The music - Matthew Herbert

In the last hundred years - between the invention of the microphone and the computer - music has undergone a profound revolution. No longer confined to specifically designed instruments, we can now make music out of anything.

Why use a guitar when you can use a lawnmower? Why use a lawnmower when you can use an explosion in Libya?

The Music evokes a shifting sonic landscape in precise detail - Chinese concrete slowly hardening, overlaid by a splintering cassette tape in the stereo of a car mid-crash. The noise of 73,984 insects hitting number plates followed by that of a drill striking oil deep beneath the earth's surface. Or just the silence of two unfamiliar people as they look up at the night sky.

As well as being a description of an imagined album this novel is a manifesto for sound, challenging how we hear the world itself, while listening to stories about humanity and our place in that world.