BOOK:

THE EAR IS A HUNGRY GHOST

Based on my life, listening and headful of music, I have self-published a book called The Ear Is a Hungry Ghost.

To support it, the Hungry Ghost website provides a Spotify playlist for each chapter, as well as offering photographs, notes and archive material to enhance the reading/listening experience. It's like a great big gatefold LP, only better.

To visit the website, click here.

To buy the book, click here.

Both links are the same.

Some Asian religions tell of restless spirits that wander the earth, forever consumed by cravings they can never fully satisfy – hungry ghosts.

With this in mind, the German post-rock/electronic trio To Rococo Rot once named an album Music Is A Hungry Ghost.

But they got it wrong, because actually the ear is a hungry ghost, and what it craves is a limitless all-you-can-eat banquet of sound, speech and of course music. 

This book, along with the website and playlists that support it, presents a range of evidence to support this proposition: the ear is a hungry ghost.

The whole project is a meandering, partisan and incomplete accumulation of material drawn mainly from aspects of my own life, listening and headful of music.

Amongst other things, it’s about

• a prefect, pool attendant, potter, parent, layabout, lexicographer, lecturer and library assistant: life
• a pair of greedy ears, used and abused for aural fine dining, extreme eating, street food and TV dinners: listening
• Elvis’s hair, Keith Emerson’s organ, sex and pistols, lists, trousers, Aleister Crowley, tubular bells and stamps: a headful of music.

Whether you like music, love music or can’t decide, there’s plenty here to graze on, and lots to get your teeth into, from ready meals to restaurant dining, from amuse bouches to bargain buckets.

And remember, it's a headful of music rather than a head full – because there’s always room for more.