Critical Perspectives on Petrosonics

Lying at the intersection of sound studies and energy humanities, this edited volume is the first to explore the sounds of fossil fuels and the entanglement of energy and listening within petrocapitalism. In a chorus of engines on the highway, as in the thunder and whine of airplanes overhead, oil has come to define and shape the sonic contours of everyday life in the twenty-first century. Over the past two centuries, fossil fuels have asserted their presence in countless other, sometimes unexpected ways: through coal and oil companies as musical sponsors, in the sonics of coal and oil towns and traditional peatlands, in seismic survey, through the vinyl record (which relies on oil-derived, synthetic plastic pellets), and across audiovisual culture more broadly.Drawing on a range of disciplinary approaches, including musicology, ethnomusicology, screen music studies, sound studies, comparative literature and more, this book presents case studies situated in the British Isles, North America, Venezuela, Russia, Equatorial Guinea and Iran, to examine questions of sonic materiality, extractive listening and environmental destruction.