The Voice in the Headphones

“David Grubbs's books are at once bravado poetic performances and incisive works of performance theory. He combines a deep knowing with a willingness to smash everything. I will follow him into any medium.” -- Ben Lerner
“It's decades now that David Grubbs has kept my head spinning with ideas about the creation, performance, and understanding of music. To hear or read his work is to be invited into collaboration. We are all audience, all of the time, and every creator worth her salt knows this. Grubbs turns this tenet into poetry.” -- Will Oldham, music maker
"Grubbs uses the set-up to extrapolate many philosophical questions surrounding the materiality of technology, the motivations of the performer, the collapsing of distinctions between different media and musing on the economics of entertainment – all within the crucible of the noble ruin of the recording studio, once the promised land for an aspiring musician and now an expensive obsolescence. . . . A kind of torrent of ideas and anxieties in the form of a visual score pouring forth from his three decades of recording in grungy studios and gilded arts academies all over the world." -- Alex Neilson * Record Collector *
"At times, Grubbs goes into incredible detail: the buttons an engineer presses, the way a space looks, the feelings that arise from playing an instrument. However.just when it becomes almost tedious, such detail proves to be the book's greatest charm. As it progresses, one more fully appreciates how these descriptions illuminate the mindfulness that music-making can beget." -- Joshua Minsoo Kim * The Wire *
"[The Voice in the Headphones] is an experience encapsulated in the space-time of the recording process of isolation booths, mixing boards, the room that not only floats acoustically but also is free from the flow of real time in the outside world. . . . This is an insider’s inside book about an inside experience, but Grubbs’ warmth will appeal to anyone who’s wondered just what goes on in those sequestered rooms." -- George Grella * New York City Jazz Record *