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

Funny, since I think I have a more liberal sense of what counts as ambient than others here (based on earlier discussions) - but as much as I love Loscil I did not vote for any of his records in this poll. I've always thought of him as a more chilled-out electronica artist. Perhaps I'm forever colored by Triple Point, which was more of a minimal techno record.

mmm this Richard Skelton is hitting the spot, thanks everyone

also holy fuck @ "you are my everlovin/celestial power" now I get why ppl are so into Henry Flynt (I took a couple of false steps)

David Behrman is also heartrendingly, achingly beautiful, def a Discreet Music vibe but with a side of No Pussyfooting and a chaser of electro-bleeps

so grateful to discover all this stuff

55. Fennesz: Endless Summer (2001)
286 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/Pu2jh6o.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skygudx8Rrs

this is inspired by a comment someone made in the autechre thread regarding a friend who liked to listen to autechre during sex. i got to thinking about experimental laptop/abstract idm stuff and i realized that some of that music is actually quite sexy. case in point, fennesz' endless summer. it has the mbv-esque endorphin slur that makes it incredibly well-suited for intimate listening. i would recommend it. so, *rfi* SEXY laptop/glitch/abstract/minimal techno. otherwise tell stories about abstract music that you like to listen to when you're getting it on (and be honest).

― fields of salmon, 18. huhtikuuta 2002 3:00

head goes "Live in Japan" but heart goes "Endless Summer". I hadn't heard it, only read about it, before I bought it. I found it in a record shop in Barcelona, we came back to the apartment from a pre Sonar event a little wasted and I put it on. Amazing stuff. Still think about it being one of the best music discoveries of my lifetime.

― mmmm, 5. toukokuuta 2012 0:23

and i don't think of the beach boys when the phrase "endless summer" is mentioned... i'm instead reminded of a CLASSIC soundtrack to the 1966 bruce brown film by THE SANDELLS. I'd argue that the Fennesz title track "endless summer" borrows fairly heavily from the 2-chord strum of the sandell's "theme from endless summer"...

please bear in mind that i would never attempt to judge the quality of fennesz's music based on the cover art or title eitha... reductionists! listen to the music!

― gygax!, 6. marraskuuta 2002 0:49

Black Sea >>>>> Endless Summer

Hope it places

The other Behrmann I absolutely love is Leapday Night. I can't think why I didn't nominate it. Fucking weird old cover!

https://img.discogs.com/mJ_8dtJceY6SOaVtLbXv_0ErNH0=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-978862-1471213618-3295.png.jpg

Wow, what the heck are those arrow things? 😀

No idea! I've always had a 'blind pilot plays inexplicable boardgame before leaping to his doom' vibe from it.

Interspecies Smalltalk is great (closer to Terry Riley than a lot of his stuff but no worse for it):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDC5AoBa7uM

54. Thomas Köner: Permafrost (1993)
289 points, 7 votes.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a7BU_kI7xQ

my favorite three are 'teimo', 'permafrost' and 'aubrite' (his 2nd, 3rd & 4th records), rolling quarter-speed gongs rolling into occasional layered fields, they all sit side by side really well, and any of them are a good starting point. I've played those records at night quite consistently over the last 5 years...

― jl (Jon L), 4. elokuuta 2003 7:59 Bookmark

thomas koner is good, perhaps a little bit simplistic and 'awed' in that biosphere way? very strong sense of place and emotional heft, certainly not nearly as agonized or ambiguous as 'on land'

― no love deb weep (nakhchivan), 16. helmikuuta 2015 21:15

the 3 disc thomas koner reissue that came out this year is so sick. coming from more of an industrial/techno background than much of the stuff in this thread, but it's about as dark and heavy as music gets

― lao gan ma (r1o natsume), 20. syyskuuta 2010 14:54

I love Endless Summer so much. god damn. one of the greatest things ever. 55 seems awfully low though

I, too, prefer Black Sea.

53. Autechre: Garbage (1995)
294 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/9bHwLRs.jpg

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

Easily my favorite EP and I'd argue the first unimpeachably awesome Ae release. Love the cavernous ambient they're doing here, quality is solid to all-time.

― Ou sont les cankles d'antan? (Leee), 1. marraskuuta 2010 5:53

Yeah, this is probably their best EP. Autechre really should have made an entire album like this, too bad they never did.

