Ocean of Sound

Background

In 1995, David Toop published his second book, Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds, which examined music as a medium for deep mental involvement. In the book, Toop said that ambient music can be defined as music listened for relaxation or music that "taps into the disturbing, chaotic undertow of the environment". As an aural companion to the book, Toop curated the compilation album Ocean of Sound, which would also serve as a historical survey of ambient music. The album was released in January 1996 by Virgin Records. It later went out of print, which music journalist Michaelangelos Matos said was because such cross-licensed compilation albums "seldom stay available for very long".

Music

Ocean of Sound is a two-disc, cross-licensed "various artists" compilation that contains 32 tracks culled from a variety of musical sources, including dub, exotica, free jazz, and field recordings. According to AllMusic's John Bush, all of the songs compiled for the album recapitulate the theme of the book—"that Les Baxter, Aphex Twin, The Beach Boys, Herbie Hancock, King Tubby and My Bloody Valentine are all related by their effect on sound pioneering." In an interview for Perfect Sound Forever, Toop explained why he included free jazz on an album of ambient music, which is commonly thought of as background music:

Toop programmed the recordings for the album so that they would segue into one another. Ocean of Sound begins with songs by Jamaican dub producer King Tubby, American jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock, and English electronic musician Aphex Twin, respectively, before transitioning to compositions by Claude Debussy, John Cage, the Beach Boys, and Peter Brötzmann, as well as an audio recording of Buddhist monks. Toop programmed the Velvet Underground's 1968 song "I Heard Her Call My Name" so that its muted feedback would segue into an underwater recording of bearded seals barking.

Critical reception

In a contemporary review for The Wire, Peter Shapiro said he was impressed by how Ocean of Sound highlighted musical similarities among its disparate artists, calling it a manifestation of the book's discussion and "a remarkable collection of great music". The Independent wrote that "Toop navigates smoothly between the various strands that have contributed to the current techno/'fourth-world' style of ambient-pop", because he used sources such as Oriental music, minimalism, and classical composers. Michaelangelo Matos from the Chicago Reader viewed it as an idyllic compilation whose songs segued fluently because of Toop's aesthetic, while noting they could also stand alone as interesting, if not excellent, separate pieces: "Ocean of Sound is one of those records that have something to teach even the most jaded music fan about how to listen to music." In a four-and-a-half out of five-star review, AllMusic's John Bush recommended the album to any "wide-ranging ambient fan" and said that it illustrates the ideas in Toop's book "beautifully".

Ocean of Sound was voted the fourth best compilation of 1996 in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics published by The Village Voice. Robert Christgau, the poll's supervisor, named it the year's best compilation in his own list for the Pazz & Jop. In a retrospective review, he gave the record an "A" grade and deemed it a "gorgeously segued 32-track tour of trad ambient" with recordings that were smaller representations of larger generational concerns such as disorder and anxiety: "For Toop, it answers a need that's both postmodern and millennial, synthesizing insecurity and hope, 'bliss' and 'non-specific dread.'" In a 2011 list for Spin, Chuck Eddy named Ocean of Sound the most essential album of ambient music, writing that its 32 tracks "flowed into each other like the seven seas".

Personnel

Credits for Ocean of Sound are adapted from AllMusic.