Haunting tunes from mythical beings, hidden worlds, and other curious sources.

This unique collection of esoteric earworms gathers, and reproduces, music from other worlds. Here you’ll find tunes hummed, strummed, and sung by spirits, sprites, and fairies, extraterrestrial elevator music, dreamed ditties, marches for occult ceremonies, secret musical codes and languages, music made by animals, and more. A cacophonous cabinet of curiosities!

Each entry contains an explanatory text on its origins and purpose, and also reproduces the musical notation, in facsimile where possible, so that you can play along at home.

An in-depth introductory essay by musician, historian, and collector Doug Skinner rounds out this wondrous musical cabinet of curiosities.

About the author

Doug Skinner has contributed to The Fortean Times, Cabinet, Fate, Weirdo, Nickelodeon, and other periodicals. In addition to his books of stories, comics, music, and translations of Alphonse Allais, Charles Cros, and Alfred Jarry, he has written many scores for dance and theater.

Music From Elsewhere unfolds as an enjoyable, wide-ranging catalogue of the weird. Within, we meet curious figures such as Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, a linguist who spent two chilly winters out in the field trying to compile a lexicon of crow language, and Rosemary Brown, a pianist medium who supposedly channelled new compositions by dead composers, from Debussy to Bach to Liszt. (Louis Pattison for The Wire)

Paperback, published 2024, 272 pages, 12 b&w illustrations.