― NoTimeBeforeTime, 1. marraskuuta 2010 14:03

i think some of their most interesting spaces are on this one. not really sure how to describe what i mean. i just get a feeling that there's a sort of an environment in each track that inhabits a defined physical space. or something...

― everything you do is a meatloaf (another al3x), 1. marraskuuta 2010 20:21

Love Garbage, when I was putting my ballot together, its ambient vibe just hit me in the right spot: mournful and beautiful.

― cichleee suite (Leee), 29. syyskuuta 2014 4:47

when hurricane charlie/frances came through my town and we were without power for a few days i had a burned copy of garbage ep and a portable cd player, and now associate that track with intense humidity and candlelight

― clouds, 3. lokakuuta 2014 21:31

really enjoying this rollout. I decided against submitting a ballot on the basis I didn't know enough True and Pure ambient but looks like that was silly of me

hell yeah Permafrost

52. Iasos: Inter-Dimensional Music (1975)
294 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/2UJ0IJO.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDD29hW5Pj4

I wonder if Iasos was an influence on the mid-90s atmospheric jungle scene. If you took an LTJ Bukem Drum 'n' Bass record, then took out all the drums, and the bass, you'd be left with an Iasos record.

― 3×5, 16. helmikuuta 2015 21:51

oh yeah, iasos is fantastic. youtube has a 1979 documentary he did where he's a total sausalito space-hippie talking about third eyes and multidimensionality and stuff.

― lime pickle (get bent), 2. joulukuuta 2013 6:08

Inter-Dimensional Music Through Iasos from 1975 is mostly flute-heavy drifty modal jazz, with a few 5 or 6 minute all electronic tracks that foreshadow real space music, but I just discovered the followup Angelic Music originally released on cassette in 1978, and I can understand his reputation now, this is distinct from most of the analog synth / space music of the 70's & looks forward to the good aspects of later New Age like Michael Stearns & Steve Roach. It follows on from side 2 of Vangelis' L'Apocalypse Des Animaux, but with two 30 minute long tracks that give you time to go a little deeper. This is exactly what I remember almost any given episode of Music From The Hearts of Space sounding like in the 80's -- back then I was on the fence about the whole genre but it's catching up to me now with a vengeance

― Milton Parker, 8. tammikuuta 2009 22:01

iasos is still around and lives in marin i guess. i think he does more video-art type stuff nowadays, but he still produces crazy stuff like this

a friend of mine booked him to play in sf but ended up backing out when he claimed it'd take 2 days of prep to properly set up the show

― a lagoon par la mer (psychgawsple), 30. maaliskuuta 2011 21:47

That is a spectacular album there!

love the flutes, the nimbus-y pads, the lovely chords, the track that’s just the sound of a jacuzzi or boiling water or whatever...

wish I had picked that up when the original LP was a dollar bin staple, but hey I got the expanded Numero CD so it's all good

51. Harold Budd: The White Arcades (1988)
307 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/C5CrHLO.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1SRZpbiDk

I am quite enjoying The White Arcades of late. Of the records I know, it seems his most synthed out. Which despite his lovely piano playing is not an altogether bad thing.

― Naive Teen Idol, Monday, July 18, 2011 6:42 PM

On Lovely Thunder (1986) and The White Arcades (1988) Budd goes it mostly alone and applies some of the production lessons he learned from Eno with great finesse. On some tracks he also subtly expands is sonic palette. The 20-minute "Gypsy Violin" features long, sad phases on said instrument, bedded gently on a luminous drone that slowly morphs, rises and falls. On "Child With A Lion" and "Totem Of The Red Sleeved Warrior" he also puts the piano aside for playful synth improvisations on the former and a deeply haunting ghost choir on the latter.

Mike Watson, Ambient Music Guide

50. Brian Eno: Music for Films (1978)
307 points, 6 votes.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu0PcfX0nIM

But the melancholy Sparrowfall (3x) from Music for Films can put me to tears - what a beaut!

― Roger in Mokum (Roger T), Sunday, March 7, 2004 6:06 PM

I love the "Music for Films" album. Quite short, composed, impressionist pieces. I especially like the fact that those films which are described in the booklet do not exist. That makes the whole project even more charming.

― Ich bin kein Berliner (alex in mainhattan), Saturday, August 25, 2018 3:47 PM

Frankly, the best is probably On Land, but at this moment Music For Films, if only b/c the CS-80 textures are sublime and otherworldly.

