Top 100 Ambient Albums

Matt Ducasse had collected the raw samples for years, Toshi & Kudo provided the instrumentation when necessary, and Howie B blended it all together. This was pop ambient long before the compilations ... whereas Kompakt's collections have a bit of monochromaticism in common with the original 'Artificial Intelligence' pieces, Skylab's compositions patched together a much more diverse range of sources. Which resulted in a deceivingly bourgeois listening experience, but sacrificed little of the impact of raw sound art.

guess I felt I had to justify that one!

Yikes we are going to hit number one too fast

44. Roger Eno - Voices
43. Harold Budd - Lovely Thunder
42. Thomas Koner - Teimo / Permafrost
41. Steve Roach - The Magnificent Void (not like other roach. I swear.)

33. Cocteau Twins/Harold Budd - The Moon and the Melodies

100. Discreet Music - Brian Eno
99. Aphex Twin - SAW 85-92
98. DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
97. GYBE - F# A# oo
96. Shalabi Effect - S/T
95. Prop - Small Craft, Rough Sea
94. The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
93. Global Communication - 76:14
92. ISAN - Lucky Cat
91. AIR - Virgin Suicides
90. King Black Acid - Royal Subjects
89. Gas - Pop
88. Tangerine Dream -- "Zeit"
87. Brian Eno -- "Neroli"
86. Michael Vetter -- "Overtones In Old European Cathedrals (Thoronet)"
85. Steve Hillage -- "Rainbow Dome Musick"
84. Zoviet France -- "Shouting at the Ground"
83. Ash Ra Tempel-New Age Of Earth
82. fennesz - endless summer
81. Susumu Yokota - Sakura
80. Tommy Guerrero - A Little Bit of Somethin'
79. Do Make Say Think - S/T
78. Beef Terminal - 20 Goto 10
77. Broken Social Scene - Feel Good Lost
76. earth - earth 2: special low frequency version
75. boredoms - super roots 6
74. Ry Cooder - Paris, Texas sndtrk
73. Ennio Morricone - Good, Bad, Ugly sndtrk
72. Harold Budd/Brian Eno - The Pearl
71. Mark Snow - The Truth and The Light, Music From The X Files
70. Miles Davis "Sketches of Spain"
69. Erik Satie "Piano Stuff"
68. Brian Eno "Ambient 4: On Land"
67. Labradford - Fixed: Context
66. Scorn - Gyral
65. Main - Hz
64. Stars of the Lid - Ballasted Orchestra
63. john fahey - blind joe death
62. Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells
61. Naked City - Absinthe
60. Popol Vuh - In der Garten Pharaohs
59. Cluster - II
58. Wendy Carlos - Sonic Seasonings
57. Miles Davis - In A Silent Way
56. Burger/Ink "Las Vegas"
55. Irresistible Force - Flying High
53. Nurse with Wound - Soliloquoy for Lilith
52. Eno - Apollo sndtrk
51. Klaus Schulze - Irrlicht
50. Coil - Worship the Glitch
49. Robert Rich/B. Lustmord - Stalker
48. Crawl Unit - Stop Listening
47. Skylab - "#1"
46. Sea Scouts - Pattern Recognition
45. The Necks - Sex
44. NO NECK BLUES BAND - Intonomancy
43. Roger Eno - Voices
42. Harold Budd - Lovely Thunder
41. Thomas Koner - Teimo / Permafrost
40. Steve Roach - The Magnificent Void
39. My Bloody Valentine - Tremolo EP
38. Bark Psychosis - Hex
37. Eno - Another Green World
36. Xenakis - Electronic Music
35. Spacemen 3 - The Perfect Prescription
34. Cocteau Twins "Victorialand"
33. Oval "Dok"
32. Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind
31. Cocteau Twins/Harold Budd - The Moon and the Melodies

now you'll have to think of somehting else for 1

-3 Between -- "Dharana"
-4 Somei Satoh -- "mandara Trilogy"
-5 Stillstand -- "Symbiosen"
-6 Tor Lundvald -- "The Mist"
-7 Can -- "Future Days"
-8 Holger Czukay/Ralf Dammers -- "Canaxis"
-9 Eleanor Hovda -- "Borealis Music"
-10 Throbbing Gristle -- "In The Shadow of the Sun"
-11 Edgar Froese -- "Ypsilon In Malaysian Pale"
-12 Terry Riley -- "Persian Surgery Dervishes"
-13 Morton Feldman -- "Rothko Chapel"
-14 Morton Feldman -- "For Samuel Beckett"
-15 John Cage -- "Perilous Night/Four Walls"
-16 Giacinto Scelsi -- "Kya"
-17 Boards of Canada -- "In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country"
-18 Bill Nelson -- "Chance Encounters in the Garden of Light"
-19 Popol Vuh -- "Aguirre/In Dem Garten Der Pharoa"
-20 KLF -- "Chill Out"

Ahh, I misread it the first time.
This makes for a bizarre list.

This list is turning out very much as I envisioned it:

"This makes for a bizarre list."

I have to get off my bum and finally make that ambient mix I have been thinking about since I finished the winter mix.

50 Pauline Oliveros -- "Deep Listening"
51 Deuter -- "D"
52 Lustmord -- "The Place Where The Black Stars Hang"
53 Fripp & Eno -- "Evening Star"
54 Joe Zawinul -- "Zawinul"
55 Woo -- "It's Cozy Inside"
56 Flying Saucer Attack -- "Further"
57 Vladimir Ussachevsky -- "Electronic Film Music"
58 Residents -- "Eskimo"
59 Aghast -- "Hexerei Im Zwielicht Der Finsternis"
60 Anouar Brahem Trio -- "Astrakhan Cafe"
61 Forrest Fang -- "Folklore"
62 Hototogisu -- "Floating Japanese Off! Gardens of the 21st Century"
63 "Mbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Rain Forest"
64 Hans-Joachim Roedelius -- "Selbstportrait"

one of my favorite albums ever ever.

65 Hans-Joachim Roedelius -- "Selbstportrait II"
66 Hans-Joachim Roedelius -- "Selbstportrait III"

do you mean Oliveros / Dempster / Panaiotis: Deep Listening Band (1989, New Albion)? if not, tell me more!

67. Stuart Dempster - Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel

Yes; sorry if I got the title wrong. The 1989 one on New Albion.

I think the first 1-2 minutes of every Wolf Eyes show is kinda ambient (uh... maybe not).

-66. autechre - Garbage

this is pretty fucking ridiculous, but the hope of it being anywhere close to something that could be described as 'accurate' was never there, right? In that case, this has been an interesting selection of Ambient, and i commend you all.

Do you have some hidden super special definition of Ambient that God on high gave to you?

except for the Wolf Eyes thing everything else seems to fall within the required boundries

68. Eliane Radigue - Trilogie de la Mort
69. Asmus Tietchens - Seuchengebiete 2
70. Thomas Dimuzio - Sonicism
71. Edward Artemyev - Solaris OST
72. Arcane Device - Envoi In Cumin
73. Rhys Chatham - Two Gongs

that cube thing was odd

http://www.quietamerican.org/

who also has some rather nice field recordings online.

81. Deep Listening Band - All Night Flight
82. Francois Bayle - Erosphere
83. Jon Hassell - Vernal Equinox
84. Christoph Heeman - Aftersolstice
85. Ragnar Grippe - Sand
86. Erik Satie - Vexations (Alan Marks, piano)
87. The Harmonic Choir (David Hykes) - Hearing Solar Winds
88. Stephen Kent - Family Tree (disc 2)
89. Laurie Spiegel - The Expanding Universe

Heasley now I know how to find him too. He said he played down here sometimes.
Thanks

I think Perfect Prescription can very easily be defined as Ambient, some of their other work was very agitated but Ecstacy Symphony was pure bliss.

Mixmaster Morris heavily sampled them on the Irresistable Force Album "Flying High".

At the gig that I saw tom heasley at there was a student of Pauline Oliveros playing as well, Christopher Willis, his treated guitar was also very moving.

