Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds

by David Toop

Ocean of Sound begins in 1889 at the Paris Exposition when Debussy first heard Javanese music performed. A culture absorbed in perfume, light and ambient sound developed in response to the intangibility of 20th century communications. David Toop traces the evolution of this culture, through Erik Satie to the Velvet Undergound; Miles Davis to Jimi Hendrix. David Toop , who lives in London, is a writer, musician and recording artist. His other books are Rap Attack 3 and Exotica .

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Art, History, Philosophy, Sociology, 20th Century

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

David Toop is a musician, writer, and Professor of Audio Culture and Improvisation at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He is the author of Ocean of Sound, Sinister Resonance, Into the Maelstrom, and other books.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listen to a lot of boring music. Really boring. Astonishingly boring. This book helped me understand why.



'Ocean of Sound' is a loose meditation on accidental and intentional ambient sound. It's meandering and inconclusive. It privileges tone over facts. I love it.



Debussy hears a Balinese gamelan orchestra in Paris in 1931. Sun Ra composes and performs the history of the future in the late 1950s. Japanese soundscape gardens designed around the noises particular insects make. Richard D. James standing in the middle of Yorkshire power stations feeling them hum. Lying in a hammock listening to Amazonian frog concerts.



... and Brian Eno threaded through everything. One of my favourite passages describes an experiment Eno conducted:



“There's an experiment I did. Since I did it, I started to think it was quite a good exercice that I would recommend to other people. I had taken a DAT recorder to Hyde Park and near Bayswater I recorded a period of whatever sound was there: cars going by, dogs, people. I thought nothing much of it and I was sitting at home listening to it on my player. I suddenly had this idea. What about if I take a section of this -a three and a half minute section, the length of a single- and I tried to learn it?"



“So that's what I did. I put it in SoundTools and I made fade-up, let it run for three and a half minutes and fade it out. I started listening to this thing, over and over. Whenever I was sitting there working, I would have this thing on. I printed it on a DAT twenty times or something, so it just kept running over and over. I tried learn it, exactly as one would a piece of music: oh yeah, that car, accelerates the engine, the revs in the engine go up and then that dog barks, and then you hear that pigeon off to the side there. This was an extremely interesting exercice to do, first of all because I found that you can learn it. Something that is as completely arbitrary and disconnected as that, with sufficient listenings, becomes highly connected. You can really imagine that this thing was constructed somehow: “Right, he puts this bit there and that pattern's just at the exact same moment as this happening. Brillant!" Since I've done that, I can listen to lots of things in quite a different way. It's like putting oneself in the role of an art perceiver, just deciding, now I'm playing that role.”

[julieta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me fascinó este libro. La cantidad de información que maneja es casi tanta como las ideas que tiene. Me deja muy muy inspirada en las posibilidades en el sonido, en la música misma, en su existencia y en lo que podemos expresar a través de ella, me gusta la búsqueda de música que te exige participar, que te hace cambiar. Me gusta mucho la cantidad de gente de la que habla, música que no conocía, pero que me despierta mucha curiosidad. Va mucho más allá de las modas o lo que sea que se llame lo temporal, y se fija en las profundidades de la expresión a través de la música. Muy valioso y una maravilla. Muy recomendado.

[Simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this pretty frustrating. I don't mind books which are wide-ranging and unafraid to explore the fringes of their subject matter, but this was pretty much *all* fringe, with less than half of it conforming to my expectations of what a book about ambient music should be like. Maybe that's my fault (or the fault of the back cover blurb writer), but I can't really see the relevance of the extended chapter describing in tedious detail the author's journey into the amazon rainforest. So he made a few recordings of insect sounds and local tribes chanting...and?
Similarly, he wanders off topic too often in order to discuss things which he himself finds interesting but which have only the most tenuous of relationships to the ostensible subject matter.
There are some good quotes from Brian Eno and Richard James, and interesting tidbits here and there about acoustics and musicological theory, but it's all too diffuse, woolly and rambling. It's also painfully 90s, with instantly dated references to "cyber-culture" and "virtuality".
Mainly it suffers from being a book about music. Ideally it would be accompanied by a compliation cd so that you could actually hear some of what he's writing about.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less a survey of ambient music at the turn of the millennium than a drifting across its synchronic plane, through regions of anthropology, travelogue, surrealism, philosophy, poetry, visual art, popular culture, reverie — it is to sound as Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space is to place. Dense with media references, this is best read at a daydream's pace, with a highlighter (or .txt document, in my case) at hand.

