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Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds
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 .
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
About the author
David Toop
44 books96 followersDavid 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 100 reviews
June 19, 2011
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.”
'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.”
September 19, 2019
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.
June 26, 2012
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.
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.
August 26, 2017
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.)
(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.)
March 9, 2021
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.
February 13, 2019
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.
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.
July 31, 2013
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.
Αυτό.
February 26, 2012
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.
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.
July 2, 2017
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.
September 23, 2017
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.
February 16, 2024
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.
August 28, 2023
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.
Read
February 19, 2024Extreem 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).
March 14, 2024
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.
Read
April 25, 2021Only 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.
April 11, 2023
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.
January 31, 2023
Sort of like an encyclopedia but with the edges airbrushed. Learnt a lot about different kinds of ambient music throughout history.
April 25, 2020
Διαβαζεται και αναποδα σαν να ψαχνεις κρυμμενους στιχους.
March 30, 2020
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.
March 9, 2019
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.
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.
December 30, 2012
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.
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.
July 14, 2021
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.
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.
April 4, 2018
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.
January 12, 2016
Really wonderful survey of "ambient," expanded to include jimi hendrix, rahsaan roland kirk, kate bush, etc. More to do with world-building than rock and roll. Hippie but not hokey. "There is talk of the object of the future as something evanescent, light, psychic; of immaterial objects akin to images or holograms." // "Transient non-articulated feelings... 'The Poetics of Space,' whether the ambience of a room, the ribbon of road, or the boundless envelopment of oceanic space." (!!) LOVELY, moody, ambling! Recommended for fans of RENEE.
August 28, 2023
Describir un libro como Océano de sonido es difícil. Es, sin embargo, importante: es fácil ir con expectativas equivocadas y que ello haga menos accesible aclimatarse a la propuesta de David Toop. Mi mejor intento es un libro de viajes y sensaciones a través de la experimentación y exploración musical y sonora desde fines del siglo XIX hasta fines del siglo XX. Fue escrito en 1995, pero muchos pasajes resuenas con cómo percibimos y apreciamos la música en la actualidad, ese océano de información cambiante y constante donde las barreras entre estilos a lo largo del mundo y los principios de composición se han roto por un fluir también cambiante y constante que te lleva.
Todo inicia cuando el compositor Claude Debussy escucha música javanesa (Indonesia) en la feria de París. En verdad comienza con David Toop en su apartamento y con muchas viñetas de sonidos y mundo imaginarios, pero no demora en llegar a ese cruce importante que sirve como ancla de donde desembocan los demás recorridos que serán explorados en el libro. Usualmente, en cada capítulo, hay un principio o idea que es explorado y rastreado en distintas partes del mundo, en distintos puntos en el tiempo. La asociación, como advierte el autor desde un inicio, es muy libre y parece que va surgiendo en la página mientras uno lee. La primera mitad va explorando nociones generales sobre la evolución de la música y sus fuentes de inspiración: el mar para Debussy, el espacio para Sun Ra, la máquina para los futuristas, y el éter del trance del house y el ambient techno. Explorando distintos fenómenos de escucha, composición e intervención sonora, sea en los instrumentos o en el estudio, indirectamente sienta una base que puede aturdir por el enorme mundo y volumen de información, pero es una base que hace de la segunda mitad mucho más placentera: los capítulos de "estados alterados" y los cierres sobre el sonido, donde finalmente se habla como tal del nacimiento del ambient y sus múltiples facetas se exploran con fuerte anclas a artistas y momentos en el mundo. Aquí entra a tallar la noción del paisaje sonoro, el silencio y la extensión de las notas, la performance extendida como un fluido sin estructura, vivo y evolutivo, así como la relación con la tecnología y la naturaleza en esa suerte de "cuarto mundo" donde todas las culturas confluyen entre sí.
Una advertencia personal: este es un libro para un tipo muy específico de persona. Toop te cuenta y lleva a través de muchísimas corrientes de la vanguardia musical en el siglo XX, y no en todo da el contexto necesario para entender cómo nacen y aparecen muchos artistas y figuras que son cruciales. Hay mucho del libro (Toop tiene un universo de referencias de muchos medios y disciplinas) donde sentí que tenía la suerte de conocer una buena base de qué ocurría para poder anclarme en ello, profundizar en lo que no y comenzar a dejarme llevar. Porque sí, es un libro de música, pero en el que hay mucho análisis conceptual que habla en general del arte contemporáneo y otras disciplinas como la filosofía, la semiótica, el cine, la antropología y la estética. Los intereses de Toop, entonces, también le exigen al lector ser muy receptivo y atento: la clave de Océano de sonido es saber dejarse llevar por las exploraciones no-lineales del autor a lo largo del mundo, confiando en que eventualmente comenzarán a encajar las piezas y con ello viajarás junto a él.
