Ocean of Sound: Ambient Sound and Radical Listening in the Age of Communication

by David Toop

Book Overview

David Toop's extraordinary work of sonic history travels from the rainforests of Amazonas to the megalopolis of Tokyo via the work of artists as diverse as Brian Eno, Sun Ra, Erik Satie, Kate Bush, Kraftwerk and Brian Wilson. Beginning in 1889 at the Paris exposition when Debussy first heard Javanese music performed, Ocean of Sound channels the competing instincts of 20th century music into an exhilarating, path-breaking account of ambient sound.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1788160304
• ISBN13: 9781788160308
• Release Date: October 2018
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

A guide to a new musical world

As an eager but somewhat overwhelmed newcomer to the world of ambient music, I've found this overview to be informative & invaluable. It's constructed like many ambient pieces: layers of information & exotica that overlap, shade into one another, and in many ways recreate in prose the experience of the music. Yet at the same time, there's a clarity & focus to the writing, which becomes apparent as the reader flows from one topic to the next. By the end, I'd not only gained some real knowledge & understanding, I'd been given some excellent starting points for further exploration. An exemplary volume, highly recommended!

Ambient insights

David Toop is both a musician and writer, having done ambient music, dub music with the likes of Prince Far I, and of course numerous written articles on ambient and experimental aspects of popular music. I'd have to say that this book is perhaps one of the definitive studies on this musical genre, covering the aesthetics, listening practica, concepts, influences, directions, and so on of this growing musical field in a very inclusive and insightful style. This is perhaps one of the best written companions to everything ambient, as well as influences on ambient music from as far afield as Sun Ra and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Anyone interested in knowing more...either in scope, or deeper within...on ambient should obtain a copy of this book.

fragments and sound bites

This is an amazing document on the sonic explorations of the last 100 years, from improv classical to backwords dub lines to the tweak tweak nob movements of our techno, this book is brought with a fun if not intoxicating writing style. the ending of this book is getting even better with jungle sounds (the nature not the genre)

Informative, esoteric, complete and well-written.

Written by a practitioner, this book on ambient music, and the place of sound itself in the history of music, should be read by anyone who has an interest in the nature of human's relationship with sound, as well as by people interested in the history of ambient music. I loved it, and have recommended it repeatedly.