(To demonstrate the volume of references: I consider myself well-versed in the book's subject matter and still emerged with dozens of titles and names hitherto unfamiliar.)

[Miloš Dimitrijević · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nabacane anegdote, biografske skice, fraze iz muzičkog novinarstva... Koliko god voleo muziku o kojoj se piše, nisam imao volje da o njoj saznajem više iz ove knjige.

[Individualfrog · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even now, 15 years on, this is a book that makes me feel pleasantly like I'm living in the future. It's sort of like a William Gibson novel, a constant stream of semi-bewildering cross-cultural syncretic references, in a fascinating poetic style. Appropriately enough, it's a great book for browsing around in, which is what I did with it for all these years until just recently I decided to read it all the way through at last.

I once told a friend that it was a book about ambient music, and saw his interest instantly disappear. It was the wrong choice of words. Ambient music was still a hip concept back when the book came out, but the book is more about the concept of ambience in general, environment as art, and ranges very widely outside the marketing category of "ambient". John Cage and minimalism, Miles Davis and Sun Ra, the Velvet Underground and Kate Bush, as well as Brian Eno and Aphex Twin. And that's only the music of the West. The parts about then-contemporary rave and ambient culture, all rainbow-clothed kids taking ecstasy and talking about digital psychedelic shamanism, tend to be the most dated bits; but then, it's now an intriguing time capsule, and they do say that the 90s are coming back. I have an abiding nostalgic fondness for that 90s cyberpunk aesthetic, and Ocean of Sound is a hell of a lot less embarassing than that movie Hackers.

There are some weaknesses here and there. Most of the book is in short vignettes, but there is one extended narrative of Toop's visit to Amazonas in Venezuela, visiting the Maquiritari and Yanomami peoples, which started to drag. But the real problem is that heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter. It's almost impossible, for me at least, to accurately imagine what music sounds like, based on a description. Toop's way with words makes everything seem amazing and compelling, but actually hearing the music is often a disappointment. For me it's usually the stuff that Rolling Stone used to call "electronica" that lets me down; for you it might be Debussy or Lee "Scratch" Perry, but it's sort of inevitable one way or another. Nowadays it's not as big of a deal--you only lose a few minutes on YouTube, where in 1997 you spent hours searching through used record stores only to be disappointed when you got home--but it's still sort of a drag. I don't want to blame Toop for this, but I can't help it. I blame William Gibson for making Steely Dan sound interesting too.

[Djll · Rating 5 out of 5]

I mean it, literally, when I say I cannot imagine music writing that is better than what's in these pages. Something very close to the pleasure of discovering new musics is experienced, reading his prose. The Toop reader comes away informed, and the mind buzzing for more.

As with his Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom, David Toop adopts a subtly immersive approach related to the main theme, doing his best in Ocean of Sound to put his thoughts into an ideascape through which the narrative wanders opportunistically, gleaning and garnering the choicest concepts and anecdotes, assembling as it goes (it seems) something coherent yet dreamlike, not totally graspable by the conscious mind, always leaving places the reader can keep exploring — either in their imaginations, or in their libraries of recordings and record shops. I wish I had read this when it was first published.

The book isn't scholarly in an exhaustive or academically-worked-out sense, but still vastly informed. It's a safe bet there's no one on Earth with bigger ears than David Toop.