Cuando llegas a ese estado, el libro es una maravilla. Mi puntuación no sería esta de no ser porque el libro hizo ese *click* que necesitaba y que finalmente me hizo flotar en tantos escenarios y puntos posibles que me hacen repensar mi relación con la música y con el sonido, una de mis grandes pasiones en la vida. La cantidad de cosas a las que me introduce todavía es enorme, y siento que entiendo mejor cómo ha ido evolucionando la música y la vanguardia en el siglo XX para producir las expresiones, corrientes y géneros tan fascinantes que se pueden explorar a vasto hoy en día. Aquí rastreas y ves las semillas del minimalismo, el ambient, el drone, el ambient techno y el IDM, el dub jamaiquino, el sampleo y la apropiación "plunderphonics", la electrónica, el new age, los sonidos de la naturaleza y muchísimas técnicas y performances de música clásica moderna que me provee nuevos oídos con los cuales acercarme a la importancia de muchos elementos en el quehacer musical. El manejo del espacio; los cambios sin estructura; la reverberación y el tono; la manipulación de extractos; el collage y ensamblaje del estudio; la actitud del oyente; la exploración permanente de las tecnologías en la era digital. También se habla mucho de los sueños y la naturaleza: varios de mis segmentos favoritos son entrevistas y diarios que enlazan de forma maravillosa estos temas con la exploración sonora. Hay conversaciones con artistas que deslumbran con su presencia y su apertura de mente: La Monte Young, Brian Eno, Richard D. James (Aphex Twin), Sun Ra, Terry Riley, Kraftwerk, etc. Poder dialogar con ellos ya es enorme privilegio.
Océano de sonido es de esos libros que no puedo recomendar abiertamente porque es tan específico y complejo que no quiero que choque con un lector que no pueda entrar en complicidad con él. Me queda, a lo sumo, confiar en que dicho lector llegará eventualmente a este libro y se adentrará en los mundos sonoros que recrea David Toop con tanto acierto y tan vívidas descripciones. Esencial.
Todo inicia cuando el compositor Claude Debussy escucha música javanesa (Indonesia) en la feria de París. En verdad comienza con David Toop en su apartamento y con muchas viñetas de sonidos y mundo imaginarios, pero no demora en llegar a ese cruce importante que sirve como ancla de donde desembocan los demás recorridos que serán explorados en el libro. Usualmente, en cada capítulo, hay un principio o idea que es explorado y rastreado en distintas partes del mundo, en distintos puntos en el tiempo. La asociación, como advierte el autor desde un inicio, es muy libre y parece que va surgiendo en la página mientras uno lee. La primera mitad va explorando nociones generales sobre la evolución de la música y sus fuentes de inspiración: el mar para Debussy, el espacio para Sun Ra, la máquina para los futuristas, y el éter del trance del house y el ambient techno. Explorando distintos fenómenos de escucha, composición e intervención sonora, sea en los instrumentos o en el estudio, indirectamente sienta una base que puede aturdir por el enorme mundo y volumen de información, pero es una base que hace de la segunda mitad mucho más placentera: los capítulos de "estados alterados" y los cierres sobre el sonido, donde finalmente se habla como tal del nacimiento del ambient y sus múltiples facetas se exploran con fuerte anclas a artistas y momentos en el mundo. Aquí entra a tallar la noción del paisaje sonoro, el silencio y la extensión de las notas, la performance extendida como un fluido sin estructura, vivo y evolutivo, así como la relación con la tecnología y la naturaleza en esa suerte de "cuarto mundo" donde todas las culturas confluyen entre sí.
Una advertencia personal: este es un libro para un tipo muy específico de persona. Toop te cuenta y lleva a través de muchísimas corrientes de la vanguardia musical en el siglo XX, y no en todo da el contexto necesario para entender cómo nacen y aparecen muchos artistas y figuras que son cruciales. Hay mucho del libro (Toop tiene un universo de referencias de muchos medios y disciplinas) donde sentí que tenía la suerte de conocer una buena base de qué ocurría para poder anclarme en ello, profundizar en lo que no y comenzar a dejarme llevar. Porque sí, es un libro de música, pero en el que hay mucho análisis conceptual que habla en general del arte contemporáneo y otras disciplinas como la filosofía, la semiótica, el cine, la antropología y la estética. Los intereses de Toop, entonces, también le exigen al lector ser muy receptivo y atento: la clave de Océano de sonido es saber dejarse llevar por las exploraciones no-lineales del autor a lo largo del mundo, confiando en que eventualmente comenzarán a encajar las piezas y con ello viajarás junto a él.
