"Great, smart fun, and full of theses to provoke arguments and pointers for new ways to, yes, listen."--Kirkus STARRED review "Michel Faber wrote this book just for you."--Robert Fripp "An extraordinary and compelling 'journey into sound' which examines close and distant listening in all its myriad ramifications, mainly in the form of music both popular and otherwise--and it's particularly good at evaluating music's intrinsic worth from a commercial and aesthetic viewpoint. Michel Faber writes beautifully, non-condescendingly and provocatively about something as basic and fundamental to human existence as oxygen, and which like oxygen would be exceedingly hard to do without. I found this, Michel's first non-fiction book, brilliant and a joy to read. He's obviously listened and thought long and hard about the act and art of consuming sound/music--essentially, electrochemical reactions in the brain--in all its multitudinous splendor, and he raises many compelling points along the way. Listen is right up there with Richard Meltzer's The Aesthetics of Rock and Geoffrey O'Brien's Sonata for Jukebox at the top of my mental music shelf." --Gary Lucas.