― Naive Teen Idol, Sunday, January 6, 2008 8:11 AM

having said that music for films is fucking great, probably underrated? and the one i have the deepest emotional connection with

― umsworth (emsworth), Thursday, April 19, 2018 2:25 AM

Never heard this album before, to me it sounds mostly like a bunch of flimsy and thin vignettes. Not much to delve into.

harsh but fair, I like this but did not vote for it

sleeve, so glad you're enjoying the Skelton, Flynt, and Behrman!!

For the former, it really is worth looking into his other records...particularly A Broken Consort's "The Shape Leaves," which is a lot more intense and LOUD than "Landings."

It certainly isn't "Everlovin'/Celestial Power," but if you like the Flynt and haven't heard the "Back Porch Hillbilly Blues" records, they're sort of...I don't know how to describe them, really, but there are some parts that verge on "country minimalism" and some parts that are quite "country acid trip and not that CCR bullshit," more "free" so to speak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQEio9qEMCw

49. Jon Hassell / Brian Eno Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics (1980)
309 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/YbYGFo8.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFig-OiIwDo

Of the Hassell records proper I know, Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics basically sets the table for the rest of the decade: African and Latin percussion (some electronic), richly-textured synthesizer pads and sometimes ambient sounds, with Hassell's trumpet modally surveying the landscape, itself electronically altered.

― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Thursday, August 12, 2004 2:10 AM

A lot of times (at least on Fourth World Vol.1, which is the one I know best), Hassell sounds like a very abstract image of "eastern"-soundingness. I hesitate to say anything like this since it's so obvious, but it does kind of interest me. I don't know enough to say, but it doesn't seem like he's actually consistently following any modes here, but there are all of these little gestures that evoke eastern, modal, microtonal music. The way one thing follows another, in the long run anyway, doesn't sound to me like anything you'd hear in, say, Indian (not that I know much about it) or Arabic music; but momentarily it does. Sort of an organic sampling effect. At least, I think that's what's going on. Also, at times his horn sounds more like what would be done with a voice than with an instrument. Without question, this music is good preparation for hearing non-western music (not that that is it's only value--I do like it as it is).

(He has studied Indian classical music though hasn't he?)

― Rockist_Scientist (rockist_scientist), Friday, August 13, 2004 4:04 AM

The first time I heard Hassell was at 3am, 1985, on the radio... the previous show had just ended, the next DJ put on 'Charm' without any intro. Imagine listening to that piece for the first time without knowing how long it was going to last, always seemingly winding down and imperceptibly fading out, but then out of nowhere spiraling right back at you full force. I just sat there staring at the speakers for half an hour.

DJ never back announced the piece, either, I didn't find it again for another year...

― (Jon L), Friday, August 13, 2004 5:34 AM

And "Fourth World means: get yourself a world vocabulary; use it with subtlety and a keen sense of surprise; follow pleasure; trust your intuition (after you're sure you know what that is)."

I want to speak in parentheses...

― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Saturday, August 14, 2004 8:19 AM

Never heard this album before either, in fact I've never had much interest in Eno and other older stuff like that. It does sound much better than the previous entry, though maybe the rhythms and especially the trumpet playing are too attention-grabbing for this to count as ambient?

these ritualistic tribal drums are mostly what makes it so good though.

Is there a Spotify playlist for the top 100?

I don't have a Spotify account, but obviously anyone else is free to compile such a list.

48. Tim Hecker: Ravedeath, 1972 (2011)
322 points, 5 votes, 1 first place vote.

https://i.imgur.com/vKCZ5zY.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NkZVWXK5jM

'Ravedeath, 1972' is scratching me right where I itch. It somehow feels Hecker set out to make this his quintessential record. All his previous albums sort of flow into this one, combining his different approaches to sound/noise and melody. It's a very dark and threatening album (which is how I like Tim Hecker best).

― La descente infernale (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, February 18, 2011 3:38 PM

the samples sound like they're in a similar vein to the "decaying music" of william basinski and the new version of the sinking of the titanic (an artist and a longform piece that i love).

― Daniel, Esq., Friday, February 18, 2011 3:45 PM

I didn't know of Hecker until last year, and Ravedeath/Pianos are pretty much always on in my house at the moment. Lovely, lovely music. Am working backwards through his other albums now.

― Not only dermatologists hate her (James Morrison), Tuesday, January 3, 2012 1:28

It's almost cliche, but many times of fallen asleep listening to Tim Hecker. Which is funny - sort of - because I'm pretty sure the last review I read of Ravedeath described it as "drone you can't sleep through" or something of that sort. Fucking nonsense. I'd play this to a kindergarten class.