92. atom heart - silver sound 60
93. atom heart - binary amplified super stereo
92. hat (harry hosono / atom heart / tetsuo inoue) - ny frankfurt tokyo
93. datacide - flowerhead
94. machine paisley - s/t (more atom heart!)
95. atom heart - V.S.V.N.
96. joe henderson and alice coltrane - the elements

Also: Mike Patton Adult Themes for Voice. He recorded this album in hotel rooms while on tour; I wonder what the people in the next rooms were thinking.

Also also: Critters Buggin Amoeba. This album is like electronic bubbles popping in outer space.

who also has some rather nice field recordings online.

964 Natoma is one of SF's best kept secrets and shows there are always amazing. I just missed a tarentel-offshoot last friday because I had to work. There is, provisionally, a Zoe Keating/charles atlas show there on February 20th. It's the best "venue" in town for low-key experimental music. They don't really advertise shows anywhere though since it's a residence, but for anyone in the area interested in this type of music, it's a good idea to keep an eye out for flyers.

(I'd assign a number, but that seems to have been abandoned up string.)

111 - Atom Heart - Dots
112 - Arthur Russel - World Of Echo

I have never heard it but its supposed to be great!

You definitely get insight into who he was as a person through those tracks. He cracked into something, you can feel it in his demos. He was coming from somewhere different, mentally. He co¢Ü“ccommunicate zen through a cello. It is worth hunting down.

X-post, Ned, nice.

It's really something -- one of my best stumbled-across-it-at-KUCI finds. Came out on a label called Win Records out of LA, which also put out things by the way cool Ms. Murgatroyd and other good types.

129. David Tudor - Rainforest (if this list were condensed to a top 10, I'd simply vote for this one)

thanks very much for the Crib tip, Ned, gotta order a copy of that.

love that record.

also I just noticed the garlo record is at cd baby, that really is an amazing record, a cross between the sinewave tapestry of Folke Rabe's 'Was?' and the structral dynamics of bellowing wind on the Alan Lamb stuff. this record just got missed in the states.

William Orbit: Pieces In a Modern Style
The Orb: Orblivion
Biosphere: Microgravity
Jean Michel Jarre: Oxygene
Jean Michel Jarre: Equinoxe
Bowie/Eno: Sides 2 of "Low" and "Heroes"

-154. Vocokesh - Smile! And Point At The Mountain?

keith fullerton whitman-playthroughs
rafael toral-violence/calm
mark lanegan-the winding sheet
philip jeck vinyl coda 4
gavin bryars-incipit vita nova
the sounds of the sounds of science by yo la tengo
gavin bryars-sinking of the titanic
loren mazzacan connors + darin gray-lost mariner
sebadoh-freed weed

'playthroughs' was no. 4 so not counting, but that is a great record. I like his field recording piece 'Dartmouth St Underpass' even more, less relaxing more ominous.

-168. Antimatter - Transfixion
-169. Zbnigniew Karkowski / Antimatter - Function Generator
-170. Anton Batagov - Music for the 35 Buddhas
-171. Kougezan KOUKIJI - The LIVE 11th [Final]

-172. You Fantastic - Homesickness

-146. Terry Riley - Descending Moonshine Dervishes

-198. Rings of Uranus - Nasa-Voyager Space Sounds - Brain/Mind Research
- 199. Akira Rabelais - ...bènèdiction. draw.
- 200. Karen Stackpole - selt-titled on Dielectric Records
- 201. La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela - The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath
- 202. Carl Stone / Nagaya Kazuya - Resonator
- 203. Ellen Fullman - Staggered Stasis (definitely the disc to start with for her work)
- 204. David Tudor - Rainforest IV (Edition Block 1980 -- different recording)

though still relatively few in number

-210. Environments 3 - Dawn & Dusk at New Hope, Pa

-212...Nick Drake-Pink Moon
-213...Nick Drake-Bryter Later
-214...Nick Drake-Five Leaves Left
-215...Damien Rice-O
-216...Joni Mitchell-Blue

I have this box now. 4 discs, 7 booklets. Basta is insane.

Completely insane.

the electrosoniks 'electronic music'

will have to check out the one with Cellicion.

-226. Joe Jones - Solar Music -- (wow)
-227. Alvin Curran - Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri (the only record of his I truly love)
-228. Gordon Monahan - Speaker Swinging
-229. Buloshkin / Gubaidulina / Artemiev / Demisov / Schnittke / Nemtin / Kallosh / Kreitchi - Electroacoustic Music Volume IV: Synthesizer ANS 1964-1971

side 2 of Bayle's Erosphere, 'Toupie dans le ciel', masterpiece, reissued as an ep

(Windsongs came first, it uses recordings of Aeolian Harps and then layers & mixes them into eight short compositions -- Voices of the Wind is one long 60 minute nonstop piece more directly based on nothing but the basic drone of the Harps -- I like them both but play the latter more often)

(242 & 249 are duplicates, so:)

242. Aeolian String Ensemble - Lassithi/Elysium
249. Henry Wolff / Nancy Hennings - Tibetian Bells II

260. Organum - Sphyx

249. Henry Wolff / Nancy Hennings - Tibetan Bells II

262. Space 'n' Bass - The Ultimate Ambient Collection

-- less-than three's Christiane F., September 29th, 2006.

wasn't this on astralwerks? pardon me if astralwerks is part of warp

-- held tony (miscellaneousfrankum...), September 29th, 2006

Erm, yeah, that was... and no I don't believe it's part of Warp. It was my own mistake.

268. Ruth Welcome - Zither Magic

272. Douglas Quin - Antarctica

Well, if I picked up Entroducing or Virgin Suicides expecting "ambient" music, I'd be pretty dissapointed. And I'm really into that "boring" shit right now, so I thought some informed person could apply that filter to this list. (2much2ask).

I'm not really fond of "ambient" as a catch-all term to encompass anything with low-to-no-BPMs which uses drifty soundscapey bits. So little of it paints a compelling portrait of 'place' or sonic geography in the way that, say, On Land did. My favorite so-called "ambient" music is more environmental - actual recordings of ambience or incidental sound, almost documentary in scope and intention. So, while I'd nominate something like Disinformation's R&D as an outstanding ambient work, it'd also likely give most ambient fans a dentist's-drill headache.

274. Monos: Nightfall Sunshine

chris meloche - recurring dreams of the urban

at the moment. i never really liked fax much as a label, but this is quite nice

finally heard the Environments record I posted the Head Heritage link to upthread. It's unbelievable, just hundreds of human voices singing one note. 1976, so predates Prima Materia, David Hykes & the Harmonic Choir, Michael Vetter's Overtone Choir, etc.

all the Environments records need a complete CD reissue

275. Environments 7 - Intonation / Summer Cornfield

http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/review/527
http://nonmusic.discogs.com/release/892588

that is so cool, I have 4 or 5 of those but have never even seen that one.

276. Aloof Proof - Piano Text (just reissued on CD and pretty great)
277. Wind Harp - Songs From The Hill
278. Lou Reed - Hudson River Wind Meditations
279. Michael Stearns - Planetary Unfolding

280. Earth - Pentastar
281. Bohren and Der Club Der Gore - Midnight Earth
282. Tangerine Dream - Phaedra
283. Tones on Tail - Pop

284. Oren Ambarchi - Grapes from the estate
285. Phil Niblock - G2 44 +/X 2
286. Rafael Toral - Sound Mind Sound Body

287. Waki - Music for Lazy People

This is a great list but can anyone recommnend something from 2008?

wyld wyzrdz - mzg wvz

free download here
http://www.magicgoatmusic.com/digitalmagic.html

289. Mark Wastell - Come Crimson Rays

every night for the last three weeks

290 & 291

Lawrence English's last two albums (both from 08) Kiri No Oto and Studies for Stradbroke are both really awesome. SFS is mostly field recordings.

..from Stradbroke Island.

http://www.residentadvisor.net/images/reviews/2008/pop-ambient-2008.jpeg

I agree that the Pop Ambient comps are still a consistent source of decent tunes, but the recent ones seem more formulaic. The 2006 version was the most outstanding to me.

