Notes from David Toop's Ocean of Sound (1995)

Notes [oldest to newest]
1. Jon Hassell's "Fourth World"
2. James Clifford on Surrealism
3. Toop's thesis
4. Disco and the de-emphasizing of the musician
5. The "reverberant character" of cave painting sites
6. Huysmans' "Against Nature"
7. Music as tint
8. The hybrid music of the future
9. 1986-1989: Proto-rave 12" singles
10. The influence of MIDI
11. Before Eno, disco
12. "Trance grooves" in the late 1960s
13. West African cool
14. Steve Hillage's "Rainbow Dome Musick"
15. E2-E4
16. Ambient music as a "way of listening"
17. KLF ambient albums
18. Rock gong complexes
19. Hitler and the loudspeaker
20. "Raw and the Cooked"
21. Levi-Strauss on noise
22. Russolo's "intonarumori"
23. Varese and music as a physical experience
24. Hermann Helmholtz and the sensations of tone
25. Varese's "Hyperprism"
26. Charlie Parker's "Repetition"
27. Brian Eno on Frank Sinatra
28. Two Arthur Russell 12" singles
29. The first wave of dub
30. African Headcharge's "My Life In a Hole In the Ground"
31. "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts"
32. "Canaxis"
33. James Clifford and the chronotope
34. Perceiving "collective experience" as "whole"
35. James Clifford on collecting
36. 1889: First known recording of an animal
37. Eno on attention
38. Appreciating a field recording
39. The recording studio and the landscape
40. Little instruments and non-instruments
41. Derek Bailey's "Improvisation"
42. Improvisation and semiotics
43. Umberto Eco's "The Open Work"
44. Roscoe Mitchell's "Sound"
45. "Worlds Within Worlds"
46. Proto-New Age music
47. Toop's definition of ambient
48. Morse Peckham's definition of art
49. Cage's Sonatas and Interludes
50. Henry Cowell and John Cage
51. The mirliton
52. John Tilbury on John Cage
53. Cage on ambient sound
54. Cage's "imaginary landscapes"
55. Fripp and Eno's "Evening Star"
56. Harold Budd
57. Jon Hassell albums referenced in Ocean of Sound
58. "Circadian Rhythm"
59. Japanese relationships to technology
60. Ben Okri's "Stars of the New Curfew"
61. "Sunday Morning Blues"
62. Angus MacLise's "main rhythmic influence"
63. Toop's list of 1960s NYC counterculture figures
64. The Forever Blues Band
65. The sound of power plants
66. La Monte Young's spirituality
67. "Some music is not recordable"
68. John Latham's electric saw performance
69. Richard Maxfield
70. Terry Riley albums referenced in Ocean of Sound
71. Pandit Pran Nath
72. Equal temperament
73. Exploratory jazz
74. Music that doesn't go anywhere
75. Early Aphex Twin tracks
76. Two opposing characteristics of ambient music
77. Satie's ambient
78. Satie's repetiton pieces
79. Investigators of echoes and acoustics
80. Time, space, and deep listening
81. Pauline Oliveros on sound and spiritual development
82. Joseph Lanza's "Elevator Music"
83. Experimental music as refusal
84. Victor Turner and open structures
85. Rudolf Steiner and Theodor Schwenk
86. Artaud's "No More Masterpieces"
87. "Jump-cut improvising" and diverse record collections
88. Alan Splet's "earth ambient"
89. Dolphins and language
90. A culture without objects
91. Toop's final description of music

> all notes from David Toop's Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds (1995)


> part of unfinished everything


search unfinished everything


unfinished everything is an original work / ongoing project (1997-present) by jeremy p. bushnell

selection, arrangement, and original text available for creative reuse under this licensing arrangement

authors' quoted words are their own.


home | @jpb.bsky.social