― brodieopolari.... oh fuck it (kelpolaris), Saturday, May 21, 2011 7:38 AM

xx. The Dead Texan: The Dead Texan (2004)
326 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/D8TBik4.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zebxXliFtg

I have been listening to The Dead Texan album all day and have not been able to do any work at all because it makes me think of wistful moments and fallen down broken glass towers and so I've been sketching all day instead. I love an album that's good to draw to.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Thursday, February 10, 2005 3:01 AM

I saw Dead Texan on Tuesday, quite by accident, as they were supporting Final Fantasy. What incredible sounding music! I bought the CD/DVD afterwards, I was so impressed.

― Paranoid Spice (kate), Wednesday, October 26, 2005 10:45 AM

I know even less about the origins of this record, other than it is a side-project from Adam Wiltzie of Stars Of The Lid. Again I got this on a Kranky splurge. It has more of a classically ambient sound than the bulk of SOTL’s dronelike material, it’s very beautiful and restive, a little like Eno or Budd in places. Actually it’s probably a lot more like how Stars sound nowadays.

― disastrous sixth series (MaresNest), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 2:03

finally listened to the dead texan album - very simple 2 chord progressions with lovely deep bass floating in and out and understated melodies on top. definitely a keeper for me

― nonightsweats, Sunday, July 4, 2010 1:13 AM

Sorry, the placing for that is 47, obviously.

I’m surprised that 1194 placed so low, but I guess my ballot is refracted through a late 90s rave prism, which these results mostly aren’t so far.

I feel that “ambient house” as a subgenre/concept is critically at an all time low vs other strains of ambient.

46. A Winged Victory for the Sullen: Atomos ()
327 points, 6 votes.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXTlFx5z9_c

The new Winged Victory for the Sullen record, 'Atomos', is very, very beautiful. On my first listen but it's very pastoral and sounds like a soundtrack to a non-existent film. At times it's very reminiscent of Johannssons Virtulegu Forsetar, strings wise.

― definite classic, predicting a solid 8/10 from the p-fork boys (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, October 7, 2014 3:08 PM

I don't see Winged Victory as 'new age' myself; I find it a broody, emotional moving piece of work albeit in a very subtle, subdued way. Perhaps it's also because I've been a long time SotL fan and for some reason have grown to respect Adam Wiltzie but also Dustin O'Halloran for their compositional qualities to not take it for generic new-age music (as my personal definition of 'new-age' tends to be: generic soothing music, which I quite frankly can't stand).

But it's a very fine, personal line.

― definite classic, predicting a solid 8/10 from the p-fork boys (Le Bateau Ivre), Saturday, October 11, 2014 1:34 AM

Yes yes I am not sure I love ATOMOS but it is amazingly well written and executed, holy cow. I've listened to it ten times now and it's still surprising me with how well paced it is, subtle expansions from track to track, really impressed.

― fgti, Tuesday, November 18, 2014 5:21 AM

i've been listening to atomos quite a bit since it came out and i've been really enjoying it. the emotional space it accesses is a bit more ambiguous than the debut which could be a bit like a nonstop cascade of melancholy. i was also surprised to hear far less piano than on the debut, since that tends to be dustin o'halloran's thing, but the arrangements here are quite lovely. that it's not as melodically driven makes some of the subtle shifts in sonics seem much more profound and moving.

― dyl, Sunday, November 2, 2014 1:45 AM

Sorry again, the release year for that one is 2014.

someday I'm probably gonna get really into SOTL and related stuff but that day has not come yet

Two Adam Wiltzie projects in a row. Speaking of Dead Texan, the various Christina Vantzou solo albums are really lovely (and in fact sound very similar to A Winged Victory for the Sullen).

IDK what it is about A Winged Victory, or at least "ATOMOS," that makes it much more digestible to me than any mainline SOTL that I've heard. Maybe because it's just one disc?

I feel that “ambient house” as a subgenre/concept is critically at an all time low vs other strains of ambient.

Yeah I guess the exoticism is out of fashion these days. I bet Chill Out and Ultraworld place high though.

Dead Texan being canonized here is fantastic, it deserves a much bigger audience (goes for more here, but this one especially).

Great run.

