he added a bunch of weird stuff which was all very strange.
David Toop / Musician
Character
Integrity
Interesting
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David Toop Quotes - Page 1

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