David Toop is a musician, author and professor of Audio Culture and Improvisation at London College of Communication, UK. He has published five books including Ocean of Sound, Rap Attack and Sinister Resonance. Exhibitions curated include Sonic Boom for the Hayward Gallery, and Playing John Cage for Arnolfini Bristol. His first album, New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments, was released on Brian Eno's Obscure label in 1975 and he has collaborated with many improvising musicians and artists.

A multidisciplinary approach to the history and development of free-improvisation with discussions of political influence, art movements (surrealist automatism, stream-of-consciousness in literature), etc.

1: (only begin) A DESCENT2: FREE BODIES3: collective subjectivities 14: OVERTURE TO DAWN5: collective subjectivities 26: INTO THE HOT7: solitary subjectivities8: TROUBLED SEA OF NOISES AND HOARSE DISPUTES9: collective objectivities10: IMAGINARY BIRDS SAID TO LIVE IN PARADISE11: postscript: the ballad of john and yoko12: RAIN FALLING DOWN ON OLD GODSIndex

Shortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize 2017.In this first installment of acclaimed music writer David Toop's interdisciplinary and sweeping overview of free improvisation, Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom: Before 1970 introduces the philosophy and practice of improvisation (both musical and otherwise) within the historical context of the post-World War II era. Neither strictly chronological, or exclusively a history, Into the Maelstrom investigates a wide range of improvisational tendencies: from surrealist automatism to stream-of-consciousness in literature and vocalization; from the free music of Percy Grainger to the free improvising groups emerging out of the early 1960s (Group Ongaku, Nuova Consonanza, MEV, AMM, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble); and from free jazz to the strands of free improvisation that sought to distance itself from jazz. In exploring the diverse ways in which spontaneity became a core value in the early twentieth century as well as free improvisation's connection to both 1960s rock (The Beatles, Cream, Pink Floyd) and the era of post-Cagean indeterminacy in composition, Toop provides a definitive and all-encompassing exploration of free improvisation up to 1970, ending with the late 1960s international developments of free music from Roscoe Mitchell in Chicago, Peter Brötzmann in Berlin and Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg in Amsterdam.