Ocean of Sound ~ David Toop

This book contains a collection of essays from David Toop where he covers his perspective on the vast nature of ambient music and world-building through sound. Studying the intense practice of deep listening and how it plays into his craft of world-building through ambiance is what I extracted from this book. “…as the world has moved towards becoming an information ocean, so music has become immersive. Listeners float in that ocean; musicians have become virtual travelers, creators of sonic theatre, transmitters of all the signals received across the aether”. Ocean of Sound is a deep dive into the understanding of listening during the age of communication. An aspect of this book that resonated with me was Toop’s perspective on memory in/with sound in his work. Toop uses sound to distinguish himself from the world he is engaged in; “Sound places us in the real world…my brain seeks it out, sorts it, makes me feel the immensity of the universe even when I have no wish to look or absorb”. Pulling from memory, he describes his ability of deep listening to hyper-analyze the sonic environment to put these sounds into his practice. This idea of associating sound with memory particularly intrigues me. What stories can I tell by simply extracting a memory in my head and finding its sonic associations? This relates back to the idea of familiarity; using what I know and trust to be able to paint a picture or describe an intimate memory or moment in time, and translating that into sound. Toop describes the experience of hearing everyday noise as swimming through and ocean of sound, all the sounds merging around and through each individual person and creating a unique experience that may feel mundane or normal. Whereas when listening and thinking about what these sounds are doing and how they are minutely changing every second; that in itself is a sonic body of work. The parallels drawn of sound to oceans to memory are instated and heavily detailed. Taking these memories and being able to paint an entire picture of the environment he was once in and absorbed by the force of the universe. Aside from this aspect of memory, Toop covers the ‘nomadic history’ of ambient sound and the lasting nature of its’ genesis. Ocean of Sound provided me not only a deep study of ambient sound but also a new language to imagine the sound in. Toop has such a specific vocabulary that is almost hard to understand but that is what intrigues me about this book. I can take this text and apply it to my current work by understanding and analyzing the familiarity of an everyday ocean of sound and extracting the unique experience of what story is being told in that exact moment; and applying this to the stories I wish to share in a more so ambient genre of work.