I feel that “ambient house” as a subgenre/concept is critically at an all time low vs other strains of ambient.
How quickly things shift, only a couple of years ago stuff like Aquarian Foundation was getting quite a bit of attention and hype as recalling old ambient house.

Well, four or five years ago. But there was a moment where revival would have been embraced.

Think I might have watched The Dead Texan doing a live soundtrack thing to Waking Life?

45. Slowdive: Pygmalion (1995)
332 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/1spFFpC.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b07n8GST2LQ

Someone sent me a tape of Pygmalion three years ago, and I really liked it. The whole album is very good, but the first song, "Rutti", is mindbogglingly beautiful and an absolute masterpiece.

The experience of listening to that song for the first time is one I remember quite fondly: I was sitting in an electronic music studio in an empty mansion, late at night and in the middle of winter, and everything was dead quiet. I had just gotten the tape, and to be honest, wasn't expecting much (actually, what I was expecting turned out to be rather like Slowdive's earlier albums, which I heard soon after and didn't much like). So I was completely caught by surprise by what I heard: beautiful chords, hanging luminously in the air in the way that I thought that only Alan Sparhawk of Low could do. It was rich, understated, and utterly gorgeous. I won't bore you all with a play-by-play of my reaction to each new element in the song, but suffice it to say that I was continually amazed, especially when the shaker entered, about three or four minutes into the song, bringing the whole thing into time in the best possible way.

Whew!

― Phil, Wednesday, May 16, 2001 3:00 AM

Have to agree about Pygmalian, an absolute blinder, and just so typical of Alan McGee to drop an act just when they make a masterpiece! Their other albums I can take or leave to be honest, but I find them reasonably pleasant to fall to sleep to (and that's actually a compliment.)

― Chewshabadoo, Thursday, May 17, 2001 3:00 AM

classic for 'pygmalion' alone -- quintessential acid-comedown-during-the-sunrise music!

― geeta (geeta), Thursday, December 11, 2003 3:00 AM

I'm not sure about all this Mojave 3 business, but Souvlaki and Pygmalion (in that order) are utterly fantastic. Like being absolutely loaded with painkillers and wine and maybe some ecstasy (but you could never appreciate the music fully if you were actually on them all (at once, anyway)).

― Kevin Allen, Tuesday, May 16, 2006 6:33 AM Bookmark

Listening to this has left me completely baffled, as it sounds like... some kind of artsy folk rock? How does it fit into an ambient poll?

yeah it's basically adventurous shoegaze imo

sorry Tuomas I'm gonna have to write up a ticket here ;)

ya weirdos

44. Fripp & Eno: (No Pussyfooting) (1973)
337 points, 8 votes.

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

(No Youtube for this one, sorry. It seems to have been completely blocked from YT, with no music from it available.)

I have been listening (not 24 hrs a day, mind you) to Fripp & Eno's "No Pussyfooting" and "Evening Star" for 20+ years now, and I still like them. A lot of the "progressive" things I was listening to at that time have not held up very well for me, but these recordings have. A friend once described them as too cerebral, but I find much of the material on these two albums quite moving. Eno's background electronic grid is not terribly exciting, but it serves its perhaps as a background for Fripp's playing. I like other Fripp things here and there, but I think this is some of the best work he's ever done on guitar. Anyone else agree? Disagree?

― DeRayMi, Monday, November 5, 2001 3:00

'no pussyfooting' sounds incredible backwards. wow.

― milton parker (Jon L), Saturday, October 22, 2005 7:54 AM

i also used to think "swastika girls" >>> "the heavenly music corperation" -- maybe i was just really into eno's vcs 3 noises in the background, but once i started really getting into fripp's guitar, and listening for the changes, and how he interacts with the tapes i think i've changed my mind, it's all about this big swirling dark build that resolves with those low sweeping notes at the end and somehow morphs into this really hopeful music, i dunno like a trip that starts out bad and uncontrollable but once you reign it in you start to chill and have the best time

i think "swastika girls" reveals its beauty more immediately so maybe that's why i connected it with it first. the recurring lead is so so gorgeous

― 不合作的方式 (r1o natsume), Tuesday, July 27, 2010 7:19 PM

I made a tape of Fripp & Eno's "No Pussyfooting" for the Palestinian who taught me about Arabic music, but he said he had to turn it off. Weird things started happening around his shop. He seemed to think that it was music that stirred up the jinn. I think he was being serious (though he sometimes said things just to pull my leg).

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, February 23, 2003 8:07 PM