Not necessarily from 2008, but some more recent finds:

• Information - Biomekano (a bit on the glitchy side)
• Oren Ambarchi - In The Pendulum's Embrace
• Loscil - Plume

I'm amazed that the Astralwerks Excursions in Ambience Vol. 3 comp got some love on here...a definite classic, but one I'd assumed was lost to obscurity. I'd be interested in seeing a similar list with a more limited scope. The extent of this one is a little overwhelming.

Check out The Caretaker's Persistent Repetition of Phrases for your hauntology ambient hunger.

no fleischmann?

XXPOST Ambarchi's 7 inch on Touch from this year is fantastic as well. Lots of organ.

This is a great list but can anyone recommnend something from 2008?

― Ned Trifle II, Monday, September 22, 2008 8:43 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

297. Karma Moffett - Golden Bowls Of Compassion

The Beatless Collection with Tokyo Black Star, Deadmau5, Joris Voorn, Gui Boratto, Hiroshi Watanabe etc is fantastic.

can anyone recommnend something from 2008?

Stretching the definition of "ambient," but...

298. Carlos Giffoni - Adult Life
299. Tim Hecker and Aidan Baker - Fantasma Parastasie
300. Patti Smith and Kevin Shields - The Coral Sea

http://www.trackitdown.net/genre/electronica/track/545575.html

that's the Beatless Collection I mentioned above. highly recommended.

now that's a lot of ambient

how do we get the incense stores to buy these and play these instead of Enigma's "The Sadnads Part 1"

from 2008, machinefabriek - dauw is essential. also recently got lawrence english - kiri no oto, beautiful drones

just discovered Oneohtrix Point Never, totally awesome hangover soothing analog tone washes, let's go for 400

301 - Oneohtrix Point Never - "A Pact Between Strangers"

"Ruined Lives" is terrific too but it's < 20 minutes so won't count as an album

that beatless comp looks fun

"Lawrence English's last two albums (both from 08) Kiri No Oto and Studies for Stradbroke are both really awesome."

just got a disc in the mail by lawrence english and francisco lopez called hb that is really cool. on baskaru. lotsa mutated environmental field recordings.

been passing out nightly to a couple of robin guthrie and harold budd collaborations

you gotta play those back to back, skipping the final tracks from both of them, for the real bliss out.

302. http://soundcloud.com/shamantis/j-biebz-u-smile-800-slower

I just saw that on someone's Facebook! I haven't listened yet, though.

WHOA, this is really, really awesome! What was done to it to make it not sound choppy/fragmented?

its this paulstretch programme

sounds like Belong

http://sourceforge.net/projects/hypermammut/files/

it's open source - i'm tripping out to ambient 'Tik Tok' right now

http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/

Please note that this is suitable only for extreme time stretching (e.g. if have a melody of 3 minutes and you want to listen it in 3 hours).

ha, someone's already updated the wikipedia page for '9 Beet Stretch': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_Beet_Stretch

the real landmark timestretching ambient piece is Carl Stone's 'Shing Kee' from 1986, which expands 4 seconds of Schubert to 16 minutes from the album 'Mom's'. it's got some uptempo things on it that kept me from posting it to this list earlier, but I used to program tracks 1-4-5 to sleep to, so...

303. Carl Stone - Mom's

love the new album by bacteria earth.

http://middlesearecords.wordpress.com/

Hey Milton, I never did thank you for that recommendation in feb '09 - which is still on my late night listening playlist, so thanks!

How the fuck is DJ Shadow - Endtroducing ambient? By that reasoning, any DJ set with a minute long beatless break is ambient too.

just ran across this today. very good and actually ambient.

http://www.archive.org/details/JOAT006

xxx-post: OK the paulstretcb utility is really awesome, but why the fuck can't you save it as an .mp3?? you really do have to save it to .wav? anybody know how to convert these things? i tried converting it to an mp3 using vlc media player and it failed miserably. harumph!

you can do it w/ itunes

180. Brian Eno - Thursday Fucking Afternoon

Haven't heard this one -- is it rare??

Ok so this is the place where I am supposed to talk about the Environments series? I bought 5 today for $4 and this is the description

Environments 5 (1974)

Side One: Ultimate Heartbeat (20:00)

A stethoscope heartbeat recording which can be used to calm infants, aid meditation or enhance lovemaking.

Side Two: Wind in the Trees (34:00)

The soft rush of wind rustling the leaves of a grove in late autumn.

The girl behind the counter fell just short of high fiving me once she read the description on the back. What part of the series was included on the Voyager album?!

I don't know, but when I die I hope I wake up on the Psychologically Ultimate Seashore.

The front cover states that the human heartbeat side can be played at 33 or 45. I can report that switching back and forth is pretty fun.

Also look at the cover image
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8491/8407641043_afd705b639_z.jpg

The trees sound kinda like soft washes of static with birds.

I've been listening a lot to Blamstrain's "Disfold" album from 2006 on Sending Orbs... it's sort of a city version of an Environments album. Field recordings from train stations and city streets mixed into a narrative about a relationship. I love it.

Pitchfork just posted their 50 best ambient albums of all time:

“As ignorable as it is interesting.” That’s the classic definition of ambient music, stated by Brian Eno in 1978 on the sleeve notes to his album Ambient 1: Music for Airports. And he should know, since he basically invented the genre three years earlier with his album Discreet Music. But while Eno’s definition of ambient has been cited continuously in the decades since, the sphere of music he first defined has broadened, especially if you judge by how that word is used by listeners. “Ambient” is now used to describe all kinds of music, from tracks you can dance to all the way to harsh noise. For our exploration of the greatest ambient albums, we polled critics for their favorites, with the suggestion that “ambient” meant, in part, music that creates an environment, something like a cloud of sound, be it soothing, sad, haunting, or ominous. We also suggested that our take on ambient music shies away from heavy rhythms and tends more toward “drifting” than “driving,” which meant de-emphasizing ambient house. And we considered the fact that not all albums in a given artist’s catalogue qualify as ambient. Taking into account our writers’ interpretation of those loose guidelines, here’s our list of the 50 best ambient albums.

01. Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports
02. Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Volume II
03. William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops I-IV
04. Terry Riley - A Rainbow in Curved Air
05. The KLF - Chill Out
06. Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid
07. Oval - 94diskont
08. Pauline Oliveros/Stuart Dempster/Panaiotis - Deep Listening
09. Tim Hecker - Harmony in Ultraviolet
10. Fripp & Eno - Evening Star

11. Gas - Pop
12. Laurie Spiegel - The Expanding Universe
13. Brian Eno - Apollo
14. The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
15. Robert Ashley - Automatic Writing
16. Terry Riley - Persian Surgery Dervishes
17. Alice Coltrane - Turiya Sings
18. Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline
19. The Orb - Orbus Terrarum
20. Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica

21. Grouper - A I A : Alien Observer
22. Fennesz - Endless Summer
23. Keith Fullerton Whitman - Playthroughs
24. Brian Eno - Ambient 4: On Land
25. Folke Rabe - What??
26. Iasos - Inter-Dimensional Music
27. Oneohtrix Point Never - Rifts
28. Pauline Oliveros - Accordion and Voice
29. David Behrman - On the Other Ocean
30. Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place

31. Ashra - New Age Of Earth
32. La Monte YoungMarian Zazeela - The Tamburas Of Pandit Pran Nath (An Homage)
33. Steve Roach - Structures from Silence
34. Charlemagne Palestine - Four Manifestations On Six Elements
35. Laraaji - Ambient 3: Day of Radiance
36. Windy & Carl - Depths
37. Tim Hecker - Virgins
38. Biosphere - Substrata
39. Suzanne Ciani - Buchla Concerts 1975
40. Max Richter - Sleep

41. Brian Eno/Harold Budd - The Pearl
42. Ekkehard Ehlers - Plays
43. Eluvium - Talk Amongst the Trees
44. Microstoria - snd
45. Huerco S. - For Those Of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have)
46. Edgar Froese - Epsilon in Malaysian Pale
47. Jon Hassell - Vernal Equinox
48. Ernest Hood - Neighborhoods
49. Bing & Ruth - Tomorrow Was the Golden Age
50. Deathprod - Morals and Dogma

Psyched that Alien Observer is on there.

pfork is garbage but this is a decent list. Personally I could give a fuck about Stars of the Lid and Grouper and some others but overall, not much to complain about

This is a pretty good list but are Oneohtrix Point Never and Tim Hecker really worthy to be included with two albums? Lots of canonical classics missing I guess but that might be refreshing, I mean Global Communication and Bohren have a high enough profile already.

