I think the problem of this book lies in what is presented and what it was marketed to be and what it actually is. So if you are interested in the drone genre, this book will most likely be a disappointment because you know most of the things in here already and will probably shake your head while reading about all the bands that - according to Sword - produce monolithic undertows. You can still find many interesting bands and album recommendations in this book, but, to be honest, I would have preferred a simple list format for that. The book itself It has a particularly drone-like feel in that middle section: like the same story is repeated with different players, facing different emotional challenges, in different cities, on different drugs, each one influencing the next. So. many. drugs... In the book the author is talking to Brian Eno who makes the point that in the past a drone was produced by a person and it was limited by their endurance, now you can hit a switch and the drone can last months or years.

This is a book about the very human fascination with sound, the drone and the shamanic other. The whole weighty volume works like a drone – pulling you into its own ecstatic journey – perhaps a groundbreaking in itself – perhaps the world’s first book of drone writing! Harry also has a habit of inserting himself into the narrative. He seems to think he's Hunter S. Thompson - our fearless gonzo reporter issuing harrowing dispatches from the frontline of his chemical misadventures. So it's a pity he comes across as more like Alan Partridge out of his depth on a Manchester drug bust. In 2021 drone is everywhere framing the dystopia and releasing to the euphoria and its journey is a strong reflection of the times. Harry Sword connects with the music that can be reflective and transcending. He looks at why the drone works – the enticing trip that creates a sense of the other, the ecstatic embrace of the one note, the endless cosmic slip and slide of sound that draws you into something deeper and mediative and into something so deep and eternal that you are hypnotised by its beauty. He signposts the key player and explains the fundamental brilliance of the drone. The journey continues through religious inanition from the holy OM to the haunting Gregorian chants of the Byzantine courts and continues, as it has done for centuries, to the centre of the drone as a sonic enabler of meditative transcendence. I recently read this and it definitely changed what I was doing. For the last few years I've had two modes of operation: monolithic ( ), wall of sound pieces with hardly any movement at all -- and then semi-endurance performances, such as this piece Neptune I've been working on that's performed over the 4 hours and change it takes to get there at light speed. Strangely enough this book got me thinking in much shorter terms, as in how short can I get and still be classified as drone, and has shaken a lot of other stuff loose. Excellent read. No hit or miss on this one. Diving from it into The Great Animal Orchestra by Bernie Klause has been really interesting.

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My only problem with this book is that I knew a lot of what it talked about already. Being pretty well informed about metal music already and having read Alex Ross' Listen to This and JR Moores Electric Wizards, Monolithic Undertow came in a LITTLE redundant. The drone hooks you in and takes you on the trip. It’s the fundamental of music’s ancient and modern because it is a direct connection with the vibration of nature, the universe and god. It is the core of all old musics and an increasingly key part of modern music. Sword writes the book with infectious enthusiasm; it is a breezy, friendly read. At the end of the day he's a metalhead (albeit a slightly pompous one) and this is where he's happiest. Unfortunately, I don't think he clearly defines what he means by drone music. He frequently talks about "the drone" as if it's something that can be invoked, or as if it's some cosmic force that one can tune into (usually aided by drugs). There's a lot of talk about "transcendence", and other wavy-gravy ideas - he even ends the book by asking "do we play the drone or does it play us?" To me it sounds exactly like the "New Age woo-woo" that Sword clearly looks down on. A lot of drone pieces are very long and the length encourages perceptual change. “If you know that the drone is absolutely constant… then you know that if you hear changing, it is you that is changing, not it,” Eno tells the author. Inside the drone, perceptions of time change too. I don’t know that Sword would go so far as to say that listening to and performing drone music is a kind of meditative practice, but the temporal pliancy of such experiences is crucial, he argues, because they allow you to take control of time, to forget the self and its sense of human transience and frailty. Reading Monolithic Undertow a phrase from a Louise Bogan poem has been running through my mind: “Music that is not meant for music’s cage”. Just as drone music offers a subversive art unconstrained by melodic, harmonic or rhythmic expectations, so it offers a release, however fleeting, from the small limits of our lives, bookended by greater oblivions as they are. It’s a portal from the body’s cage to whatever lies on the other side of ecstasy.

In his short author bio Harry proudly boasts of having been published by The Quietus. And yes, his style of writing is a perfect fit for that place. It's all here: the laboured points; the use of five adjectives when one will do; the meandering run-on sentences; the overuse of italics for emphasis; the tendency to namedrop; and tortured metaphors that look good on paper, but which actually make no sense at all.

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Only two real areas of omission. The Punk/New Wave era is missed when groups like Wire went from one-minute songs to drone in a few years. And Sword as a complete blind spot on the biggest drone community in the British Isles, bagpipe players. I found the book inspiring overall, which was the point, and wound up recording a half-hour drone set for an upcoming internet radio show -- I'm pleased at how it turned out and I might just continue in the same vein from now on, instead of shorter pieces.