Ocean of Sound is a 1996 compilation album compiled and produced by English musician and author David Toop. The two-disc, cross-licensed "various artists" compilation contains 32 tracks culled from a variety of musical sources, including dub, exotica, free jazz, and field recordings. Toop compiled the recordings to serve as both a historical survey of ambient music and an aural companion to his 1995 book Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds.
Ocean of Sound was released in January 1996 by Virgin Records. It was well received by music critics and finished fourth in the voting for The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop poll. The album later went out of print.
Background
Toop in 2015
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.[1] 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".[2] 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.[3] The album was released in January 1996 by Virgin Records.[4] 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".[1]
Music
Brian Eno (2012) produced three of the album's songs.
I was making a point about the immersive quality of 20th century musical experiences. Immersion is the key word for me; not background. The whole idea of background music was a red herring, a distraction – there is no such thing as background music, in the sense that so-called background music is always deployed (though not always accepted) as a lifestyle accessory and lifestyle is a collection of strong signifiers.[6]
Reviewing for The Wire in 1996, 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".[9]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.[3] 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."[7]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".[5]
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.[10]Robert Christgau, the poll's supervisor, named it the year's best compilation in his own list for the Pazz & Jop.[11] In Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s (2000), he 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.'"[8] 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".[12]
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