[Pantelis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Από τα πιο ενδιαφέροντα βιβλία που έτυχε να πέσω πάνω τους τώρα τελευταία: έχεις ένα ταξίδι στην μουσική-που-δεν-είναι-μουσική, έχεις προσωπικά βιώματα, έχεις απόψεις, έχεις απίστευτο υλικό για να ξεσκαλίσεις, έχεις βιβλιογραφία και δισκογραφία και όρεξη, και έχεις την διάθεση να το διαβάσεις αν σου αρέσει η μουσική.

Αυτό.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't really a book about ambient sound, or ambient music, but rather a collection of this dude's thoughts about a lot of 'outsider' music that he's been interested for 25ish years. Some of it is actually quite interesting, some of it (usually when he goes off on a tangent about himself) is incredibly dull.

[Stevie Dunbar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes frustratingly surface level with its subjects (one paragraph for Ryuichi Sakamoto? ONE?) but ultimately it all works together for a greater whole

[Xenia Germeni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Και κάθομαι και αναρωτιεμαι γιατι τελείωσε....Κι όμως η μουσική και ο ωκεανος δεν τελειωνουν...δεν γινεται να τελειωσουν..όπως επίσης και η καλλιτεχνική δημιουργια και τα βιβλία...Βιβλιο must read και must have! Είναι μια "διαφορετική" μουσική αναδρομή για αυτό που θα μπορούσαμε να αποκαλέσουμε (ίσως και λαθεμενα) μοντερνο στην μουσική. Αλλά δεν έχουμε όλοι τις ιδιες μουσικες γνωσεις, ούτε τις ίδιες εμπειριες, ουτε την ιδια παιδεια, ωστόσο μας αρέσει ή τουλαχιστον θα θελαμε να ακουσουμε ή να διαβασουμε ή να δουμε κατι διαφορετικο στην (ενηλικη ζωη μας...διοτι ως νεοι μαλλον ειμαστε ολοι απολυτοι). Ο David Toop μουσικός και ο ιδιος ερχεται να παρει τον αναγνωστη απο το χερ,ι και μεσα απο προσωπικες εμπειριες, διαβασματα και ταξιδια, να μας μεταφερει σωους και αβλαβεις στον ωκεανο των ηχων. Κανει τοσο πετυχημενες αναφορες σε βιβλια που ακομη και να τα εχεις διαβασει ειναι δυσκολο να μην ανατρεξεις να δεις και να συνδυασεις τη μουσικη την οποια περιγραφει. Ακομη κι αν το βρειτε στα αγγλικα να το αγορασετε! Μαλλον εξαντλημενο...(δυστυχως)! ΥΓ Σας προτεινω να ακούσετε μια φοβερη μουσική εκπομπή που ειτε το θελει είτε όχι έχει "νονό" το βιβλιο του Toop αλλά και μουσικά θα σας βοηθήσει να κατανοήσετε ή να εντρυφήσετε στον μαγικό ωκεανό του ήχου...Όλα αυτά στη συχνότητα 105,5 στο ΚΟΚΚΙΝΟ από Δευτέρα έως Παρασκευή 22.00-00.00, στον ωκεανό του ήχου, με τη λατρεμένη Θάλεια Καραμολέγκου.

[Esteban · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me cuesta no comparar a Océano de sonido con los libros de Simon Reynolds publicados por la misma editorial. Como Reynolds, Toop no historiza, pero (a diferencia de él) tampoco sitúa a las obras y a los músicos en algo parecido a una narración. Es una decisión deliberada que busca un correlato a nivel de la escritura a los climas y texturas sónicas del referente. Si las biografías miniatura de Reynolds son el equivalente de una canción de tres minutos, parece pensar, en un libro sobre producciones y experiencias de escucha menos estructuradas correspondería organizar la escritura según afinidades y asociaciones subjetivas. El resultado no me pareció muy parejo. A veces generaba algo parecido a un clima, pero tantas otras me dio la impresión de una mera acumulación de nombres y datos. Algunos de ellos me parecieron lo suficientemente interesantes para justificar una experiencia de lectura irregular.

