The mind revealing itself to itself: the TOP 100 AMBIENT ALBUMS as voted by ILX

hopefully another album recorded in that cistern is gonna appear later...

65. Gigi Masin: Talk to the Sea (2014)
264 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/RFWun9a.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAHjMWEb9y8

listened to most of these while driving around tuscany last week, confirming that nu-balearic is the greatest driving music.

gigi masin's vocal stuff scratches a wonderful david sylvian itch

― max, 2. kesäkuuta 2014 0:15

I'm tight with the Juno Plus list of best reissues. Also agreeing with their comment re Gigi Masin's Talk To The Sea

wasn’t just the best reissue project of the year – it was better than most albums of new music released in 2014

― doug watson, 3. joulukuuta 2014 18:17

Huh, I skimmed this Gigi Masin album earlier in the year, but I'm only just now discovering there are some vocals. Makes it better imo.

― Johnny Fever, 27. tammikuuta 2015 20:51

talk to the sea is a retrospective compilation and mr. masin has been working since the 80s (including a collab with charles hayward [this heat] which my bf pointed out as a huge charles hayward fan). as someone who listens to a lot of ambient-ish music i thought this was pretty special and a cut above, with more varied instrumentation including like the best-sounding digital synthesis ever and great cale-esque vox on some tracks. the vibes are kind of perfect for 2014 era balearic. i'm sort of over stars of the lid and certain guitar treatments, personally.

― languagelessness (mattresslessness), 27. tammikuuta 2015 20:57

64. David Sylvian / Holger Czukay: Flux + Mutability (1989)
265 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/4rS3fB3.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_E-lg2M5gQ

the second one, 'flux and mutability', made more sense on vinyl, two seperate pieces, one a mellow saunter, the other a sound wall made of sylvian's fripp-cribbed "I am sad now" guitar tones, is good.

― (Jon L), 23. toukokuuta 2004 0:33

Flux + Mutability is my favorite of the Sylvian ambient albums, if only for the second track. I don't think it would sound out of place on Eno's Apollo, and imo it bests a lot of the material on that album.

― I like tv random anything (corey), 30. heinäkuuta 2010 7:45

Today, Grönland Records are proud to announce the reissue of one of ambient music's hidden gems, by two unique musicians whose paths originally crossed in the early-eighties while working on Sylvian’s debut solo album, 'Brilliant Trees'. In 1986, David Sylvian - of British Art-Pop band Japan - and Holger Czukay - founding member and bassist in legendary German Kosmiche band Can - were ostensibly reconvening for Sylvian to record a vocal for Czukay's forthcoming album 'Rome Remains Rome’. But on arriving at Czukay's studio - a former cinema in Köln - Sylvian began playing freeform, improvising on readily available instruments located in the studio itself. No sooner had Sylvian, on whatever instrument he’d been applying himself, start to structurally define/refine the performance than Czukay would stop the recording he’d surreptitiously been making. Czukay had attempted to capture the process of creation without a musician's inclination for refinement. This process, drawn out over two nights, gave birth to the duo's first, full-fledged, collaboration, 'Plight and Premonition'.

Having been out of print for some time, the parallels between the original release 30 years ago and now are quite stark; at the time of recording the Cold War was lifting - but still very real - after a bitter winter. The names "Plight & Premonition" and "Flux & Mutability" themselves hint at an instability. In Sylvian's words, the sessions seemed to touch on something: “A form of music that seemed to have been created while we were absent by instruments abandoned to the earth and the woods, sounded by the coarse winter elements.”

(text by the man, Sylvian, himself, via fb)

― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), 25. huhtikuuta 2018 21:27

gigi masin can do no wrong. nice one-two there

63. Boris: Flood (2000)
267 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/z8Szs1k.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZDstZ1-EAI

It's a shame you guys didn't get Boris doing a 40 min of Flood like we got in Glasgow last year. That was mindblowing.

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, July 2, 2008 2:54 AM

Flood is monumental...a lot to digest (hence the Boringus tag) but the patience is definitely rewarded.

― demons a. real (Drugs A. Money), Thursday, August 12, 2010 5:13

In spite of all the hype, Boris seems like the real obvious answer here - esp on the dreamy, epic stuff like Flood.

― Bob Standard, Saturday, September 8, 2007 1:36 AM

Yes, from what I have read they were an Earth tribute band but quickly evolved into sth... uh... original.

Oh yeah? I always figured their name was a ref. to the Melvins track.

Feedbacker is indeed awesome. Have you heard Flood? Similar strcture but with less harshness.