I wouldn't trust any ambient top list with no FAX label albums in it at all...

was going to be either you or me tuomas to say that ..

In general, this list seems to totally prefer the "cool", minimal side of ambient, and totally ignore to more hippieish side that has been just as important for 25+ years. So no Namlook, Tetsu Inoue, Mixmaster Morris, Constance Demby, PWOG, etc.

Plenty of older new age hippie stuff in there though, although not the 90s variety.

hahaha, that's a list made by people afraid to admit in public that they like Future Sound of London.

It is interesting to see that the critical revaluation of new age 'cheese' is in full swing - Pauline Oliveros, Iasos, Ashra, Suzanne Ciani, that stuff was critically off-limits for a long while. I mean, Yanni, Enigma or Enya aren't going to pop up on this kind of lists anytime soon, but the more respectable end of new age is definitely back in focus.

if Eluvium is on this list there's no credible reason the first two Enya albums wouldn't be, except Pitchfork finds her way too unbeardly

Two Stars of the Lid albums in the top 20 is a bit rich for me personally, but I mean these lists are what they are.

I thought Enya was hip again now, shows what I know.

FSOL's Lifeforms absolutely deserves to be on here somewhere.

Music for Airports is obviously important and what have you but for me On Land, Apollo and The Pearl are all superior records.

Ah well substitute Kitaro for Enya then.

I'm actually surprised at the PF love for Laraaji, I thought that was always considered as the dud one in the Eno series.

It's good, but the first half of it hardly seems to fit even the self-imposed rules that Pitchfork had for this list... it's pretty frantic for an ambient album.

Interesting enough list, albeit kind of arbitrary as to what fits and what doesn't. Biggest omission for me is no Labradford (unless I missed it).

Just listening to David Behrman for the first time in a while - On the Other Ocean and Leapday Night are both fabulous (and both a massive influence on Jim O'Rourke).

"but the more respectable end of new age is definitely back in focus."

where you been?

pauline has been a hipster icon for ages in the states. jon hassell on the other hand has not. that is a more recent development. ciani-love definitely came about during the first wave of hepcat reappraisals.

Replica is just the wrong choice for an OPN "ambient" album. the only straight up ambient thing he ever did was the Rifts collection and parts of R Plus Seven. Replica is a collage record.

It's a pretty good list. It's also very coherent for pitchfork, these are artists and albums they've been pushing for years, of course there's going to be missing stuff but it wouldn't make sense for P4K to give FSOL recognition, per example, when they rarely mention them or rate them high. Take it for what it is.

i do wonder if people who weren't listening the first time are listening to 90's-era stuff lik gas, orb, oval, klf? do they speak to the iBud crowd?

all the album links on the pitchfork list should have gone to this. and it should be #51 on the list:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peXoHKKA3d4

i do wonder if people who weren't listening the first time are listening to 90's-era stuff lik gas, orb, oval, klf? do they speak to the iBud crowd?

― scott seward, lunes 26 de septiembre de 2016 18:22 (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I dont think that most of the readers of p4k are actually that young anymore.

i like a lot of what's on here but it's undeniably on-trend wrt new age. like, erik satie should really be on a list that's actually interested in uncovering what ambient is, just as much as eno should be. i love laurie spiegel but i don't think she's ambient at all. eliane radigue 'fits' better i think. (don't mean to weigh token women artists here.) psycho-acoustic sound art type stuff feels connected to the ambient concept imo. maryanne amacher. robert ashley was a good call. in general there seems to be a fear of experimental classical / institutional sound art that isn't outsider-y enough. i love minimalism but solely focusing on it betrays a certain predictable pov.

tbr though 'ambient' may have made sense for eno in a specific context but it's a terrible category.

Yup, too broad, too subjective. Eno had a more specific definition

But when I make playlists I operate in a v subjective way with definitions

I mean even playback volume comes into play here

pretty broad list, a lot of stuff i dont think of as ambient. Its a little rude to characterize minimalists/pure drone artists as ambient, isnt it?

there's a LOT of stuff on there i wouldn't call ambient. but lots of good stuff so i don't care.

yeah i know it's pretty narcissism of small differences... but somehow the act of listing ambient albums puts the definition of ambient music under severe stress

anyway here's a list

jordan de la sierra - gymnosphere
dj olive - sleep
dj olive - buoy
heathered pearls - loyal
various - pop ambient 2002
steve hillage - rainbow dome musick
waki - music for lazy people
robert turman - flux
dream carpets - interior fountains
jack jutson - mother official
jack jutson - mother official volume 2
154 - strike
shuttle358 - understanding wildlife
adlib - adlib
eno - neroli
reinhard voigt - premiere world
ulwhednar - withatten 1982
vektroid - polytravellers
shuttle358 - frame
shuttle358 - chessa
dolphins into the future - canto arquipelago
k. leimur - closed system potentials
microstoria - init ding
cex - presumed dead
rob theakston - i am waiting for you to stop being mad at me

i mean

Pauline Oliveros/Stuart Dempster/Panaiotis - Deep Listening

i don't think this title is meant to be ironic!

Well I don't disagree with the p4k list but as long as we're enlisting missing albums:

Popol Vuh - In den Gärten Pharaos (1971)
Klaus Schulze - Irrlicht (1972)
Roedelius - Wenn der Südwind weht (1981)
Virginia Astley - From Gardens Where We Feel Secure (1983)
Labradford - Prazision LP (1993)
Susumu Yokota - Sakura (1999)
Colleen - Everyone Alive Wants Answers (2003)
Akira Rabelais - Spellewauerynsherde (2004)
Belong - October Language (2006)
Kevin Drumm - Imperial Distortion (2008)
Áine O'Dwyer - Music for Church Cleaners (2012)

"sandstorm" encoded at 8kbps... is it ambient?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldFlcR31gYg

this is an interesting list for sure but yeah snubbing fsol, global communication, and fucking SEEFEEL of all acts is just kind of bonkers

04. Terry Riley - A Rainbow in Curved Air
07. Oval - 94diskont
08. Pauline Oliveros/Stuart Dempster/Panaiotis - Deep Listening
09. Tim Hecker - Harmony in Ultraviolet
12. Laurie Spiegel - The Expanding Universe
16. Terry Riley - Persian Surgery Dervishes
20. Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica
22. Fennesz - Endless Summer
23. Keith Fullerton Whitman - Playthroughs
25. Folke Rabe - What??
28. Pauline Oliveros - Accordion and Voice
31. Ashra - New Age Of Earth
32. La Monte YoungMarian Zazeela - The Tamburas Of Pandit Pran Nath (An Homage)
34. Charlemagne Palestine - Four Manifestations On Six Elements
37. Tim Hecker - Virgins

you can certainly use these as background music, or selectively attentive music, but i don't know, just doesn't seem correct.

who cares, right?

this is an interesting list for sure but yeah snubbing fsol, global communication, and fucking SEEFEEL of all acts is just kind of bonkers

― laraaji p. henson (Stevie D(eux))

Ah Seefeel forgot about them! Used to love them back in highschool.

persian surgery dervishes sounds really intense and ecstatic to me, for example, like let's all have a rave up with terry

this is THE Seefeel ambient jam, afaic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm4rtr03ZV8

but i don't know, just doesn't seem correct.

just doesn't seem right or wholesome to have them on an ambient list, i should say, unless you widen the tent to encompass more 'ambient is a feeling' stuff in jazz/classical/world etc

or like, eagles greatest hits

yeah. it makes sense as a process but feels really cynical as a category of music to me.

like a list of 300 'spiritual' albums would have been so much better + more coherent

So an interesting closing of the loop... Back in 2000 I was in college and just getting into ambient music vie extreme insomnia. hyperreal.org (which is still up - although it says "Copyright 1992-2004 Hyperreal" at the bottom of the page) was an electronic music/rave culture/drugs (via the connected Erowid) site and had DJ sets to download as 'instructional material'. I downloaded an ambient one in Real Audio (yep) format by a guy called Tim Fothergill and listened to it a lot - an awful lot. As I learned more about ambient music I started to recognise a lot of the tunes as Aphex Twin, Eno etc., but eventually I got a big CD and MP3 collection and forgot about this crappy Real Audio file.

