I read a chapter of a book called “Ocean of Sound” by British musician, author, and professor David Toop. In this publication, he explores the history of ambient music, the philosophy behind it, and its connection to our everyday soundscapes.
In the first chapter, “memory”, which I have been assigned, Toop introduces the reader to the concept of ambient music in a way that one might not have thought of it. He provides examples of different approaches to sound and ambience and draws connections between things you would have never known had anything in common. He talks about Muzak, Brian Eno’s perfume, Javanese pop, hearing his neighbours having a fight, Thomas Pynchon, Balinese gamelan orchestra, Claude Debussy, the music played at Indian cafeterias, bedhaya dancers, Umberto Eco, and the sound of plastic food wrap from a freezer. The chapter has no structure, it is just a fusion of Dasvid’s observations and quotes from people with different professional backgrounds. He provides examples from the world of design and literature, connects sound to other senses – the smells and colours – and covers the timeline from cavemen to modern (and by saying “modern” I mean the year 1995 when it was published) times. The readers must then collect the full picture themselves – collect the images from the book and make out how they all relate to ambient music. The broad range of topics covered in this chapter must be one of the exceptional traits of “Ocean of Sound”.
His writing style is rich, somewhat sophisticated, and often descriptive. It evokes the sensory experience of sound in a way that, while I was reading the book in a noisy London underground carriage, I could almost space out from where I was and hear the things described in the text. I, however, have found the language to be unreasonably complicated when Toop was being analytical. Being exhausted after a long day, I had to re-read some of the sentences all over and over again for them to make sense. The stylistic choice also left the text feeling a bit scattered due to seemingly unrelated quotes and facts piling up until they connect over a mutual idea two pages later.
If I had to do academic research on ambient music, I would probably go for another, more non-fiction, book. While David Toop does cover a lot of the history of ambient music, the first chapter is more of a suggestion of a new perspective on the connection between music, sound, environment, and aether – the communication and interaction between various sonic elements, such as melodies, natural sounds, and electronic textures. He assembles an approach to creating and perceiving an intentionally “background” yet emotionally complex music.
“Increasing numbers of musicians are creating works which grasp the transparency of water, seek to track the journeys of telematic nomads, bore moods and atmospheres, rub out chaos and noise pollution with quiet, concentrate on sonic microcosms, absorb quotations and digital snapshots of sound into themselves, avoid form in favour of impression, concoct synthetic wilderness in urban laboratories, explore a restricted sound range or single technological process over long durations, seek to effect physiological change rather than pursue intellectual rigour, or depict impossible, imaginary environments of beauty or terror. Music that aspires to the condition of perfume, music that searches for new relationships between maker and listener, maker and machine, sound and context.” (Toop, Ocean of Sound, p. 24)
Toop, David. “Davidtoop.” Davidtoop, davidtoopblog.com/author/davidtoop/ (Accessed 4 Dec. 2023.)
Toop, D. Ocean of Sound. 1995. Serpent’s Tail, 2018, pp. 4–25.