James Kopf approaches the phenomenon of music from the level of perception, as opposed to presuming a definition of music as either prima facie known or gleaned solely from a specific cultural tradition. Methodologically, this work draws from phenomenology, particularly the field of modern phenomenology as inaugurated by Edmund Husserl and its promulgation by Martin Heidegger, sound studies, and, in terms of rhetorical style, deconstruction, though it considers the work of thinkers from a wide variety of other fields, from Theodor Reik’s psychoanalysis to archaeology and beyond.

The author charts a path forward into a more ethical understanding of music and listening in the age of global capitalism, one that tolerates difference and uniqueness across the perceived divides of culture, time, species, and matter. In pursuing this path, the possibility of musical experiences to be emergent in aural spaces historically deemed "non-musical" is considered: the space between notes of a chorale, breaks between movements, aboriginal sonic practices ignored or scorned by colonial logic, a forest rent by fracking, and even bodily noises.