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

^^ 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.

it's OK, but it's no "No Pussyfooting". the side with the short tracks is kind of pointless iirc, at least one is just "Discreet Music" with guitar noodles added

Following on from Evening Star, it's a shame only 50% of Gone to Earth by David Sylvian is ambient, sides 3 and 4 are absolutely classic, especially if you love a nice low-key Robert Fripp:

https://youtu.be/tbJTOcdoRPU?t=3255

(that link should start at 54:15, which is the beginning of side three)

ps it's a pretty good Powell/Pressburger movie too

(oh yeah, Bill Nelson on guitar too)

Coming up next is the highest-rated multi-artist compilation in this poll.

Only one in the Top 100, no?

My favorite Fripp and Eno is the Air Structures 2lp boot, all of which (i think) is on here.

yeah that thing is awesome

I wondered when Pure Moods was going to show up!

32. Various Artists: I Am the Center - Private Issue New Age Music in America, 1950–1990 (2013)
382 points, 8 votes.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AADFqc84LEg

This might be comp of the year in terms of overall presentation/tie-in with current underground trends/sheer quality of content over such a long running time. It's really addictive, all I've been playing since the beautiful vinyl landed last week.

― Badmotorfinger Debate Club (MFB), Sunday, November 10, 2013 11:08 PM

love this comp. I was worried it just wouldn't work; it can be a challenge to make a compilation of immersive ambient music that still flows well, especially when so many of the pieces are so iconoclastic / strange. but this is just great. even in the cases of the artists I'd heard of, they pick tracks that are obscure but still very representative (best example -- I love Don Slepian's process music work with the Alles synthesizer more than his live keyboard & flute music, so 'Sea Of Bliss' is a hallmark new age record for me, but I did not know about his other all-Alles cassette only album 'Open Spaces' -- http://www.discogs.com/Don-Slepian-Open-Spaces/release/556677)

the weekly music from the hearts of space show changed tack pretty dramatically in the late 80's as new age evolved, this compilation captures just how truly weird that show sounded to me in the early to mid-80's when I occasionally caught it on KPFA on sunday nights while trying desperately to do all the homework I'd put off all weekend. captures it a lot better than the HoS CD compilations & syndicated shows that came out later.

― Milton Parker, Monday, November 11, 2013 9:30 PM

bought the 'i am the center' comp on vinyl, would have paid twice as much for how good it is. really intrigued by constance demby, her cut on the comp is incredible. as is everything else, tbh. been a steven halpern head for some time already.

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, November 20, 2013 9:11 PM

Seriously though, I'm not sure I've played a single compilation this much since, err, DGC Rarities. Aside from maybe one or two tracks, this thing is perfect for pretty much every mood. Maybe I'm just getting mellow?

― Jimmywine Dyspeptic, Monday, December 9, 2013 7:27 AM

I remember the hype when that comp came out, but I felt I had enough new age music in my life already, so I didn't have any need to get it. Maybe I'll do one day.

great album, Douglas knocked it out of the park as the compiler, just perfect choices all around

32. David Hykes & The Harmonic Choir Hearing Solar Winds (1983)
386 points, 5 votes.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVfnWJm1nyE

I believe David Hykes' website has some info on his version of overtone chanting, mostly how it will bring about world peace and such.

― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, January 8, 2003 10:26 PM

the David Hykes record to die for: 'Hearing Solar Winds'. all overtone chorus moving slowly, one unbroken long movement that takes the time it needs.

― (Jon L), Wednesday, November 5, 2003 3:08 AM

i love it. i don't know how you would classify them. just your average trippy choir making strange mouth sounds and recorded in a cave somewhere. but beautiful! and mind-altering.

― scott seward, Wednesday, November 5, 2003 3:49 AM

I think my single favourite album of the 80s is David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir - Hearing Solar Winds. Seriously, one of the most beautiful albums I've ever heard. A whole choir of master overtone singers (able to sing melodies in overtones, hold fundamentals and change overtones, hold overtones and change fundamentals, etc.) singing in a resonant cathedral. Just some spectacular drones and sonics. Enveloping. Can feel like you're floating.

― sund4r (sund4r), Monday, August 29, 2005 8:19 PM

I was not aware of David Hykes at all when I started compiling the results for this thread, but as soon as I listened to that album online, I immediately bought a copy of it. It sounds amazing!

Whoops, sorry, that album is 31., not 32., obviously.

that one's a monster

https://www.discogs.com/Harmonic-Choir-David-Hykes-Hearing-Solar-Winds-Alight-Special-25th-Anniversary-Remastered-Edition/release/5010897

^^ you want to hear the original first, but if you've listened to that more than 30 times, this is a very interesting remaster which drastically alters the high end and condenses the composition by a good 5-8 minutes.

