"A rich, wideranging discussion, knowledgeable and insightful, that achieves the rare feat of connecting, and balancing, philosophy and artistic practice."

The Wire

"I foresee that the book will become a staple in sound studies . . . . The book’s strength is that it offers the first philosophical genealogy (to my knowledge) that establishes the sonic flux theory as an ontology for understanding the emergence of sound art in the second half of the twentieth century."

Journal of Sonic Studies

"In this book, Cox (also co-editor of the Audio Culture anthology) constructs and formalises the concept of 'sonic flux,' conceived in an early form by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Deleuze, and furthered by Manuel DeLanda’s 'A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History.'" 

Neural

"Christoph Cox in Sonic Flux investigates the most materialistic and prosaic music: the underrated background music. . . . Following the school of Schaeffer, Russolo, Varese, and Cage, Cox stands up for urban soundscapes and their range of attractions, blurs, chains, dilations and fades."

Sonograma Magazine

Sonic Flux is a book that may well revolutionize both philosophy and audio culture. Just as the words we speak are ‘sampled’ from the reservoir of language, Cox argues that sounds are extracted from an intensive material continuum—the ‘sonic flux’—which he explores through a rich array of concepts such as synesthesia, acoustic space, room tone, noise, signal, and time. In doing so, Cox appeals to a wide array of sonic artists—from pioneers such as Cage and Schaffer to a host of more recent figures—whom he treats as philosophers, as thinkers who happen to think in sound rather than concepts. Sonic Flux may finally compel philosophers to take the aural as seriously as the visual. An essential work.

Daniel W. Smith, Purdue University

Whether you like your materialism old or new, this is the manual for thinking about sound in its material flux. And if you don’t like your materialism at all, this book is all the more important, because no one is more comprehensive or more persuasive than Cox. A test and a testament—as close to a must-read as the study of sound is likely to produce.

Seth Kim-Cohen, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Sonic Flux makes a passionate and finely detailed case for a materialist view of sound and gives sound art its own place in the historical arc of music. Christoph Cox ties together Nietzsche's conception of the Dionysian and Attali's theories of territorialization to outline something like a Tao of sound—a ‘field of fluxes’ that exists before and outside humanist models of signification and narrative. Sonic Flux returns sound to itself, and frees the act of listening from any need to replicate the tendencies of reading or looking.

Sasha Frere-Jones

"Sonic Flux has solidified Cox’s role as the definitive voice in the field of sound art. Sonic Flux presents us with sound art’s long overdue conceptualization within contemporary discourse. In this text we encounter sound studies like never before, that is, as a site of courageous creative artistic research founded upon rigorous material experimentation and theoretical exploration. Cox’s background in philosophy, critical theory, and art history are clearly evident in this book and are greatly appreciated."
 

Journal of Visual Culture