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

37. Tim Hecker: Harmony in Ultraviolet (2006)
364 points, 8 votes.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qse2KT65ZcE

Nothing beats Harmony In Ultraviolet for me.

― Evan, Tuesday, August 26, 2014 9:18 PM

Tim Hecker's Harmony In Ultraviolet was pretty high up my 2006 favourites. Superbly melding drone, discordant noise, and ambient atmospherics against a lush electronica, this was a big leap on from previous Hecker outings. Listen loud, listen passive.

― Mister Craig, Wednesday, May 2, 2007 11:50 PM

Harmony in Ultraviolet was always my favorite and I could never fall in love with his other albums in the same way however much I wanted to.

― Evan, Tuesday, April 12, 2016 6:47 PM

I def don't "get" Hecker at all

I finally connected with Hecker when I decided he was a noise artist whose records need to be played at extremely high volume, rather than an ambient artist with interesting textures.

The run from Harmony in Ultraviolet to Virgins is pretty outstanding.

I finally connected with Hecker when I decided he was a noise artist whose records need to be played at extremely high volume, rather than an ambient artist with interesting textures.

Yeah, I went to a “sound bath” event one time (they have these all the time here now?) and was sort of underwhelmed. But I went to an incredibly loud Tim Hecker show and it was just perfect, full brain rinse.

36. Tangerine Dream: Zeit (1972)
367 points, 7 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/6X7bRzb.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjvF36gzLF8

I sort of got the same feeling listening to this that I do when watching "2001: A Space Odyssey" in that it was just made in a different era and that this kind of music could never really be done today. Newer droney bands like GYBE usually have a lot more going on than this. Was a different time back then when it was okay to just space out in front of your record player for an hour+ at a time.

― frogbs, Wednesday, June 15, 2011 12:01 AM

I wonder if it's possible to make a record that sounds like this without smoking lots and lots of weed.

― Bass Solo (Matt #2), Wednesday, June 15, 2011 12:12 AM

Listening to this album on headphones all the way through in the dark feels like going on a journey into outer space. Top that.

― Garyln (La Lechera), Wednesday, June 15, 2011 1:34 AM

Classic classic classic, an album to lose yourself in, deep dark immersive droney goodness.

― phuturephase, Sunday, January 15, 2012 4:23 PM

they really pull off this marvelous sense of fluctuating otherness

like, you're not enveloped, you're not having a cinematic experience, you're not JUST 'going on a journey', the record doesn't take over your space and you don't always enter into its space, but you intermittently seem to encounter it as a thing in its own right

― j., Saturday, May 2, 2015 6:21 AM Bookmark

To me, Zeit feels like the first "proper" ambient album, aesthetically, moreso than any of their later, more electronic records. I mean, both in form and function it isn't really different from most droney space/dark ambient that's been released 20 or 40 years later.

And it still sounds awesome 47 years after it's release.

agree, great one

35. The Caretaker: An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2011)
373 points, 7 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/Fi52yfi.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL998ajnjN4

Oh man oh man oh mannnn....

Just got back from a long city hall meeting for work... I was ballroom-minded all night, art-deco twinkling in the chandeliers, grainy landscape photos on the wall, cuddly static noise and crackles over the PA driving the voices to the background and the crackling and pops to the fore... and I come home and there it is! There it fucking is. The digital subscription delivers the new Caretaker album!

Oh man... A night to remember... I'm busting! I feel like a schoolboy being floored by a crush.

― ...wow! (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, May 20, 2011 12:20 AM

Been hammering An Empty Bliss Beyond this World recently...what a perfect, heartbreaking, sentimental record that is. Sounds so...English?

― the Shearer of simulated snowsex etc. (Dwight Yorke), Friday, March 1, 2013 1:23 AM

I love the Disintegration Loops to death but The Caretaker stuff is a lot more specifically 'about' various forms of memory degradation not 'cultural memory' - as the MP3 collection Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia in 2005 and tracks such as Von Restorff Effect, Unmasking Alzheimer's and Libet's Delay suggest.

― Doran, Wednesday, September 28, 2016 9:37 PM

Like you, memory and all it entails, especially its shortcomings (loss, false memories, how they are stored and wired neurologically, memory conditions) is probably my biggest "hobby", field of interest outside of what I do for a living. Out of mere fascination. It was like that already well before I got to know The Caretaker. He is undoubtedly one of my all time favorite artists, for a lot of reasons, but the shared fascination of memory obviously a big one too. Your questions and reservations deserve to be looked at more closely. I'll give it a first try.

