First lines of David Toop's "Oceans of Sound"

"Sitting quietly in never-never land, I am listening to summer fleas jump off of my small female cat into the polished wood floor. Outside, starlings are squabbling in the fog tree and behind me I can hear swifts wheeling over rooftops. An ambulance siren, full panic mode, passes from behind the left centre of my head to starboard front."

David Toop, Oceans of Sound

Subtitled "Ambient sound and radical listening in the age of communication," Toop's book so far is an idiosyncratic examination of what it means to listen in a world where are inundated with inputs, with stimulus - with all sorts of sounds. I've been enjoying his take on what music is, his observations and thoughts on music both old and contemporary. In just the first third of the book, I've been exposed to  interesting music I was not aware of - from the wondrous ringing of gamelan orchestras to the quiet, halting piano of Eric Satie, to the "machine music" of Luigi Russolo's Intonarumori.