Ways of Hearing

John Berger's Ways of Seeing was first published in 1972. It looked at visual images and how they shape us. In Ways of Hearing Ben Thompson does a similar thing for music - albeit in a non-sociological, highly subjective, fairly irreverent and extremely entertaining manner. He explores the role of music in the mediums of radio, TV, film, literature and video, and interviews a wildly disparate bunch of musicians and djs, from Brian Eno, John Peel, Captain Beefheart and Neil Young, to Lee Perry, Sir Cliff Richard, the Chemical Brothers and Mercury Rev. 'As a public airing of private pleasures delivered with a distinctive critical voice, it's consistently engaging and infectiously readable' Julian Cowley, The Wire