Some fifteen years later I came across the same recording on another curated compilation - this time on cd and released by major label Virgin - called Ocean of Sound. The double cd jumped back and forth among new and historical material and genres. A musical travelogue exploring confrontations as well as unexpected congruencies in what seemed to be my very own collection of records. Reading the liner notes, the cd turned out to be the companion to a book by the same title, written by journalist/musician David Toop.

Among the myriad of threads in Ocean of Sound - some merely touched upon, some discussed in more detail - there are a few topics that have proven to be recurrent themes among both musicians , music-critics and media-theorists . Toop's exploration of the immersive quality of sound - music as space - has coincided with a widespread discussion of possible music in imaginary sound space. British music mag The Wire has featured a complete series on the subject of imaginary soundscapes and soundtracks. Belgian filmmagazine Andere Sinema followed its duo-review of Ocean of Sound with several discussions, interviews and articles covering similar ground. Throughout the book Toop describes the capability of sound to narrate and describe space which allows musicians to create strange new worlds, alternative refuges and temporary autonomous zones. Gimme two records and I'll make you a universe states DJ Spooky (Tha Subliminal Kid) in one of the many forum discussions following the publication of Ocean of Sound. In another, close collaborator and composer in his own right Paul Schütze describes these imaginary soundscapes as landscapes of sound with visual narrative resonance. Soundscapes as spatial representations of memory, sonic architecture charting memory. As other writers and certainly many musicians/DJ's have done in recent years Toop partly roots of these forays into musical space in the otherworldly experiments of Sun Ra and Miles Davis. Sun Ra's Afro-futurist space adventures and his quest for an essentially alien, black world, have been seriously reappreciated by TripHop DJ's and studio-composers alike. The same goes for Miles Davis' electronic cyberfunk from the early seventies. Davis teamed up with producer Teo Macero, to explore the advanced possibilities of the sound studio. Based on a collection of live takes they created artificial universes of sounds based on overdubs and special effects. The 'live-albums' from this period - from Bitches Brew to Dark Magus - are really artificial improvisations that have no place in actual space and time, but conjure up mythic civilisations on lost continents like Agharta and Pangaea.

Although viewed by the general press as a history of ambient music, Ocean of Sound offers no such thing. There is no chronology, no lineage on who influenced whom, no clear definitions or fixed labels. Toop's writing at times grows dense, larded with references and digressions - like his lengthy diary report on his travels in the Amazonas. Ocean of Sound simply beckons you to immerse yourself in Toop's sea of information. Maybe this combination accounts for the reception in the USA where it was considered to be a difficult book. My experience reading the book - pleasantly enveloped by the music on the CD - left me with the feeling that the open associative structure of Ocean of Sound would have made a great website. Updated regularly to include new directions in music it would allow the reader to hubskipp through Toop's sonic universe. His writings might feel more at home in the 'ocean of data' for which, he says, people have been so thoroughly prepared by this century's sound-music.