― original bgm, Friday, February 11, 2005 4:53 PM

Probably the only album to place both in this poll and the ILX all-time metal albums poll?

Love Flux + Mutability, I didn't know they'd re-released it on CD with Plight and Premonition added! That is a must-buy.

62. Loscil: Plume (2006)
268 points, 3 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/3NqG7Xl.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxIlV2iOCyc

i only have Plume and i love it, i have no idea why i haven't gotten hold of more. it reminds me of other acts but he nails the sound just right.

― footballer of the future (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, October 16, 2013 1:50

Plume was my entry point and always my favorite. Listened to some Loscil this morning and read a few old Pitchfork reviews. I guess Plume isn't generally thought of as a high point, but whatever.

― beard papa, Wednesday, June 12, 2019 8:07 PM

Adding variation to loscil's loop-based work is the inclusion of real-time instruments alongside layers of computer generated pulse. By adding vibes, Ebow guitar and Rhodes piano to his pieces, loscil augments his mechanically intricate rhythmic cycles with an interesting spontaneity. Interleaving patterns comprised of odd clicks and bumps each spin at different ratios synchronized to a master clock. The virtual wheels and gears of loscil's motif engine crank out a heady-gentle machine music.

[/url=https://www.starsend.org/Plume.html]Chuck van Syl, Star's End[/url]

Another perhaps controversial album coming up next...

man I just don't get Loscil, I guess I need to try again

bottom-of-the-barrel generic Kranky act to my ears

yeah I'm kinda mad too

Can't quite recall what Loscil sounds like, although it certainly wasn't unpleasant…

some bvdub comin' up next I guess

Huh! Didn't think Boris would make it, but I'm pretty out of the ILM loop nowadays.

so far pretty much all the results are a long way from anything I would call ambient, but hey, lots of new stuff to check out

61. Oval: 94diskont. (1995)
273 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/n8A1WTG.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn8mxzDYdbE

Autechre were heroes to most
But they never meant shit to me you see

OVAL LUV 4-EVAH!!

(mothafuck Autechre and John Wayne)

― Keiko, Tuesday, May 21, 2002 3:00 AM

'Diskont' is still my fave - was there anything that sounded like Oval before Oval?

I think they're one of the greatest 'groups' of the last 20 years.

― Andrew L, Wednesday, May 22, 2002 3:00 AM

'94 diskont' and 'Systemisch' are the two I've played most. Beautiful shifting melodies adrift amidst all that digital debris.

― stevo, Wednesday, May 22, 2002 3:00 AM

voted for 94diskont cos i've listened to that and 'systemisch' a lot lately and they're both great, they're ever so vaguely related in my mind to the later mozart piano concertos in their formal invention and ~usually~ good natured but unsaccharine temperament

― nakhchivan, Friday, May 7, 2010 10:11 PM

i like the "is this really ambient tho" stuff placing in the lower reaches of the poll. Puts a finer point on it as we get to the top, I'm assuming

the Sylvian/Czukay album is great

lol Boris?

60. Alio Die: Aura seminalis (2008)
280 points, 4 votes, 1 first place vote.

https://i.imgur.com/fUgCzHJ.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBBVt0opjtE

i had never heard of Alio Die and am totally smitten with Aura Seminalis, whoever nominated it I kiss you.

― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Friday, June 14, 2019 11:19 PM

I played F. Hazel's rec, Alio Die's 'Aura Seminalis' tonight. Blissful. So good. (reminded me of Polish neo-classical/ambient dude Jacaszek, check him out).

― Uptown VONC (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, June 18, 2019 12:44 AM

The ancient melodies and styles of early music, it turns out, lend themselves particularly well to ambient, and Alio Die clearly knows exactly what to do with them, combining ambient electronic textures with field recordings and early music samples in beautifully textured looped pieces. The effect on the listener is very interesting. I’ve got a lot of early music in my collection, and as I noted in my previous post, one of the pleasures of this kind of music is being transported back in one’s imagination several hundred years to a very different, more natural world. Since a lot of early music is liturgical, that means visions of monastic courtyards and gardens, which is about as tranquil a vision as one can have. Combined and looped with ethereal ambient sound art, that effect is only enhanced to a hypnotically soporific level. And there are hardly any ambient musicians who can spirit me off to my spacy happy place like Alio Die does on these recordings.