30. Bohren & Der Club of Gore: Black Earth (2002)
395 points, 8 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/6DepF4P.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvnROH91GLk

One of my favorite groups of recent years, sinister, bleak, doomy jazz music, absolutely fantastic.

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, May 30, 2005 4:51 AM

whenever I'm listening to Black Earth I'm convinced they're the best band in the world

― Simon H., Sunday, May 13, 2018 8:58 PM

By far the heaviest "quiet metal" CDs I have are the last two by Bohren & der Club of Gore. Black Earth is massive doom metal disguised as a jazz trio.

― a. begrand (a begrand), Friday, January 26, 2007 8:47 PM

The most Lynchian stuff I've ever heard that hasn't actually been used on one of his soundtracks (yet) is that album Black Earth by Bohren and Der Club of Gore (Ipecac).

― Nate Carson, Sunday, April 6, 2008 2:21 AM

hearing solar winds was my #2!

i did a quick 30 second skim of the 'alight' version and yeah, that's waaay different! i'll give it more of a listen this afternoon

Hearing Solar Winds was def high up on my ballot. Amazing stuff

29. Autechre: NTS Session 4 (2018)
398 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/f6Pauwo.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVjlmLmAi2w

it is trippy as hell. want to say it exudes a cosmic darkness lol.

― macropuente (map), Sunday, December 9, 2018 2:46 AM

music like “all end” is not something I’ve ever quite heard before. I know most people don’t relate to drones or ‘unchanging' music, but being carried into a trance by this kind of music is really underrated imo

― Dan S, Sunday, December 9, 2018 3:03 AM Bookmark

i wouldn't say all end is unchanging - it feels like a static, shimmering cloud, with a rapidly shifting intensity... or there's a weird limiting effect, similar to the outro of nodezsh. it bears a superficial resemblance to instances of Tim Hecker's music on Virgins and/or Ravedeath, in its 'bright' density of glassy-textured sound spectra. kevin drumm's drone stuff (on Imperial Distortion) feels heavier, and less stacked somehow, with deeper or more involving movement and tangible mass.

― braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n), Sunday, December 9, 2018 9:17 AM

I adore every track on this set, especially mirrage and column thirteen (the latter being gorgeously accessible and trance like ambient, cosmic electro), and on the surface either one of these could be my pick, but all end has taken me to a space few, if any, other songs have. Maybe Laraaji's Sung Gong or some local sound mediation performances using gongs and delay/reverb effects in San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, but that's about it. Sound mediation at its finest, but more alien and abstract. It's incredible. The way the underlying tones pulse and mutate underneath the unrelenting granular chord that dominates the mix creates this visceral organic texture in my mind visually. Very easy to get lost in it and to lose your sense of self. It is kind of a more digestible expression of the constant, hypnotic chaos at the end of Lentic Catachresis. The vinyl release splits it into 3 sections, about 20 minutes a side. It's a really great way to take in all end as a smaller and more casually digestible composition (definitely recommend part 3 for this). I consider it a capstone track to their very large and very brilliant oeuvre.

― octobeard, Monday, December 10, 2018 7:01 AM

I'm 3/4 of the way through "all end" now and it's like a combination of some kind of pink-cloud ambient music, Aine O'Dwyer's church organ improvisations, and the beginning of Godflesh's "Love, Hate (Slugbaiting)." This whole set is amazing, but this one piece - which I'm assuming will get its own CD when the physical version arrives - is the kind of thing you want to turn up to window-rattling volume and just live in for an hour.

― grawlix (unperson), Sunday, April 29, 2018 9:37 PM

I tried to listen to "All End", but it feels like they've just brought their unmistakable wonky engineers' touch to drone music. If I want to get into mood like this I'd much rather play France Jobin or something, not these guys... But I guess I've never been impressed by any Autechre music that I've heard, except for a couple of their early '90s techno tunes.

28. Gas: Zauberberg (1997)
401 points, 7 votes.

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

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

It's the third track on Zauberberg that really gets me. This album somehow manages to both creep me out and pacify me at the same time.

Also, the only way to suitably describe the last track is heavenly.

― lou, Wednesday, January 16, 2008 3:00 PM

yea zauberberg is really bizarre, isn't it? you have the first and last tracks which are completely gorgeous - yea, heavenly, the third track (which is one of my favorite Gas tracks) which kind of envelopes you in this really calm way, but all the other tracks are downright creepy.

