One of my all-time favourite anthologies. I want to read everything from this excellent publisher that even set the stories beautifully and with adequate margins all round (even considerately putting running headers of author on left page, story title on right, a practice too seldom followed now to be called a 'convention'), with attention to detail on a level that I applaud heartily, even though they will most likely not be appreciated (that treatment of contractions is brilliant!). I also highly recommend the other anthology published by this oddly perfectionist publisher: ROCKET SCIENCE. Space stories and fact usually make me want to move to a rock in which 'space' means merely pantry space or various holes, but I couldn't stop reading this. Every story and article is better than good. But back to MUSIC. Too many superb stories to mention here, but Neil Williamson's "Arrhymthmia" ranks up there in the top 10 best horror stories I've ever read. Has the mental claustrophobia of Poe's trap-bed, Kafka's welfare state; I was helpless before Jim Steel's "The Shostakovich Ensemble", a deadpan satire as smooth as an organ note. There are very few fine satirists these days, when reality like facebook is so much a satire itself that satire has become a crude game of making someone else look stupid, and the satirist holding up a sign saying "Laugh at him" to make sure we know what is stupid and who is smart. Two other writers who are wonderful satirists today are Matthew Hughes and Tansy Rayner Roberts. "Singing Breath into the Dead" by Lisa L Hannett also surprised me. Written in the present tense (ooh, I hate that), it completely worked. Both the tense and the macro detail work together to create a society that we live in, quite viscerally. And David H. Hendrickson's "Blue Note Heaven" caught the magic of not just the pull of music, but that joy that comes from the relationship between the music and the listeners, both musician and audience. Music and instruments, musicians and sound, are themes that fascinate me. In this anthology there were only two stories I would call weak, one of which was predictable, but both were good enough that they deserved to be read all the way through. You will meet unforgettable people, and you WILL feel those strange waves, the ones that can tickle the soles of your feet even as they melt your soul.
Anna Tambour

... one of the most exciting and original [anthologies] I’ve read in years...
... The collection offers a host of absorbing, entertaining and thought provoking stories...
... an exceptional anthology. Ten of the nineteen stories are astonishing; eight are simply impressive...
Andy Hedgecock, Interzone #231

...It is possibly a testament to the interesting mixture of authors that the themes explored in the collection themselves are diverse: loss, obsession, desire, solitude and redemption, among others...
...I found myself agreeing wholly with Harding’s desire to discuss and share many of the tales in this book with anyone who was willing to listen...
...I found in its pages new ways to hear, see, and experience music, and a new appreciation for why it is such a powerful art form...
From Meredith Wiggins, The Future Fire Reviews  Full review

...a good collection of tales, ranging from the eminently readable to the excellent. Recommended...
From Ian Sales, Full Review

...containing a consistently high standard of writing....
The unifying theme of music has resulted in a delightfully wide range of styles and genres (slipstream, ghost stories, alternate history, fantasy and science fiction to name but a few), settings (ranging from deep space through gritty suburban streets to the Christian heaven) and emotional effects.
I mention emotion because of the soul-deep link between music and emotion. One of the strengths of this anthology is that it explores this link, and so does it without descending into sentimentality: although a number of the stories have a certain whimsy, they generally manage to be charming without becoming cloying... 
When it comes to musical, as opposed to literary, genres there's all sorts of styles, including classical, rock, punk and jazz, plus a few less easy to classify and yet to be invented musical genres too.
From Jaine Fenn. Author of the novels Principles of Angels, Consort Of Heaven, Guardians Of Paradise(Gollanzc) Full review 

...To my mind the most successful tales were Richard J Goldstein’s Dybbuk Blues, concerning a charmed cornet and the fates of its players, Susan Lanigan’s The Accompanist, where the spirits of Robert and Clara Schumann inhabit the bodies of a teacher and pupil in a Music College, L L Hannett’s Breathing Life Into The Dead, about err…. breathing life into the dead and Gavin Inglis’s Fugue, where a driver crashes on a lonely road and hears a choir singing. Special mentions too to Jim Steel’s The Shostakovich Ensemble, a discography of a rock group from a Stalinist Britain, and Neil Williamson’s Arrhythmia, a kind of 1984 with added songs...
Jack Deighton, A Son Of The Rock Full review