Fast forward to two years ago and I found it by accident - I tracked Tim down on Twitter, and he posted up a much higher quality version on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/tim-fothergill/evolution

Some of the track ids of this 20 year old mix were lost to the mists of time, but we got nearly all of them (including using Shazam for a few). I still think it's a nice intro for a beginner, and personally for me it's very evocative of an era:

00:00 Brian Eno - Neroli
01:00 u-ziq - ?
03:40 Aphex Twin - 1-10 SAWII
05:00 Speedy J - Grogono
07:30 Aphex Twin - 1-5 SAWII
09:30 Slowdive - Albatross
10:50 Speedy J - Lanzarote
13:00 Aphex Twin - 1-3 SAWII
15:00 Neutron 9000 - She Trails Flowers
17:50 Dreamfish - Underwater
(20:00 The Orb - Sticky End)
(21:35 FSOL - Bird Wings)
(22:50 Woob - Creek)
25:00 Aphex Twin - 2-4 SAWII
27:00 Aphex Twin - 2-9 SAWII
28:30 Brian Eno - Tal Coat
32:30 The Orb - Valley
35:00 Brian Eno - Unfamiliar Wind (Leek Hills)
36:00 Aphex Twin - 2-6 SAWII
38:30 Woob - Depart
39:30 Dead Can Dance - Piece For Solo Flute
41:30 Woob - On Earth
44:00 Slowdive - Avalyn II
46:00 Aphex Twin - 1-12 SAWII
47:30 Cabaret Voltaire - Project 80
(49:00 FFWD - What Time Is Clock)
51:20 Woob - Strange Air
55.00 Wagon Christ - Aerhaart, From Within
57:00 ?
59:00 Wagon Christ - Glass World
61:00 Psychonavigation - Angel Tech
63:30 Slowdive - Losing Today
65:45 ?
67:00 Cabaret Voltaire - Exterminating Angel (Intro)
69:00 Woob - Odonna
71:30 The Orb - Back Side Of The Moon
73:00 FFWD - Meteor Storm
75:30 The Young Gods - Moon Revolutions
77:00 Slowdive - Golden Hair
78:00 ?
80:00 Woob - Emperor
82:00 Aphex Twin - 1-10 SAWII
84:00 Woob - Odonna
86:00 FFWD - Hempire
88:30 Harold Budd & Brian Eno - First Light
91:00 Aphex Twin - 2-12 SAWII
91:30 Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent)

If anybody has an idea what the remaining ones are then let me know!

I also used to read the reviews at Ambience for the Masses and listen to the associated 24/7 Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast stream which unbelievably seem to be going strong almost two decades later as well.

As for the Pitchfork list, I'm sure they'll have a top 50 New Age albums list next with all your missing favourites.

i like a lot of what's on here but it's undeniably on-trend wrt new age. like, erik satie should really be on a list that's actually interested in uncovering what ambient is, just as much as eno should be. i love laurie spiegel but i don't think she's ambient at all. eliane radigue 'fits' better i think. (don't mean to weigh token women artists here.) psycho-acoustic sound art type stuff feels connected to the ambient concept imo. maryanne amacher. robert ashley was a good call. in general there seems to be a fear of experimental classical / institutional sound art that isn't outsider-y enough. i love minimalism but solely focusing on it betrays a certain predictable pov.

― savvinesslessness (map), Monday, September 26, 2016 1:50 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah if they're gonna go broad with the definition there's quite a few 'non outsidery' notated compositions that'd fit right in. Rothko Chapel, Les Heures Persanes, Egdon Heath, Musica Callada, A Haunted Landscape...

So, cos I had nothing better to do, here's my corny top 50 ambient albums list to complement the "cool" one Pitcfork did:

2350 Broadway - 2350 Broadway 4
310 - Snorkelhouse
Air Liquide - Nephology: The New Religion
Alio Die - Deconsecrated and Pure
Alquimia - Coatlique: Goddess of the Earth
Autumn of Communion - Autumn of Communion
Baked Beans - Baked Beans
Biosphere - Patashnik
Constance Demby - Novus Magnificat: Through the Stargate
Constance Demby - Sacred Space Music
Cosmic Baby - Stunde Null
Datacide - Flowerhead
Deep Space Network - Big Rooms
Dots - Dots
Dreamfish - Dreamfish
Elodie Lauten - Inscapes from Exile
Exquisite Corpse - Inner Light
France Jobin - The Illusion of Infinitesimal
Freida Abtan ‎- The Hands of the Dancer / The Temple of the Dreamer
Gas - Königsforst
Global Communication - 76:14
Higher Intelligence Agency & Biosphere - Polar Sequences
The Irresistible Force - Global Chillage
Ishq - And Awake
Jochem Paap - Vrs-Mbnt-Pcs 9598 I
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - Tides
Khan & Walker - Empire State Building
The McLean Mix - Rainforest Images
Meg Bowles - Blue Cosmos
Meg Bowles - The Shimmering Land
Minilogue - Blomma
Move D & Namlook - Raumland trilogy
Music to Films - Music to Films
Natasha Barrett - Trade Winds
Oliver Lieb - Constellation
Oliver Lieb - Inside Voices
Organic Cloud - Organic Cloud
Psychick Warriors ov Gaia - Ov Biospheres and Sacred Grooves
Raica - Lucent Glances
Robert Rich - Somnium
Shades of Orion - Shades Of Orion 2
Sheila Chandra - ABoneCroneDrone
Solar Quest - Orgship
Susumu Yokota - Sakura
Tangerine Dream - Zeit
Vangelis - Soil Festivities
Vladislave Delay - Anima
Woob - Woob 1194
Zalys - Sublime
Zenith - Zenith

Oh man soil festivities
What a strange recording

There's a lot of FAX in it, but IMO it's pretty inexcusable for any top 50 ambient list to completely ignore the most important ambient label (and the most prolific ambient producer) of the last 25 years, so I tried to balance that a bit.

(xpost)

IMO Soil Festivities is Vangelis' best attempt to do "proper" ambient. Albums like Beauborg or Invisible Connection are a bit too on-the-nose avant-garde for my tastes, and stuff like The City is a bit too cheesy, but on SF he gets it right.

fun list, Tuomas. Zeit would go on my list as well, epic gloomy space ambient.

i must check out that Minilogue album

Anima too but that's another borderline "waht is ambient" case. it's a little too lively and unstable (?) for proper zoning out. Entain is the most "ambient" of his albums, i think. just imo/ime.

i was too young for the late80s/early90s period when "ambient" also referred to ambient house/techno

zeit is so heavy like dark ambient ground zero kinda

If it has beats at all, it shouldn't be considered as an ambient album, imo. Here's an ambient mix I did this weekend with my friend. There are no beats.

https://www.mixcloud.com/biznotic/ambient-excursions-to-44/

rong

or right, i don't know lol

some of the things on the pfork list are like "if it doesn't have beats at all, it can be considered an ambient album"

I never really got why the aphex twin collected ambient work- sounding stuff like fsol is considered ambient, it's p banging and also distracting with the off-kilter beats

I wasn't there at the time but I think "ambient" mostly was being used as a prefix to -house or -techno.