Make Your Own Taste

That was not the Alio Die album I voted for, but it's still gorgeous, and I'm glad he made it to the top 100. Dude has put out something like a hundred albums, and every one of them that I've heard has been at least good if not great.

all I have is a 7" EP on the Drone label, excited to check these out and I had no idea there was so much

i gave diskont94 a bunch of points. i wouldn't call most of the oval i've heard "ambient", but to me diskont is very very ambient. the track could be 10x as long and it would have a similar effect

59. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Async (2017)
280 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/AZvC2L3.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xhmVueRtLs

Got the new one, and currently on a second listen.

In short, it's fab. Yes, it's ambient/glitch (which may disappoint a few upthread) but with a much less austere tonal palette than the collaboration records (where he was basically adding piano ornaments to other people's dronescapes, not that there's anything wrong with that). It's low key but colourful - lurrrrvely Prophet 5 chords on Zure, for example. And the odd melodic flourish that'll make you well up a bit in places too.

Will see how it plays out over subsequent listens, but I'm loving it so far. What with the Revenant soundtrack being his best OST in years, his post-illness return to work on such stellar form is an inspiring thing to behold.

― bamboohouses, Monday, April 3, 2017 8:24 PM

i really like the combination of introspective, lyrical piano pieces with sound art tracks on async.

― Alex in Spree-Athen (alex in mainhattan), Monday, May 8, 2017 1:15 PM

while aysnc just breezed by like a cool autumn day on the first few listens, I've recently returned to it and found it to be a stunner. I thought his previous solo album Out of Noise was kind of boring but I really like the "14 flavors of ambient" thing going on here, not to mention how the title/theme "async" manifests itself in several ways. I wish it was a bit more melodic but only because the actual melodies on here are absolutely gorgeous. I like the plinky plonky stuff. Reminds me a bit of The Ship by Eno, not in any thematic way but rather how the openness and sense of space lets you hear the compositions in a number of ways.

― frogbs, Tuesday, May 8, 2018 6:01 PM

huh I considered voting for one of his albums with Alva Noto (which I like a lot) but this went right by me

(as in, I missed it in the noms list and have never heard it)

The next entry will be by far the longest album in the top 100.

Ah, I was afraid it wouldn't make it.

58. Max Richter: Sleep (2015)
283 points, 4 votes, 1 first place vote.

https://i.imgur.com/ru48ycw.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lauw7hvzDkE

Have been listening to the eight and a half hour version the last few nights (and days). Epic and absolutely beautiful.

― groovypanda, Wednesday, September 16, 2015 11:22 AM

anyway i decided to sleep to 'sleep' last night and this morning i feel very refreshed!

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, October 26, 2015 1:49 AM

it's very weird to be able to say: yeah, i guess this piece of music is fit for purpose

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, October 26, 2015 1:49 AM

i have fell asleep to this several times. i have absolutely nothing to say about it except that the first 20 minutes is pretty good. i'm assuming he put a lot of effort into that first track because it's the only one a lot of people will hear

― Karl Malone, Tuesday, November 10, 2015 11:47 PM

i like music for sleep now and again but i would never put on something i knew was 8 hours long. i've been listening while i'm awake to make the world feel more soporific.

i really like the religious feel of some of it.

― doing my Objectives, handling some intense stuff (LocalGarda), Tuesday, November 10, 2015 11:52 PM

Lol, that's not what I had in mind at all.

I like Sleep just fine, but there's something about Richter's prettified melodicism that rubs me the wrong way, it feels too neat and petit bourgeois. Though admittedly it fits the functionality of Sleep much better than his other albums, which I haven't liked that much.

Anyway, my "8 hour long soundtrack to sleeping" album vote went to Robert Rich's Somnium, which I think is better, and more ambient too, obviously.

Fully agreed, re: Richter's melodic, faux-classical vacuity.

I hope Somnium (which I voted for) will appear further along.

I did the sleep concert in NYC. I love Richter but I usually sleep to silence so it was not an easy night of sleep for me!

Yay Alio Die! I think he's said that he considers Aura Seminalis to be his finest work, but don't quote me on that. As noted, dude has like 50+ albums and it's all amazing stuff. Plus his label Hic Sunt Leones releases lots of cool other stuff.

56. (tie) Chapterhouse / Global Communication: Blood Music - Pentamerous Metamorphosis ()
285 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/wAQueTv.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpj6vyxS4kw

yeah, global comm certainly had a deft touch with the remix. i've not heard that lamb remix though. 'pentamerous metamorphosis' was quite special. talk about alchemy - the worst record chapterhouse released (and there was some competition for that title) molded into one of the best global comm titles.

― jon dale, Sunday, October 24, 2004 6:47 AM

Pentamerous Metamorphosis is still my favourite thing, though. Footsteps or tick tocks, take your pick.

