An innovative book that changed the way we perceive contemporary music. The book understands sound as an ocean and the ocean as countless sounds; it invites those for whom this Earth seems boring to swim.

The Ocean of Sound is a landmark book in music literature. It begins to unravel its thread, starting from Paris in 1889, when Claude Debussy first heard the pentatonic scales of traditional Indonesian music. The first page in the history of the development of this ethereal culture, which has since influenced the greatest contemporary composers as well as the wild children of techno, has just been written.

A representative "history" of 20th-century music. Through interviews with influential musicians such as Brian Eno, Lee Perry, Sun Ra, Bill Laswell, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Kraftwerk, David Toop weaves a captivating tapestry of narratives around "organized" sound and the soundtrack of a Fourth World stretching from Tokyo to Marrakech, from London to the Amazon, and from Java to New York.

David Toop is one of the most important music theorists of the 20th century. He is a musician, author, journalist, and professor of sound improvisation at the London College of Communication. He has worked as a music editor for the Face, Wired, and Times.