Which makes a lot more sense given most of that stuff is too soft and slow to dance to (at a time when house and techno were almost exclusively conceived of as club or dancing oriented), but predates and doesn't fit in with the "intelligent" frame that started to sweep through circa 1993.

Selected Ambient Works Vol II is "proper" ambient tho.

right, it was more shorthand... like calling hardcore techno "hardcore"

I think that large swathes of Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld (esp. the last three tracks on disc one and "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain...") do in fact meet a narrower definition, but I can appreciate not wanting to include an album that also features "Little Fluffy Clouds" and "Perpetual Dawn" etc.

makes sense, thx tim. and yes of course vol ii is the good shit ~_~

that's a good example of why words are so annoying, you can't just make a list of humming ambient drone without someone being like WHY DOESNT BRITISH TECHNO THAT U CANT DANCE TO FROM 2002 IN THERE

qn: do u pronounce it << auhm-bient >> or whatever?

the 'b' is silent

<i>IMO Soil Festivities is Vangelis' best attempt to do "proper" ambient.</i>

not an official release, but what you want to hear is his soundtrack to "microneurosurgery with videotapes" also called the Tegos tapes. most of the online recordings edit out the narration but it still leaves you with about twelve hours of ambient vangelis. it's as fantastic as you might hope that would be.

here's a collection of them on soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/kitlightning/sets/tegosauron

try case 4, for example

I don't even follow my own proclamation most of the time. Plastikman's Consumed album is full of beats but functionally, it works like an ambient album to me.

If ambient music is defined as something you can chill to, nothing precludes it from having beats. There's plenty of albums by proper, recognized ambient artists that have unobtrusive, chilled down beats.

Obviously there are types of ambient house and ambient techno, where the latter genre is more important, and which have fairly banging 4/4 beats. That's one of the reasons I don't consider the From Within albums or Selected Ambient Works I to be proper ambient. But there are also distinguished types of ambient beats. There are even some tunes I'd consider to be ambient where percussion is the main element.

I think it should be beatless. But then: Gas.

If beatlesness was an absolute requirement, a lot of acclaimed ambient albums would have to be disqualified: Microgravity, Patashnik, Organic Cloud, all albums by Air, Silence, Woob, Gas & The Irresistible Force, most Atom Heart, etc.

I'm fine with that - it'd make it 'neater' as a genre descriptor. As it is, it's kinda messy and vague. (It doesn't keep me awake at night. But still.)

Drawing clear genre boundaries is impossible anywhere.

What's more interesting in discussing these lists (or at least, treating them as some sort of 'critical consensus') are the blind spots and shifts in focus - new age used to be one of those, it's now firmly back in the canon. 90's ambient (incl -house and -techno) is receding. But large swathes of the ambient landscape (ha!) still lay undiscovered - lots of soundtrack work (film and increasingly, video game), dark ambient (Lustmord, Cold Meat Industry, Thomas Köner etc), psybient (Shpongle, Ott, Ultimae Recs etc).

Even within this debate re beats or no beats, some of those 0PN records on their list seem pretty far removed from ambient.

Rifts made sense. Replica made no sense.

yeah, the absence of ambient artists in this list from labels like Projekt/Hic Sunt Leones/Cold Meat Industry makes sense, as goth + world music is still terminally uncool. It's sad though, artists like Robert Rich and Alio Die have been putting out amazing work, often collaborating to great effect, for 20-30 years now. I'm surprised there's nothing by any Em:t artists... obviously Woob's 1194 but also magical releases like Lucid Dreams 0096:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuQj1txL2Bs

Scanner doesn't seem to get any love these days either.

I think we can all agree that one defining characteristic of ambient is Beatleslessness.

the easily cornball intersection of world music + new age/ambient is highly highly beloved of me

The Em:t albums seem to have sort of suffered the same fate as FAX: they're out of print and not so easy to acquire. I kinda feel lists like this are compiled by people who weren't listening to this stuff in the '90s, and these days the newcomers don't have an easy access to it, so it's dropped off the radar. Which is sad, because their catalogue include some of the best electronic music of all time.

here have a mix..

https://www.mixcloud.com/crystalsprings/evening-fog-mix/

dude made his own list:

http://www.self-titledmag.com/2016/09/30/100-best-ambient-albums/

dude's list runs pretty close to my tastes but I don't know if that makes the list very useful for me wrt new discoveries.

nice list, weird that it's framed as a rebuttal when it deliberately excludes albums from the p4k list.. it's really just "another hundred great ambient albums" and obviously that's a totally good thing to post but the disconnect is odd, i'll go ahead and blame clickbait culture (sorry)

also because his list features plenty of artists from the pitchfork list. kinda getting into narcissism of small differences territory.

good for dude

Dude also made a pretty remarkable ambient album of his own (Daydreaming, 2007)

duane pitre - organized pitches occurring in time

The Beach Boys Pet Sounds
The Beatles The Beatles
Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
David Bowie Hunky Dory
Radiohead The Bends

another mix

https://soundcloud.com/coppersprings/local-fertilizer-mix

No FAX (or Rather Interesting) on that guy's list either, what's wrong with people? Have Namlook/Inoue/Atom Heart/etc been completety scratched off the ambient canon?

Namlook's Air I appears (assuming that we're talking about the same list.) I think that'd be my choice of Fax titles as well if I could choose only one. Okay, maybe Ambiant Otaku. Damn.

I think it's like Tuomas said, the FAX stuff being unavailable for an entire generation of listeners means it drops out of the canon for many... same goes for Woob, although 1194 was re-released a few years back.

Looks like Global Communication's Pentamerous Metemorphosis is also out-of-print, which is a shame because it is easily a top ten all-time ambient album.

I think it's the other way round, i.e. people don't care much for that stuff so it becomes unavailable and then drops out of the canon. FAX label has no God-given right to be remembered, it has to earn it.

hahaha, yeah like that Laraaji album "earned" a spot on the Pitchfork list by being called Ambient 3 and being released on Editions EG.

i mean it's p obvious that pfork peeps couldn't think of 100 ambient albumss, they threw fennesz and terry riley in there for some reason. who cares, though, right?

well, I think ILX exists to sequester challops by binding it with our own best-of lists, we're cultural environmentalists aren't we?

i thinkmaybe we should FAX tuomas an anagram

I think with FAX it really is a case that the albums are so hard to find; especially after Namlooks death, when they disappeared from online stores and there wasn't any more Ambient World reissues (though that's gradually starting to change now that rights have been reverting back to his collaborators). Even in the '90s, some of those albums were like mythical objects, with everyone who managed to snatch a copy from those pressings of 500 or 1000 CDs praising them, while they remained impossible to acquire for the rest of us. I still remember how good it felt in the 2000s when Discogs.com and me having a proper job finally meant I could acquire some of those albums.

Of course there are duds among them, FAX released a new album once a week, but the quality of the best records is definitely high and their reputation is earned. So I really feel their low availability has caused them to drop from the canon... It's not a coincidence that the albums most likely to be included in this top 50 or top 100 lists are stuff like Air or Silence, which were reissued several times, while amazing records like Music to Films still remain obscure, because they only had that one 500 copy pressing.

It's not necessarily the availability, the FAX material just isn't that highly rated. If you take the Rate Your Music chart for 'big tent definition' ambient (ie including minimalism, new age and drone), the first FAX album only shows up at #174.

(and there's tons of stuff on those charts that's also out of print)

I don't understand how that list works...? Tetsu Inoue's Organic Cloud is at 202th spot, and has rating of 3.79, which is the same rating the album at 23rd spot has. It doesn't look like they are ordered by rating?

Top ten for me. Some certainly stretch the criteria.

Upper Astral - Higher Self Rendezvous
Mirror - Die Spiegelmanufaktur
Steve Roach - Structures From Silence
Ones/Hands - 1997-2005
Climax Golden Twins - Lovely
Bernhard Günter ‎– Un Peu De Neige Salie
Graham Lambkin & Jason Lescalleet - Photographs
Omit - Quad
Andrew Chalk - Gold Fall
Robert Turman - Flux

hahaha, that Rate Your Music "ambient" list also has... a lot of Loreena McKennitt albums on it.

