Louis Barfe

His Master’s Voice

Perfecting Sound Forever: The Story of Recorded Music

By

Granta Books 416pp £20 order from our bookshop

In his 1950s radio series, the American satirist Stan Freberg portrayed a hi-fi nut called Herman Horne. In his pursuit of perfect audio, Horne counselled moving out of one’s main dwelling in order to exploit its acoustic capabilities fully. The true range of sounds could only be enjoyed ‘as you and your wife sit of an evening, shivering in the garage, listening to your house’. 

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'Hart sets out to unsettle, startle and disturb. In this strange, disconcerting, radical version of a strange, disc… ,
    • Here is @MannJessica's June crime fiction round-up, discussing books by Georges Simenon, Jack Grimwood,… ,
    • John Stubbs reviews Stephen Greenblatt's latest, 'Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power' ,
    • RT : What happened when US military strategist Herman Kahn - one of Kubrick’s three models for Dr Strangelove - took LSD… ,
    • 'Pollan has no doubt that the use of psychedelics could have a powerfully beneficial effect on a range of condition… ,
    • A memoir about an Untouchable family and the 'formation of modern India': 'Ants among Elephants' by @gidla_sujatha… ,
    • RT : First founded in Edinburgh in 1979, is considered a trusted independent source for reviews of new book… ,
    Follow Us