― Karen D. Tregaskin, Wednesday, August 18, 2010 12:43 PM

Pentamerous Metamorphosis really is something special. That headspace where the swoony end of drone/shoegaze bleeds into ambient techno, with or without guitars, will always be one of my absolute sweetest spots. (I rediscovered it and started caning it right around the time I started doing a lot of hiking in Cornwall, so it will really forever be associated with striding along bits of the coastal path towards some ruined wheal or other.)

― I'd rather be the swallow than a dick (Branwell Bell), Friday, January 24, 2014 11:44 AM

Forgot how much I loved 'Pentamerous Metamorphosis' by Global Communication back in the day. Haven't really busted it out in well over a decade, probably because '76:14' is always the go-to. This record is a lost classic of the genre and I'm surprised it doesn't come up in conversation more. I've never even listened to the original Chapterhouse material and inspiration from which it is born.

― yesca, Sunday, March 12, 2017 6:33 PM

Sorry, the year for that one is 1993, obviously.

xp re: Hic Sunt Leones - oh yeah I have an Andrew Chalk CD on that label!

and whoa I need this:

https://www.discogs.com/Francesco-Paladino-With-Alio-Die-In-Gowan-Ring-Jack-Or-Jive-Nocturnal-Sessions/release/1111211

I love that Paladino has an album with Alio Die called "Angel's Fly Souvenir"

f. hazel if you haven't ever heard the albums he did under the F.P And The Doubling Riders name, I love them very much

56. (tie) Tetsu Inoue: World Receiver (1996)
285 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/iAa4qmX.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grlYRK1aSus

Tetsuo Inoue's "World Receiver" is ideal for drifting off to (if I had a stereo in my bedroom); the last track, barely there, repeats over and over and over and over....

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, June 28, 2001 3:00 AM

I can't imagine "World Receiver" being made without "Chillout" as an example. Music and field recordings together like transparencies. But if "Chill Out" is a drive across America, "World Receiver" is a train under the sea, running from freight depots in Sweden to caves under the Brazilian jungle, to a dirty bit of sidewalk in Hong Kong, and you're sort of deliberately letting your attention wander from thing to thing.

― Tracer hand, Friday, January 25, 2002 3:00 AM

Surprised Biosphere's substrata did not get mentioned as a "field recordings mixed with music" example. Also Cirque.
Tetsu Inoue's World Receiver is a great call. I love these kinds of albums, they do funny things to my brain.

― brimstead, Sunday, March 2, 2014 9:12 PM

https://phonaut.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/where-is-tetsu-inoue

I feel like Loscil's output walks a fine line between ambient and dub, but certainly falls into ambient a lot of the time.

For those who don't get it, I totally understand. But as someone who lived in Cascadia and has spent a lot of time in the Pacific Northwest, his music evokes the area better than many others i can think of...

hmm I've lived in Oregon for almost 30 years, so I really will give it another shot :)

That Pete Namlook died too young and Tetsu Inoue has disappeared off the face of the earth is obviously sad as it is, but the unfortunate side effect to that is that the Inoue/Namlook albums and his solo material for FAX are in a limbo, where no one can reissue them because Inoue can't be found to give permission to that. (Some other FAX artists have had their rights revert back to them, so in the last 2 or 3 years people like Biosphere and Klaus Schulze have reissued stuff they made for the label.) World Receiver is a great album obviously, but I do rate Inoue's FAX output even higher, and I feel the current state of its legacy has made those albums unnecessarily obscure, so they probably can't reach listeners who might otherwise enjoy them a lot.

I gotta go to sleep early tonight, so that's it for now. I'll try to roll out more albums tomorrow than I did today.

that is super interesting! i'd not heard some of the Namlook/Inoue stuff, really love it.

sleeve, here's a cut from Endless Falls that I love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdAgPn-HYao

(he's from Vancouver, BC, btw)

Btw, I hadn't heard of Loscil before, but I have enjoyed the two albums we've seen so far a lot, definitely one of the several nice discoveries I've made through this poll.

The pace is really good, Tuomas... you could even go a bit slower to let conversation about each placing go on a bit.

And I'll def. check out the Doubling Riders stuff, sleeve!

The pace is really good, Tuomas... you could even go a bit slower to let conversation about each placing go on a bit.

Yeah, I agree, but unfortunately due to work I can mostly post the entries within a 2 or 3 hour time window in the evening, Finnish time. But my summer vacation starts next week, so I can do the top 20 or 30 on Monday/Tuesday in a more relaxed pace. (I'll be taking a break from this on Saturday and Sunday because there's the local Pride plus my birthday party.)