Cuando llegas a ese estado, el libro es una maravilla. Mi puntuación no sería esta de no ser porque el libro hizo ese *click* que necesitaba y que finalmente me hizo flotar en tantos escenarios y puntos posibles que me hacen repensar mi relación con la música y con el sonido, una de mis grandes pasiones en la vida. La cantidad de cosas a las que me introduce todavía es enorme, y siento que entiendo mejor cómo ha ido evolucionando la música y la vanguardia en el siglo XX para producir las expresiones, corrientes y géneros tan fascinantes que se pueden explorar a vasto hoy en día. Aquí rastreas y ves las semillas del minimalismo, el ambient, el drone, el ambient techno y el IDM, el dub jamaiquino, el sampleo y la apropiación "plunderphonics", la electrónica, el new age, los sonidos de la naturaleza y muchísimas técnicas y performances de música clásica moderna que me provee nuevos oídos con los cuales acercarme a la importancia de muchos elementos en el quehacer musical. El manejo del espacio; los cambios sin estructura; la reverberación y el tono; la manipulación de extractos; el collage y ensamblaje del estudio; la actitud del oyente; la exploración permanente de las tecnologías en la era digital. También se habla mucho de los sueños y la naturaleza: varios de mis segmentos favoritos son entrevistas y diarios que enlazan de forma maravillosa estos temas con la exploración sonora. Hay conversaciones con artistas que deslumbran con su presencia y su apertura de mente: La Monte Young, Brian Eno, Richard D. James (Aphex Twin), Sun Ra, Terry Riley, Kraftwerk, etc. Poder dialogar con ellos ya es enorme privilegio.
Océano de sonido es de esos libros que no puedo recomendar abiertamente porque es tan específico y complejo que no quiero que choque con un lector que no pueda entrar en complicidad con él. Me queda, a lo sumo, confiar en que dicho lector llegará eventualmente a este libro y se adentrará en los mundos sonoros que recrea David Toop con tanto acierto y tan vívidas descripciones. Esencial.
February 12, 2022
oooooeuf <3
February 21, 2024
Ocean of Sound is honestly, one of the best music books I've read. It's a kind of unconventional book with some sporratic writing that constantly hops from subject to subject but still often finds connective tissues that makes these jumps not feel quite as random as they could be if the author didn't care.
Often we're told of different artist, different stories and different technological or otherwise innovative progressions that aided ambient or electronic music in some way. These subjects are pretty much all given justice, which is crazy because it feels like the book scratches a million different genres, cultures and styles and still makes them all interesting to hear about. Often it's told through direct interviews with artist that author did themselves which is so great because we gain so many different perspectives on music making, what people have been inspired by and so on.
As I recognized several names and artists, it definetly made it more fun since I was not expecting a lot of people that we're mentioned, and the ones that were obviously going to be mentioned, I still learned a lot more about. Obviously there were tons I had no idea about and it was very interesting to learn about their influence/influences as well.
The Author also inserts several personal stories and has connections to a lot of the people he interviews which could lead to the book becoming too personal or biased in one way. But while he expresses opinions they're not overbearing on the material and it's nice to see that he has so much respect for so many styles of music and so many artists, even most of the one he dislikes or glosses over are still acknowledged in what work they did and that gives room for the author to further discuss interesting topics.
I also plan to go through the recommendations at the end of the book since they really seem to be able to expand my sound palette and will probably be a way for me to hear a lot of music I've neglected or have yet to stumble across. But anyway, highly recommend you check this out if you have any interest in learning more about music in general, this book was super giving in that way.
9/10 (Since I need to reread it, lots of information to pick up on)
Often we're told of different artist, different stories and different technological or otherwise innovative progressions that aided ambient or electronic music in some way. These subjects are pretty much all given justice, which is crazy because it feels like the book scratches a million different genres, cultures and styles and still makes them all interesting to hear about. Often it's told through direct interviews with artist that author did themselves which is so great because we gain so many different perspectives on music making, what people have been inspired by and so on.
