quoted 2 lines Everything you might want from a book about ambient (and more!) can be> Everything you might want from a book about ambient (and more!) can be
> found in Ocean Of Sound by David Toop... Highly recommended.
I wouldn't have said that Ocean of Sound had everything about anything - it's a fantastic book that gives you totally new ways of looking at sound, but it's hardly a reference tome on ambient.
Speaking of books...
a) Has anyone read Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900 by Olivia Mattis and is it any good?
b) I know it's traditional to look down on it around here, but I read Energy Flash by Simon Reynolds (Generation Ecstacy in America) and thought it had some quite good bits in. It's basically a history of the UK rave scene with some other bits thrown in rather than an attempt to deal with the whole of electronic music, and it radically oversimplifies a lot of issues (especially regarding race and class) but there are some very interesting points, especially his observation that 'stupid' music often breaks more new ground than 'intelligent' or 'progressive' music - although his conclusion that any music that isn't purely dancefloor oriented is therefore tepid and uninteresting is a rather illogical jump.
But yeah, it's certainly not as pointless as some descriptions on this list have implied, and even if you disagree with bits of it, you're at least forced to think hard about why you disagree.
David
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