Book 13
Ocean of Sound
(Aether Talk, Ambient and Imaginary Worlds)
By
David Toop
pub.
Serpents Tail 1995
ISBN
1-85242-382-X
This
is a fabulous collection of fragments, ideas, imagery and facts and much
material from interviews which (to my mind) help to properly identify music as a
seamless entity where Debussy, Eno, John Coltrane, Edgard Varese etc. etc. can
be all be included within an ambient sound concept. In fact after I had read the
book I was gratified to see that the errosion of musical categories into a ever
changing lattice for attaching musical ideas is mentioned in the prologue as an
aim of the work.
This
is all very well you may say, but what has this to do with odour matters, the
main focus of this website? Well, to start with
on page 5 et seq. the author reviews J. K. Hysmans “Against Nature”,
mentioned elsewhere in these miniature book reviews. The passage is featured
where the subject of the book journeys into fantastic musical-organoleptic
realms by mixing droplets of licqueurs on the tongue via the mouth-organ, a
device to attain the creation of musical exploration (anisette for flutes, gin
for cornets etc.).
But
aside from Huysmans' aromatic adventures in "imagined esoterica",
the book opens up a portal for me, which I am keen to explore. I was not
aware until I had read the book (albeit six years after publication) of musical
explorations into perfumery. Performances of Napoleon Roinard’s Cantique
des Cantiques at the Théâtre Moderne in 1891 are briefly described on page
7 where music, colour projections and perfume sprayed into the crowd were
received with outbreaks of fighting and gun-shots near the ticket office. This
seems a more provocative performance than one I attended in the late Sixties by
Pink Floyd at Parliament Hill Fields, where the crowd were kept at a respectful
distance by large bowls of burning sulphur, during a performance of the Eastern-flavoured
but sombre composition “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” from Saucerful
of Secrets!
New
to me also are descriptions of Brian Eno’s Hamburg art installation “The
Future Will be like a Perfume”, his lecture and slide demonstration of
“Perfume, Defence and David Bowie’s Wedding” and the album Neroli
(Thinking Music Part IV). The book goes on to describe some sections of the
Perfume lecture: Orris butter and Civet being especially featured.
Really,
these extracts do not do justice to the book as a whole, which for muso’s like
me (my son’s description!) is an exciting if belated find. However the very
few pages briefly described above do excite me into further research – how much more “total art” concept material
is there out there to find?
P.S. Since writing this review, the following piece on Brian Eno's work in this area has been brought to my attention....... I hope you enjoy pursuing the thread!
from an Interview with Brian Eno
By Stuart
Maconie,
from Select magazine, 1993.
What are your favourite smells? (His latest album, 'Neroli', is named after a pricey, grandad-style hair oil.)
"You may not recognise the names. *Methyloctane carbonate. It's a smell exactly between violets and motorcycle dope - you know the smell of racing motorcycles? That has very powerful associations for me. Karanal which is like a striking flint, or when you switch an electric fire on. They're both used in perfumes. My favourite natural smell is Philadelphus or mock Orange. Balsam Poplar as well. That grows in Austria and Italy. I'll tell you a smell that's going to sweep the world. It's called 'sea moss algae' in the labs. It's very fishy and it's in Calvin Klein's Escape and Issey Miyake's new perfume. You couldn't have sold it ten years ago. It's so determinedly non-floral."
This is a typo. The substance in question is a methyl octine carbonate, now restricted by IFRA to 0.01% final concentration in perfumes. The material has been an important inclusion in violet perfume bases, and has figured more recently in male fine fragrance perfumery such as Fahrenheit, Curve for Men etc.
Full interview can be found at:
http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/eno_thin.html
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