Article and pictures by Juliette Thouin In Ocean of Sound (1995), sound artist and music theorist David Toop gives an alternative history of ambient music that weaves together an immensely disparate array of sounds, genres, styles, stories, and eras. Going from Debussy to Sun Ra to Aphex to Lee Perry to Arthur Russell, it’s a story of experimental (and technological) music’s journey across the twentieth century. A particularly engaging aspect of Toop’s theory is his departure from ambient’s strict ...