Caretaker's focus on memory's flaws and rare conditions started out way earlier than his HAFTW records. I feel this needs to be pointed out. The massive 80 track collection 'Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia' seems to have been his starting point of making music with the idea of memory malfunction and amnesia disorders behind it, conceptually. I was, and still am, deeply struck by the sheer power of that monumental release. And sonically I'd say it approaches Alzheimer's more truthfully than anything else he's done after that. For Alzheimer's isn't a romantic thing slowly and merrily sailingthe person suffering from it into a place where reality and dreams merge into something in between those states indefinitely. It's harsh, it's full of sadness and tears, frustration and utter helplessness (loneliness) for someone who half realizes he is going down that road but is unable to take a turn. I've seen the demise in my grandfather, and it was heart shattering. TPAA sonically is in many ways unforgiving, relentless, blurry, confusing and chaotic. Which is why it struck me as 'truthful' in a way (despite from being beautiful music).

― the tightening is plateauing (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, October 7, 2016 8:23 PM

Oh man... A night to remember... I'm busting! I feel like a schoolboy being floored by a crush.

― ...wow! (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, May 20, 2011 12:20 AM

This sounds nice enough, but kind of a one trick pony, doing some ambient filtering and editing to pre-1950s pop music, and that's it? And this guy has done like 20 albums of that? Or do the other albums sound different?

lol my thoughts exactly, but ppl love this stuff so hey I'm glad they get something out of it

I didn't mean to sound too critical, it does sound pretty cool to me, but can't imagine wanting to own more than album of this kind of stuff.

34. Éliane Radigue: Trilogie de la mort (1998)
378 points, 6 votes.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMfGLNrLvGA&t=308s

trilogie de la mort, and e=a=b=a+b, seem opposite ends of the scale?

i like trilogie, but i only really ever listen to the final track, koume, which is very rich sounding.

― charltonlido (gareth), Saturday, April 15, 2006 11:44 PM

listened to Jetsun Mila last weekend on headphones while hiking the Pacific coast. that & L’île re-sonante are the ones I listen to most often the last two years -- all of Trilogie d'la Mort is almost too heavy to casually throw on.

― Milton Parker, Thursday, March 12, 2009 1:12 AM

loved this bit from that interview:

I ’ve been working alone
for so much of my life. My only assistant
has been my cat .
I would always know something was wrong
when she made a face , but when she was
very quiet I’d just carry on .

― original bgm, Saturday, October 8, 2011 11:51 PM

trilogie d'la mort on has been on repeat for the past two weeks while i read / sleep / do yoga etc

― until the next, delayed, glaciation (map), Friday, September 9, 2016 5:14 AM

and sit and eat chocolate and nuts like i'm doing right now.

― until the next, delayed, glaciation (map), Friday, September 9, 2016 5:17 AM

Sorry, I dunno why that Youtube isn't working, let's try another one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnbGirPTgF0

what is with all the heavy noise

starting to think a lot of my personal favorites in my top ten won't make it

can't imagine wanting to own more than album of this kind of stuff.

reminds me of a gentle dig at Edward Ka-Spel/Legendary Pink Dots that I read years ago I think in Bananafish magazine "no one can ever accuse Edward Ka-Spel of glossing over ideas" - obviously there are still artists like that where I get obsessed and don't care and *do* end up with like 20 albums that are fairly similar

This one is one of my absolute favourites, so I'm glad it made it this high. To me, Radigue's drone music and Trilogie de la mort especially are the most extreme example of stripping music to its absolute minimum while still retaining its emotional core. On the surface the tones seem static but once you start listening more carefully, they soon create an vertigo effect of continously sinking/ascending deeper/higher with no firmament in sight. You can sense all the spiritual searching mournfulness, and transendence that comes with an extended piece composed in the memory of one's dead son.

wow, that caretaker album is amazing. reminds me of one of my own favorites, Vangelis' May '68 album (which he called a symphonic poem)... sorta meta-evocation of place, in that it evokes both the place and the imperfections of the act of recalling it, a sort of narrative seasickness that is pleasant like opiates or a rollercoaster.

damn, good post - that def gets at what I've seen others say about why they like it so much

I finally connected with Hecker when I decided he was a noise artist whose records need to be played at extremely high volume, rather than an ambient artist with interesting textures.

his current live show (which i have never seen) features tons of fog. like so much fog you can't even see other people in the room. that, combined with what i assume to be very loud volumes, would be an excellent way to experience his music

When I tripped over an amp and broke my leg in three places, I finally got it.

(Hecker is great.)

I saw him play in Marfa back in April, with the Konoyo ensemble... there were indeed a ton of fog machines, although the performance space was a cavernous warehouse with a lot of windows in the middle of the day, so that aspect probably didn't work. Sounded like standing next to the tracks while a freight train went by though.

this is an interesting poll, in that you can tell many people are refraining from voting from deeply loved all time favorites simply because of their personal definitions of ambient. I didn't vote for IASW or the Radigue or the Conrad or the Palestine yet I'm still relieved to see them here (simultaneously sad Radigue didn't place higher, she is an all time favorite but I'm like a cat picked up by the back of its neck thirty seconds in to any of her pieces, even when they're playing quietly, can't check e-mail can't drive a car can't sleep)

>So thanks, Jon, for writing all those things here throughout the years

ILILM

Just wanted to say thank you for this thread, I have quite a few things on the list so far but have been on the lookout for ambient music recommendations recently.