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Toop is one of the better 'music' writers out there right now. He's also a composer, but alas this is a creative 'study' on ambiant music of all sorts. I can't imagine having a music library (books) and not having this and Toop's other book "Exotica" part of the collection. Essential reading and fascinating history.

[aleximou · Rating 4 out of 5]

I seldom consider myself an expert in anything, and often diminish my own intellectual sphere of knowledge, but if I am anything, I am the ambient expert of Columbus Ohio. I have heard about 650 ambient albums in my life, and I think it is the most expressive and important human art form. It means the world to me. I have known about this book for a little while, and have heard of David Toop, so it naturally made sense that I check the book out. There are a number of lists on the internet, specifically rateyourmusic, that show the appendix section of this book, a well organized and cut down list of references to notable works in the discipline, but I often feel like it is missing a lot of the important things about how this book is constructed. In the introductory pages, he informs the audience that this is a history through his eyes, anecdotally laid out, references bleeding into each other, ideas melding into other ideas.

What follows in this book is more a personal nomadic drift than a detached chronological history. This drift will trace a web of sources. In my biased opinion, compromised by first-hand involvement, these are the sources that have led to a musical environment which is, despite my reservations, a hydra of creative potential for now and the next century. There are other sources, but those are other books.

The problem with recommending this book to most people is that the appendix only accounts for about 30% of the references in this book, and even I, a distinguished student in ambient sound, only recognize about 60% of the names dropped here. Ideas flash in and out, theories and philosophies flow into each other. The book is split into these chapters that either focus on a person, a general idea of listening, or include the 5 stages of “altered states” that go through various environmental phenomena. This leftfield genre brought in so many interesting and brilliant people, people who saw through the noise of everything, and understood the spiritual resonance of sound in the world. At times it made me jealous that I could not be a part of the burgeoning UK 90s loft ambient techno scene, or been contemporaries with john cage, and at other times it makes me wonder if I myself have any ideas this captivating, or quirks this interesting, or philosophies that inspire me. It would take a long time, but I want to compile a proper list of references, albums, and works that David Toop discusses here, because there is enough ambient knowledge in this book to pass down for generations. I do not recommend this book to anyone unfamiliar with ambient beyond the very basics, unless you want to spend your day cross referencing wikipedia pages and searching links to 30 year old ambient albums. That is my dream, I doubt it is yours.

[Graham Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ocean of Sound is billed as a kinda history of ambient music, and it is, but it skirts and dives between topics and at times I thought parts were too brief. Admittedly there's a lot to cram in, and the author explains why, taking the reader on a run through episodes like Debussy first hearing Balinese musicians and the dreamy ambient complexity of their music, to the sound experiments of mid 20th century composers, or how Detroit techno came about. Brian Eno (Brian Eno? Fuck does he know?) features throughout like the velvet clad ambient brain guru. I think Toop fancies him a bit, maybe we all do. Nah. But he is a creative genius, rightly featured alongside other key players in the development of ambient music. I enjoyed the parts on Dub featuring King Tubby and Lee Perry and thought 'there's never been a good documentary about Perry or Tubby? Or a film, a dramatisation. (Get the casting right and that could be a winner!). They took the basics of recording and sound engineering and used it to their own tune to create music and sounds that will - Jah willing - resonate for centuries. All from a wee island in the Caribbean, a crowd of dudes with limited resources, shitty equipment really, pushing the boundaries of stock reggae music to the far-flung universe. The heads and minds on these guys, the talent of Lee Perry for instance is outrageous - never mind participating in the invention of a new type of music, between him, Tubby and others they mastered it and in doing so projected the idea of hip-hop, DJ culture, remixes, sampling, collage and ambient music. Ocean of Sound gets particularly interesting when the author considers, well, what is ambient? and takes exploratory trips to far off tribal lands where the music is played in consideration of the natural surroundings: ancient frequencies. The landscape carries the music for miles. These colorful sections, where a range of jungle field trips are described, could perhaps be a book of it's own. I felt the writing was restrained here because it had to be, there was so much more that could be said and expanded upon. Overall, a terrific read but a bit of an echo-chamber and a conformation of my own exquisite taste.