I don't understand how that list works...? Tetsu Inoue's Organic Cloud is at 202th spot, and has rating of 3.79, which is the same rating the album at 23rd spot has. It doesn't look like they are ordered by rating?

― Tuomas

no, it's not by straight rating- the number of ratings also has a large effect. the #23 album has over 2,000 ratings, whereas inoue's "organic cloud" has under 100. it doesn't make statistical sense to simply go by average rating in this case.

Well that kind of rating system is obviously biased against albums with small and/or limited pressings, such as most of the FAX catalogue; they're never gonna have as many people voting for them.

you're misunderstanding how maths works but i think it's a system which works to reinforce a certain ahistoricist kind of canon-building

The weighting needs to give more weight to reviews by people who are familiar with all of the releases, not just the ones that are easy to find. That's more effort than a web site trying to rank all music via crowdsourcing is going to put in though, and it's also why the recommended ambient albums list from Hyperreal from 2001 (http://music.hyperreal.org/epsilon/info/2001_classic_ambient.html) is still a better list than what Rate Your Music generates today.

That's a good list, yeah. Interesting that Tetsu Inoue is rated so high, but I can't argue that his first two FAX albums are proper ambient classics... Tho personally I rate the first two Shades of Orion (Namlook/Inoue) albums even higher.

hahaha, that Rate Your Music "ambient" list also has... a lot of Loreena McKennitt albums on it.

― erry red flag (f. hazel)

That's what happens if you include new age. There's also those Silent Hill soundtracks which receive insanely high ratings (I assume mostly by nostalgic gamers who don't really listen to anything else?) and are not very ambient, there's a few run-of-the-mill droney mood pieces but mostly a shit ton of (very inept) alt rock with drum machines, which sounds like a demo from Garage Band presets.

I think the RYM system doesn't have a bias against albums with few votes (unless it's a few dozen), but it puts much less weight to a rating if it's the only thing the reviewer has rated or if he just rates everything 5 or 1, etc. It's a bit like IMDB ratings.

Can we argue some more about why a bunch of Finnish teenagers who think Madvillain is the best rap album of all time don't rate the Fax catalog

ts: teenagers who think madvillain is the best rap album of all time vs. 40 year olds who think paul's boutique is the best rap album of all time

wow, the #1 new age album is apparently Hosianna Mantra by Popol Vuh

well yeah

Robert Turman - Flux

this album rules, btw

lol RYM ratings... jeez... not an insignificant amount of people are just going through their slsk downloads, previewing a few tracks and then rating them..

xpost you're exactly who I thought of when I saw that! then I thought 'aw, Seligpresung is only at #18"

kids today just can't be bothered to listen to records a few dozen times before forming opinions on them. terrible.

My fondness for the KLF's Chill Out may be down to the cassette being stuck in my car stereo for a couple of months.

"bryter layter" is my favorite nick drake record because all my other nick drake records got stolen

Made another ambient mix. caution, there are beats in the last 2 minutes of the mix. https://www.mixcloud.com/biznotic/ancient-heavenly-connection

for me, Suzanne Ciani's Seven Waves is album of the season

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06nWn98x_ek

mmmm, prismacolor ambient

http://windsmeasurerecordings.net/catalog/wm18/

michael t. bullock and andrew lafkas ceremonies to breathe upon

currently loving the new Biosphere album, Departed Glories:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLMDIG4sJes

Since winter is coming, I guess I could also share this mix I made a couple of years ago:

https://soundcloud.com/kukka-dj/winterchill

It starts with an electronic pop tune, but the rest of it is mostly ambient.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11JITPeYAWs

really great

i'd like to check that out!

suzanne ciani wheeie posted upthread is doin the trick rn

also I'm listening to Seven Waves at the moment but this looks super interesting

https://open.spotify.com/album/5NeWznX1xhs9KzsNh5PZQT?si=1NH6pf0wSTefbjgZghhqAQ

that looks super cool

lots of stuff here i haven't heard: https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/03/17/contemporary-ambient-music-list

That Daru album I posted upthread is seriously good. Apparently he did the music for avatar the air bender

Got rly into virgins by Tim hecker this winter
That is a album of feeeeeelz

I'd completely forgotten about this thread, but last month I did a top 100 ambient albums list for another site, might as well share it here too:

1. Shades of Orion – Shades of Orion 2
2. Meg Bowles – The Shimmering Land
3. Éliane Radigue – Jetsun Mila
4. Lucette Bourdin – Radiant Stars
5. Vangelis – Soil Festivities
6. Air Liquide – Nephology: the New Religion
7. Constance Demby – Novus Magnificat: Through the Stargate
8. Oliver Lieb – Inside Voices
9. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – Tides
10. Biosphere – Patashnik
11. Organic Cloud – Organic Cloud
12. Wendy Carlos – Beauty in the Beast
13. Alio Die – Deconsecrated and Pure
14. Robert Rich – Somnium
15. Datacide – Flowerhead
16. Tangerine Dream – Zeit
17. Sheila Chandra – ABoneCroneDrone
18. Silence – Silence V
19. Deep Space Network – Big Rooms
20. Gas – Königsforst
21. The Irresistible Force – Global Chillage
22. Psychick Warriors ov Gaia – Record of Breaks
23. Lucia Hwong ‎– Secret Luminescence
24. Meg Bowles ‎– Evensong: Canticles for the Earth
25. Alio Die & Sylvi Alli ‎– Amidst the Circling Spires
26. Max Richter ‎– Sleep
27. Lucette Bourdin – Timeless Shore
28. Iotronica – Of Moons and Stars
29. Mariolina Zitta ‎– Concert for Bats, Voices and Natural Sounds
30. Namlook ‎– Namlook XXV: Permutations
31. Music to Films ‎– Music to Films
32. Donato Dozzy ‎– K
33. Solar Quest ‎– Orgship
34. Lorenzo Montanà ‎– Nihil
35. Ambiant Otaku – Ambiant Otaku
36. Omni Vu Deity ‎– Uvunayatu
37. Autumn of Communion ‎– Autumn of Communion
38. Higher Intelligence Agency / Biosphere ‎– Polar Sequences
39. 2350 Broadway ‎– 2350 Broadway 2
40. Minilogue ‎– Blomma
41. Susumu Yokota ‎– Sakura
42. Ishq ‎– And Awake
43. Khan & Walker ‎– Empire State Building
44. Zalys ‎– Wandering Through Space
45. France Jobin ‎– Intrication
46. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Suzanne Ciani ‎– Sunergy
47. Baked Beans ‎– Baked Beans
48. Woob ‎– Woob 1194
49. Thomas P. Heckmann ‎– Ghosts
50. Raw C / Pharmakustik ‎– Anamorph Specimens
51. Global Electronic Network ‎– Rolleiflex / Weltron / Time Square
52. Éliane Radigue ‎– Trilogie de la mort
53. Namlook / Montanà ‎– Labyrinth
54. 2350 Broadway ‎– 2350 Broadway 4
55. Suzanne Ciani ‎– Seven Waves
56. Alquimia ‎– "Coatlicue" Goddess of the Earth
57. Vangelis – The City
58. Global Communication ‎– 76:14
59. Otras ‎– Otras
60. 310 ‎– Aug 56
61. Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom ‎– The Days of Mars
62. Dominic Woosey ‎– Straylight
63. Biosphere ‎– Departed Glories
64. Alio Die & Mariolina Zitta ‎– La Sala Dei Cristalli
65. Tetsu Inoue ‎– Inland
66. Lucia Hwong ‎– Goddess Awakening Vol. 1
67. Indiana Drones ‎– Indiana Drones
68. Atom Heart ‎– Live at Sel i/s/c
69. Deborah Martin ‎– Eye of the Wizard
70. Dr Atmo ‎– Quiet Life
71. Raica ‎– Lucent Glances
72. Jochem Paap ‎– Vrs-Mbnt-Pcs 9598 II
73. Constance Demby ‎– Skies Above Skies
74. DeepChord presents Echospace ‎– Liumin
75. A-Symmetry ‎– I Am Life
76. Single Cell Orchestra ‎– Dead Vent 7
77. Biosphere ‎– Substrata
78. Material Object ‎– Artefacts Digitaux II
79. Laurie Spiegel ‎– Unseen Worlds
80. Banco De Gaia ‎– Last Train to Lhasa
81. Sheila Chandra ‎– Quiet
82. Move D ‎– The Silent Orbiter
83. Dreamfish ‎– Dreamfish
84. Freida Abtan ‎– The Hands of the Dancer / The Temple of the Dreamer
85. Monolake ‎– Silence
86. Cosmic Baby ‎– Stunde Null
87. Ishq ‎– Seascapes
88. Zalys ‎– Sublime
89. Robert Rich ‎– Geometry
90. Tomita ‎– Kosmos
91. Meg Bowles – Blue Cosmos
92. Sad World ‎– Sad World 3
93. Baked Beans ‎– Bean Me Up, Scotty!
94. William Orbit ‎– Strange Cargo III
95. Vladislav Delay ‎– Anima
96. Suzanne Doucet ‎– Reflecting Light
97. TBA / Natalie Beridze ‎– Size And Tears: Alice in Wonderland
98. Terre Thaemlitz ‎– Lovebomb
99. The Fires of Ork ‎– The Fires of Ork 2
100. Geoff Barrow / Ben Salisbury ‎– Drokk: Music Inspired by Mega-City One