Unfortunately I need to sleep and can't post any more entries today, and I'll be busy for the rest of the weekend... But I'll continue the countdown on Monday and will finish it on Tuesday. Sorry about the delay.

This sounds nice enough, but kind of a one trick pony, doing some ambient filtering and editing to pre-1950s pop music, and that's it? And this guy has done like 20 albums of that? Or do the other albums sound different?

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

semi-related:

How Ambient Chill Became the New Silence

Hecker is a noise artist, it’s just pretty and cinematic and has harmonies and stuff

starting to think a lot of my personal favorites in my top ten won't make it

Finally catching up with the list:

[*] Ballasted Orchestra = YES. Why can't all SOTL sound like this?
[*] Liumin = if Basic Channel kept releasing stuff like "Phylyps Trak II/II" = YES.

finally listened to Strumming Music, well there's another CD I gotta buy (ordered the Behrman CD today, LP is more readily available but splits the track, also not on Spotify fwiw).

Can anybody recommend stuff that sounds like Robert Turman’s Flux?
― brimstead, Friday, June 28, 2019 7:05 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes but ahh will post on the morn post drunk haze love y’all

<3 <3

Hanging with Charlemagne Palestine today at his studio in Brussels. Charlemagne rules!! ❤️ #bearmitzvah pic.twitter.com/xIElzzWX3m

— Oren Ambarchi (@orenambarchi) June 27, 2019

Zeit is amazingly cold and deep. Along with Alpha Centauri and Atem, what a supreme trilogy of dark deep synth fantasias

Charlemagne is the shit. Schlongo!daluvdrone is my fav of what I’ve heard. It’s weird cause he has stuff that’s much closer to ambient than strumming music ok ok I’ll stop

the ambient poll went in unexpected directions and that is very very cool

This sounds nice enough, but kind of a one trick pony, doing some ambient filtering and editing to pre-1950s pop music, and that's it? And this guy has done like 20 albums of that? Or do the other albums sound different?

As someone who owns a couple dozen Alio Die CDs... slight variation on a theme is absolutely great if it scratches an itch.

^^ yeah Muslimgauze was exactly who I was thinking of with my post upthread, I still have dozens even after selling a bunch off

loving this radigue btw. la mort la merrier if you ask me :)

we call for devotion to subtle variation in the age of aleatory and non-persistent listening

list-dependent pissing is not an ameliorative clarification of such dull swales of emotion

I didn't mean to sound too critical, it does sound pretty cool to me, but can't imagine wanting to own more than album of this kind of stuff.

― Tuomas

I don’t disagree, but that album is AEBBTW.

The Caretaker stuff just isn't my bag— like I get why people are into it, it just doesn't "scratch the itch" as f.hazel said a bit upthread.

Now Richard Skelton? That's where my itch gets scratched.

Turns out I have some extra time tonight, so I'll post a few entries more...

woot!

33. Fripp & Eno: Evening Star (1975)
380 points, 8 votes.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW85KrKEphY

Side Two of Evening Star - An Index Of Metals - is one of the scariest songs I have ever heard.

― Damian, Tuesday, November 6, 2001 3:00 AM

I love Evening Star. Mixing that w/ some Windy & Carl is fuzzy drone heaven. Classic.

― Mark, Thursday, November 8, 2001 3:00 AM

Evening Star is such a better ambient record than Another Green World and yet the latter is the one that gets all the praise. Idiots.

― Mr. Snrub, Tuesday, October 14, 2008 7:42 AM

I've only heard Evening Star, but I love it. It's equally appreciable as background or for a close listen, and it has the one qualifier I've come to need from ambient music. I can't stand these constant 'round' synth tones, I don't know how to describe it, they're not bells exactly, but they're very cool and they turn me off everytime I listen. This has the kind of hiss I like, and of course the loops are cool too.

Index of Metals is my favorite track because it closely matches my favorite sound, the fireplace floo in the morning as it's wearing down. I used to sleep beside it before the bus on winter mornings, on the cold stone hearth, with that slowly modulating whistle, and it's just ingrained in my psyche as the most pleasant, wonderful sound.

― trashthumb, Saturday, October 20, 2007 8:27 PM

Never heard this one before either, but I'm on track two ("Evening Star"), and it sounds pretty nice. Not keen on guitar noodling in general, but this is all soft and mellow, and I love the peaceful synth washes.