[Dave Tamulonis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wide-ranging look at all things that could be considered "ambient and experimental" music, this book is far more than just a catalogue of interviews and history. Toop takes us to the jungles of the Amazon, to 19th century concert halls, to the courts of ancient Japan, and to the bedroom studios of techno artists to investigate where the line between music and our environment is drawn. One comes away with an astounding appreciation for ambient music, its legacy and history. This book, written in 1995, also acts as a bit of a time capsule to read now: Toop musing on the possibilities and ethical dilemmas implicit in the cresting wave of technological innovation of the 90's; a wave that would crash on the shores of the music industry very shortly after. Informative and a treasure trove of musical discoveries, this is also written in a very bizarre (but beautiful) way that was hard to wrap my head around originally. Most of the book contains vignettes of interviews, memories, historical dissertations, personal experiences, and philosophical musings that flash by in the blink of an eye. Best read with your phone out ready to look up artists and listen along.

[Thomas]

Extreem hoge informatiedichtheid, waarbij de vloeiende overgangen van het ene naar het andere onderwerp tegelijkertijd de kracht én de zwakte zijn. Gaat je in elk geval een boel luistertips opleveren (en doet je verlangen naar een tijd toen muziekjournalistiek meer was dan persberichten overschrijven).

[Brie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. It was a bit "lecture" in tone but there were great moments where the author talks about his experience talking to various ambient artists...and eh describes the situation/setting that really stand out and make you feel like you are entering a conversation. I just wish that the style carried out and made the rest of the boo more like a conversation and entertaining than it was.

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Imagine the most likely use for the wired city of the future not in cyberpunk or megatripolising world music frameworks then, but as a hi-tech campfire, people plugging in to remind themselves of life as it was when they were plugged out, twisting their isolation into something resembling community" (91).

[Baderani]

Only went through 20% of the book and although I bumped into many familiar names, the number of new artists I have to check on now are staggering. Picked up this book way too soon.

[Raimundo Zubelzu Hernández · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sin dudas el mejor libro de música que he leído en mi vida. He aprendido muchísimo y me quedo con una enorme lista de discos por escuchar.

[Simone Lanzoni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Non la storia di un genere, ma il racconto illuminante di un’intera filosofia di musica.

[Wei Lin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sort of like an encyclopedia but with the edges airbrushed. Learnt a lot about different kinds of ambient music throughout history.

[Yannis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Διαβαζεται και αναποδα σαν να ψαχνεις κρυμμενους στιχους.

[Cjg1988 · Rating 1 out of 5]

To a degree, the author delivers what is promised by the title of this book: David Toop clearly is a radical and avid listener of all sorts of music, broadly classified as ambient or otherwise. Toop refers to a dazzling array of musical genres and artists which tempts you to explore further. While the book offers some interesting nuggets, it remains far too “ambient”, impressionistic and anecdotal, at the cost of not making or even having a point. The one point that does come across strongly however is that the blurring edges between music and environmental sounds may prove to be (one of) the most striking features of twentieth-century music.

[Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best book about music I've read yet.

More a collection of essays, journal entries and quips, coherently anthologized.

Not just about "Ambient" music. Links disparate movements from music concrete to free jazz to new age to hip hop and techno.