As I recognized several names and artists, it definetly made it more fun since I was not expecting a lot of people that we're mentioned, and the ones that were obviously going to be mentioned, I still learned a lot more about. Obviously there were tons I had no idea about and it was very interesting to learn about their influence/influences as well.
The Author also inserts several personal stories and has connections to a lot of the people he interviews which could lead to the book becoming too personal or biased in one way. But while he expresses opinions they're not overbearing on the material and it's nice to see that he has so much respect for so many styles of music and so many artists, even most of the one he dislikes or glosses over are still acknowledged in what work they did and that gives room for the author to further discuss interesting topics.
I also plan to go through the recommendations at the end of the book since they really seem to be able to expand my sound palette and will probably be a way for me to hear a lot of music I've neglected or have yet to stumble across. But anyway, highly recommend you check this out if you have any interest in learning more about music in general, this book was super giving in that way.
9/10 (Since I need to reread it, lots of information to pick up on)
December 25, 2021
A profound reflection on sound and our relationship to it, told in vignettes that spiral inward and outward and that include personal experiences and revelations as well as spacey explorations into music and the forward-thinking artists who pioneered it—including but not limited to in-depth musings on ambient, ECM jazz, spiritual jazz, techno, the avant-garde, experimental music, dub, field recordings, and electronic.
What makes this book shine is not simply that Toop is a musician in his own right who palled around with the likes of Eno, Hassell, Cage, and Sakamoto or that his own reflections bear weight—serious weight—on the meaning he makes of otherworldly music, but rather it sings all the more beautifully because Toop's prose is a glowing work of art itself, describing, for instance, the effect that a chorus of cicadas has on his own consciousness. Or, the carefully drawn conclusions he and other artists have arrived at when mapping the influence of illusory music (such as Satie's compositions) in a tangible and perhaps even analog world.
It's a documentation, sure, but it's also a kind of rare lyrical drama or romance that imagines a star-crossed relationship between people and the music they choose to hear. There are countless passages that are worthy to look closely at, but I'll leave you with one I read this morning and loved (Toop's conclusive thoughts on ambient music): "Ambient music is regarded, sometimes with cosmic militancy, as an escape from the unpleasant realities of raw emotion, psychological crisis, body mess and political discontent, but if ambient means only white-light bliss, then the musicians are mere functionaries, slaves to cool the brows of overheated urban info-warriors, rather than the shamans who travel to gruesome corpselands in order to mug demons for wisdom." An interesting image to land on, but one that clarifies Toop's vision of an active and a wholly-embodied listening experience. I could and *probably will* read this again sometime soon. I recommend it as highly as anything else I know.
What makes this book shine is not simply that Toop is a musician in his own right who palled around with the likes of Eno, Hassell, Cage, and Sakamoto or that his own reflections bear weight—serious weight—on the meaning he makes of otherworldly music, but rather it sings all the more beautifully because Toop's prose is a glowing work of art itself, describing, for instance, the effect that a chorus of cicadas has on his own consciousness. Or, the carefully drawn conclusions he and other artists have arrived at when mapping the influence of illusory music (such as Satie's compositions) in a tangible and perhaps even analog world.
It's a documentation, sure, but it's also a kind of rare lyrical drama or romance that imagines a star-crossed relationship between people and the music they choose to hear. There are countless passages that are worthy to look closely at, but I'll leave you with one I read this morning and loved (Toop's conclusive thoughts on ambient music): "Ambient music is regarded, sometimes with cosmic militancy, as an escape from the unpleasant realities of raw emotion, psychological crisis, body mess and political discontent, but if ambient means only white-light bliss, then the musicians are mere functionaries, slaves to cool the brows of overheated urban info-warriors, rather than the shamans who travel to gruesome corpselands in order to mug demons for wisdom." An interesting image to land on, but one that clarifies Toop's vision of an active and a wholly-embodied listening experience. I could and *probably will* read this again sometime soon. I recommend it as highly as anything else I know.
January 8, 2021
Hay varios David Toop en este libro: el narrador, el musicólogo, el imaginador de sci-fi, el hipster, el antropólogo; y también termina cubriendo un abanico de géneros amplio: ambient, experimental, música étnica, cultura DJ, grabaciones de campo. Yo todavía me pregunto si todo esto puede convivir junto en un libro. Toop va de un apartado a otro pegando saltos geográficos, temporales, temáticos... Uno empieza “1967, The Roundhouse, Chalk farm, London”, y el siguiente “Amsterdam is cold, this Friday night, October 1993” (y así cada dos páginas). Por momentos parece un compilado de notas, algo que nunca pude confirmar/descartar. Pero después de varias páginas, algunos nombres empiezan a repetirse: Brian Eno, Lamonte Young, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Sun Ra, Satie... y más.
