Recent years have seen a spate of publications that use the mycelium root structure of fungi as a metaphor for reimagining relations between individuals and collectives. Underpinning this metaphor are ontological and ethical concerns that are echoed in certain strands of contemporary philosophy, timbre studies, and new-generation research into the neuroscience of psychedelic states, all of which are characterised by an investment in mind-world continuity and non-dualist conceptions of consciousness and the self. In this talk, I consider these trends to be indicative of a wider ‘mycelial turn’ in scholarship that seeks to challenge what Tim Ingold has described as the ontology of the ‘blob’ and thus renew the frameworks used to theorise the social and cultural relations that weave together disparate lifeworlds.

I explore the musical implications of the mycelial turn with reference to timbre cognition in electronic dance music (EDM) settings, arguing that the mind-manifesting qualities of synthesised timbre allow listeners access into radically distributed modes of being. Building on established oceanic models of EDM’s affectivity, a conception of timbre as a mycelial “zone of entanglement” is put forward in which the material and cultural, individual and social, and spiritual and fleshly dimensions of the listening experience are folded into a reverberant unity, in turn encouraging a negotiation of the ethics that this entanglement entails.

Biography:

Dr Maria Perevedentseva is a Lecturer in Musicology at the University of Salford, specialising in the analysis of timbre and the history and criticism of electronic dance music and the popular avant-garde. She is a co-founder of the Music and Online Cultures Research Network (www.mocren.org) and has publications forthcoming in Dancecult, the Cambridge Companion to Electronic Dance Music, a Handbook of Popular Music Methodologies, and a volume on Music Studies After the Internet.

Maria Perevedentseva