[Anders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ocean of Sound was written by David Toop, a British music-thinker, who has a history within the British free improvised scene of the 70's. Published in 1995, very current. My impression is he free-associated and free-wheeled through a whole roster of ideas and musicians, possible and impossible realms of music as a phenomenon, and linked them to general cultural trends of previous and tangibly close eras. I find his writing on point using a personal sphere of examples and drawn connections. He doesn't profess although he knows how to talk, and steers free of stylistic favoritism = he's not ambient, or jazz or psych or rock or synth or anything at all, while engaged and very informed about all of these categories and their roots.
So what is this book about...? Don't know, but I enjoyed reading a captiving, curious, unromantic account of music paired with the context of our sonic milieu, nature sounds, patterns in nature it's definitely not new age, and the evolution of technology, ritual music, pop music, quests. As an insightful listener and enjoyer of music he knows how to articulate his seemingly spontaneous and non-conclusive findings with the reader very well. I may not be very interested in all of the examples he picked, but did find the chapters on Kraftwerk, muzak, Satie and several others quite fascinating. Toop has interviewed many of the people whose music is discussed himself, and seems like a guy I'd like to hang out with. Pretty quirky and observant. I also enjoyed reading about stuff I've heard more of before; Varese, Cage, The Orb etc.
I recommend it if you find your opinions about music, and different styles of it to be a bit stale and old. You don't need to "know" anything about music to enjoy this one.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think marketing this book as being about "ambient music" is entirely fair. I think it's more accurate to say this book is about the ways in which the line between music and sound has been blurred during the 20th century. My favourite parts involved interviews with folk enraptured with field recordings, learning to appreciate the "accidental" sound collages that exist everywhere.

It is certainly a wide-ranging and compelling work - it was surprising to read about Sun Ra, dub and Fourth World in the same volume, but it made sense. At other times it felt too meandering... is this trying to be an ambient book about ambient music, perhaps? It often feels like Toop is writing about what he knows about even if its relevance isn't entirely obvious. I was never sure why shamanism kept popping up. The interviews with Richard James and Brian Eno were helpful, but I don't really understand what the interviews with David Lynch or Kate Bush added.

I'm reading this book in 2021, 26 years after it was originally written. And oh boy is the book dated. Shoegaze, IDM, and Lustmord get at least passing references, but the story Toop tries to tell (that is, assuming he is trying to tell a story) feels incomplete without any mention of post-rock, dark ambient or the radical evolution of soundtracks over the past 20 years. As another reviewer mentioned, there is cheesy 90s technobabble about cyber this and virtual that.

The book is written in a way that reflects its subject matter and that explains both the praise and criticism it has received. I am certainly glad I read it, and will probably tell some of my friends about it, but I think I will stop short of recommending it to them.

[boofykins · Rating 4 out of 5]

The exhaustive history of ambient sound and music contained within these pages is a bit exhausting at times. It also happens to be fascinating at the same time. Pretty apt, if you ask me, as it mirrors ambient music in that manner. Woven into the fabric of the dense text, David Toop often tries set an ambience by describing in great detail his surroundings, which I assume are surrounding him as he is writing it. Sometimes he seems to get a little carried away with it. He clearly is passionate about the subject matter. You have to give it to him on that. I think I expected more Brian Eno. He's definitely well represented in the book, but I feel like Claude DeBussy is referenced way more that Eno, which is fine I guess. I have a little more than a passing interest in Eno but DeBussy is less of an intrigue. Could have used more Aphex Twin stuff. I understand that the book was written in the mid-90s though.

I'm really glad I read this. I can't explicitly recommend this book to anyone. You'll know if your interest is there.

[Sabrina Rodríguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uno de los mejores libros que he leído hasta la fecha y probablemente mi favorito de ensayo de todo lo que he leído hasta ahora. Mucho más allá de conceptos sobre música o sonido, el libro parece una novela experimental de William S. Burroughs donde no existe lo lineal y la búsqueda sonora nos lleva a viajes psicodélicos al espacio interior. Independientemente de los datos y múltiples nombres, citas y anécdotas sobre multitud de discos y músicos; el texto resonó en mí a nivel personal, dando sentido a una época complicada para mí, donde la lógica se ahogaba en el océano y me era difícil continuar a flote. Muy recomendable.