Lo que me pareció más ridículo es una especie de diario en el que describe su día a día en una tribu Yanomami (son unos indígenas de Venezuela), donde cuenta que lo pican los mosquitos, un murciélago pasó volando cerca, que los que comparten bote con él cazaron pirañas, y descripciones varias de paisajes. Parece una de esas notas periodísticas alargadas para justificar el pasaje a algún país lejano. Pero eventualmente termina en unos rituales musicales o algo así.
Por qué 4 estrellas? Básicamente cada vez que leí sobre alguno de mis ídolos (Aphex Twin, Brian eno, Satie, Biosphere y varios del ambient), terminé concluyendo que Toop hace valer cada línea. Es escueto, va a lo importante, describe con inspiración, y el resultado para mí es algo más valioso que una nota promedio de un portal de música (incluso de Pitchfork). Para releer por partes (gracias por el índice de nombres al final).
Lo que me pareció más ridículo es una especie de diario en el que describe su día a día en una tribu Yanomami (son unos indígenas de Venezuela), donde cuenta que lo pican los mosquitos, un murciélago pasó volando cerca, que los que comparten bote con él cazaron pirañas, y descripciones varias de paisajes. Parece una de esas notas periodísticas alargadas para justificar el pasaje a algún país lejano. Pero eventualmente termina en unos rituales musicales o algo así.
Por qué 4 estrellas? Básicamente cada vez que leí sobre alguno de mis ídolos (Aphex Twin, Brian eno, Satie, Biosphere y varios del ambient), terminé concluyendo que Toop hace valer cada línea. Es escueto, va a lo importante, describe con inspiración, y el resultado para mí es algo más valioso que una nota promedio de un portal de música (incluso de Pitchfork). Para releer por partes (gracias por el índice de nombres al final).
July 17, 2023
Océano de Sonido. David Toop.
Un libro clásico que desde el mismo título me sedujo, tal vez porque mi presente se encuentra caminando entre palabras en el éter, música ambient, mundos imaginarios y mucha experimentación.
Si estas sonoridades son el tipo de información que quieres tener en tu cabeza, entonces este libro es para ti.
Debo advertirte que no es una enciclopedia, o un texto escrito de manera cronológica y descriptiva. Es maravilloso descubrir que aunque el libro tuvo su primera edición en 1995, presenta pensamientos muy actuales, y es un documento donde definitivamente no vas a aprender y conocer de manera literal de estos géneros como si leyeras Wikipedia, pero lo que definitivamente te va a pasar, es que a través de sus hojas te vas a conectar con músicas y viajes conceptuales de grupos, pensamientos, artistas y proyectos, (incluido el del mismo autor “David Toop” quien en algún momento publicó música con el sello de Brian Eno) que de alguna manera vivieron en pasados que no imaginabas, desde Debussy hasta nuestro “régimen sónico” actual, y que ayudaron a dar forma no solo estructural sino emocional a toda esta electrónica ambient, experimental y ensoñadora que vive en nuestro presente de éter.
Un libro clásico que desde el mismo título me sedujo, tal vez porque mi presente se encuentra caminando entre palabras en el éter, música ambient, mundos imaginarios y mucha experimentación.
Si estas sonoridades son el tipo de información que quieres tener en tu cabeza, entonces este libro es para ti.
Debo advertirte que no es una enciclopedia, o un texto escrito de manera cronológica y descriptiva. Es maravilloso descubrir que aunque el libro tuvo su primera edición en 1995, presenta pensamientos muy actuales, y es un documento donde definitivamente no vas a aprender y conocer de manera literal de estos géneros como si leyeras Wikipedia, pero lo que definitivamente te va a pasar, es que a través de sus hojas te vas a conectar con músicas y viajes conceptuales de grupos, pensamientos, artistas y proyectos, (incluido el del mismo autor “David Toop” quien en algún momento publicó música con el sello de Brian Eno) que de alguna manera vivieron en pasados que no imaginabas, desde Debussy hasta nuestro “régimen sónico” actual, y que ayudaron a dar forma no solo estructural sino emocional a toda esta electrónica ambient, experimental y ensoñadora que vive en nuestro presente de éter.
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