Listening to virtual space in recorded popular music

Research on virtual recorded space manifests a division between production and reception based approaches. I address a number of issues which complicate discourse across perspectives and outline why a convergence may be beneficial to research in various disciplines. I consolidate previous models of listening, including Moore (2012) and Zagorski-Thomas (2014), and argue that the ecological approach to perception and research on embodied cognition may provide a useful theoretical framework for bridging this divide. This is exemplified by music analysis and interpretation of Karnivool’s (2009) ‘Goliath’. I discuss the virtual recorded space that the track affords me and consider how listeners may narrativise the track’s personic environment according to ecological/embodied principles.