https://soundcloud.com/kukka-dj/wintermix-vol-ii

I also did a sequel to that wintery ambient mix mentioned upthread.

Wow, that’s a lot to go through. Thanks T

That's a fascinating list! I think I've heard...6 of them.

Yeah, interesting list. I’ve been gradually tracking entries down. Lots I haven’t heard by artists I have heard.

love Meg Bowles. Have never heard of her until your list.

Meg Bowles is one of my favourite ambient artists, it's always nice when people discover her music. I've said it before here, but IMO she would be more acclaimed if her albums weren't self-published and labelled (by herself, admittedly) "new age". The sort of hippie elements a lot of new age artists have are completely missing from her music, mostly it's just pure cosmic synth drones. (Personally I love corny hippie new age too, but I do understand why those elements alienate people.) If her records were published by an established ambient label, they'd probably be considered classics of the genre.

Liking the Meg Bowles album. I think 'new age' would have seemed like a pejorative up until a couple of years ago but that sound is unexpectedly coming into vogue it seems.

Have we ever done an ambient albums poll?

No, I don't think so... I'd definitely participate in one.

Same! We did have this thread that died a quiet death: https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=1558318&boardid=41&threadid=80208

I'd definitely be up for participating.

Likewise, although there is so much I would still like to hear first.

count me in

make sure to collect at least 2000 nominations tho

I can nominate some vapor ambient stuff, but not an expert on the larger topic at all

I’m only in if we can vote for the first eagles greatest hits album

seriously, though, I’d rather just see everyone’s own lists

I’m only in if we can vote for the first eagles greatest hits album

Eligible only if slowed down 800%.

If I don't get this job I want I'll have time to run a poll, we'll see

This'd be a fucking minefield on what qualifies and what doesn't.

Bring it.

If lukas gets his job, I might be willing to run it!

I've already compared my personal top 10 ambient albums with a couple friends over the last couple years. Would love to participate too

I got the job! Sorry.

Hmm, I think I might actually have the time to run this, if people are interested?

That'd be great!

Ummmmm yeah!!

Yup!

This is the thread in which I discover that Lukas, LBI, Tuomas, KM, and Chinaski all have me killfiled.

:p

I can nominate some vapor ambient stuff, but not an expert on the larger topic at all

i'm listening to Sleepline by New Dreams Ltd right now and I'm curious if something like this would qualify

xp no way leee, i just forgot! i'm just pumped for the poll, whoever ends up running it :)

I had the bartender put a few drops in my beer last week. Horrible idea , turned it into soap abd caused it to overflow.

_I can nominate some vapor ambient stuff, but not an expert on the larger topic at all_


i'm listening to Sleepline by New Dreams Ltd right now and I'm curious if something like this would qualify

i don't envy the pollrunner on this one, tackling issues of what counts as ambient

i have a very expansive/permissive view of what "counts" in any genre, but i'm sure there will be questions about, say, seefeel's more well known albums

Xp hah - no way, leee! I got my 'l's mixed up and thought you'd sworn off cos you'd got the job. I'm up for it whoever runs it.

I'd prolly say NO Seefeel because beats but happy to be swayed. (While acknowledging there are some utterly beautiful ambient moments on Seefeel records, ofc.)

Thanks, chums!

As for what counts... if we say beats != ambient, then that would disqualify SAW and SAWII... and they have "ambient" in their titles!

and Gas albums have beats as well! or at least, they have pulses. :)

anyway, i prefer not to participate in the What is Ambient? wars of 2019, but i'll be very happy to choose my ballot from whatever makes it through the sift

also, very timely poll, as i just got David Toop's Ocean of Sound book on ambient music in the mail

Yeah, I won't die on the NO BEATS hill. Happy to vote on whatever appears.

Can't say how excited I would be about this poll, were there anyone to run it. Sad.

lllooolll

The recent-ish (2018?) Jurg Frey 5-disc album on Erstwhile = top ambient

...if you like the sounds of ocean surf, jet planes carving holes in the sky, passive (background / adjacent room-) listening, incidental sounds, vague tonal content, and silence

also, very timely poll, as i just got David Toop's Ocean of Sound book on ambient music in the mail

― these are not all of the possible side effects (Karl Malone), Wednesday, May 15, 2019 9:42 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Excellent book.

Oh and Leee I'd never killfile you, honest!

i don't understand what this is supposed to be saying:

if Eluvium is on this list there's no credible reason the first two Enya albums wouldn't be, except Pitchfork finds her way too unbeardly

Me neither.

I propose a totally free nomination process, beats/no beats, the voters will decide what they deem ambient. We're more or less adults here, I think we can do without strict rules?

Yeah, that's how I'm thinking of doing the poll. I think I'm gonna write some simple guidelines of how ambient is usually defined, to steer the nominations, but I'm not gonna disqualify anything if someone feels it's ambient.

For example, to me it seems pretty evident that SAW 1 is not ambient (despite the title of the) because of its dancey rhythms and beats, while SAW II is. But if someone still wants to nom the further, why not. But since we've had numerous generic polls on electronic music, I'm hoping this won't turn into one too, so hopefully people will at least consider what ambient means before nomming their favourite Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada albums.

if SAW1 counts then I'd think early LPs by The Black Dog and Autechre should also count

I don't think any of those count as ambient, but I'd like to hear justifications why they would?

I mean, if the one characteristic of ambient most people agree on that it's non-intrusive and doesn't call attention to it, then the jerky mood and rhythm changes of something like Spanners or Temple of Transparent Balls would absolutely disqualify it.

The first four Enya albums are amazing (the next four... less so) but I wouldn't call them ambient. Enya is Enya.

Would love to see everyone's top ten or twenty too!

Yeah, I love Enya, and there are many new age albums that are among my favourite ambient records, but her music isnt ambient, it's too song-oriented.

SAW1 shouldn't be eligible imho.

Let the great ambient gatekeeping begin.

hey tuomas, can i passionately argue for the inclusion of a field recording that i made of a train that's on my hard drive and no one else has ever heard, just so that i can be the one person that votes for it?

(jk)

everything is permissible but nothing is ambient

FSOL and Banco De Gaia, ambient or not?

FSOL has to be, how can Lifeforms not be ambient?

Your nominations for the ILX AMBIENT ALBUMS POLL (nominations close on Friday, May 31st)

Zoning out to saw1 after too much drink and drugs when I was far too young, as the sun rose over the trees, where me and my friends sat in sleeping bags we needed only for comfort, in a bright light back room in the west of england, we knew we were already late for saturday jobs, but it was alright because this music

Isn't ambient?

Posted on the wrong thread. Not to be I suppose