― Mark Clemente, Wednesday, January 16, 2008 4:29 PM

track 3 on zauberberg is astonishing, i used to listen to that on loop for hours

― marcos, Tuesday, May 13, 2014 5:43 PM

This question was inspired by 5 listens in the last 24 hours to the first track from Gas' _Zauberberg_. Not far from Christian music tradition, w/ deep organ drones that go on forever. But tweaked enough to get me inside and kneeling at a pew.

― Mark, Saturday, August 18, 2001 3:00 AM

now we're talking

This is actually the one among the original four Gas albums to which I return the least. The first one has its own cosmic and steamy vibe, which I love, and the string miasma approach he started on this record I feel he perfected on Königsforst (which remains my favourite of all six Gas albums). But Zauberberg is still good too!

That's all for today, I'll return to the countdown on Monday.

thanks for the bonus!

Really glad that Black Earth placed. I'd heard of but never heard Bohren & der Club of Gore before this poll, and now I am fully obsessed, particularly with that record.

Speaking of really doom-laden ambient, I wish I'd remembered to nominate David Terry's "Sorrow," which is very unlike his group Bong in that guitars seem totally absent. Instead, it's just heavy bass drones, minor-key piano loops, weird chanting, and sustained synths. On a somewhat long drive yesterday, the track below came on, and I *almost* had to change it about 30 minutes in because it was starting to seriously freak me the fuck out. The low end is really something on it, too, so play through good speakers.

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

Midnight Radio is my favorite Bohren

Zauberberg is so huge, I remember first discovering Gas in 10th grade and just being like so thankful that it existed. That music means a lot to me!!!

the vastness... first album I listened to when I bought an iPod in 2002/2003

this poll rules... thanks yall

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

Haha. I'm feeling more like this with every passing selection.

Just wanted to chime in and share that I recently visited Cologne, Germany and hiked through Konigsforst while listening to GAS. I was not on LSD, however, so the experience was not 100% authentic.

The results so far lead me to think there are some very large but non-overlapping ambient fandoms.

have been interested in GAS for a long time, to me the most recent albums, narkopop and rausch are the best

Oh, that's interesting, I don't think I've ever heard anyone prefer the new albums to the old ones... What makes you feel that way?

Sorry I didn't end up voting. Last few weeks were really hectic and it felt like I would have to think and listen a lot to do it right. Good to see albums I love on here. I should really listen to Hykes again.

I also prefer the newer albums, I think there's a level of refinement to them that feels more like a culmination of a style and expression than the earlier records.

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

― budo jeru, Friday, June 28, 2019 11:28 PM (two days ago)

otm

27. The Future Sound Of London: Lifeforms (1994)
406 points, 8 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/wf6kw4N.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCUN46Rb3Q4

God, this brings it back. Too many earnest late night conversations on this new-fangled thing called ~the internet~ with boys who made me Loop Guru mixtapes and talked about Freemasonry and the secret meaning of Babylon5. Oh god, the mid 90s, did they really happen.

― I want to smother him in electronic butter. (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Thursday, July 26, 2012 1:41 PM

future sound of london's "lifeforms". disc 1 is the most indescribably beautiful piece of musical lushness evah. disc 2 is OK.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), 28. elokuuta 2003 0:58

FSOL do sound a bit dated, but it's dated to a time and place musically that I happen to be really very fond of so I'm not going to complain.

― 3-D Whinge-ometer (Masonic Boom), Tuesday, May 11, 2010 12:28 PM

But I will rep for Lifeforms some more. In addition to being playful, it also very much has the feeling of happening in a city, or some place full of people, and that makes it delightful to me... I get this same thrill from the KLF's Chill Out. Although like WCC, I usually want my ambient albums to knock me out of time and space, or take me to some natural landscape bereft of people... but Lifeforms doesn't do that and still works.

― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), 26. heinäkuuta 2012 19:27

26. Hiroshi Yoshimura: Music for Nine Post Cards (1982)
410 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/rAXfH2M.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyY7NU4cbtY

Yoshimura started work on Music For Nine Post Cards in an unassuming manner. He stared out the window and played the piano, attempting to mirror what he saw in short, one-measure phrases. While at work on this project, he visited the Hara Museum Of Contemporary Art, in the Shinagawa ward of Tokyo. Inspired by the clean, white minimalism of the museum's architecture as well as the trees that rustled in the courtyard, he envisaged the nine pieces as environmental music for Hara, an offer its administrators accepted. It was only after visitors frequently asked how to acquire the music playing throughout the grounds that Ashikawa and Yoshimura launched a record label, Sound Process, to release it.

In so doing, Yoshimura removed this music from its intended environment, but the nine pieces would bring an atmosphere of quiet grace to any setting. The static beauty of Yoshimura's nine pieces, which revolve around simple Fender Rhodes figures, have the ability to bring a sense of comfort into the hustle-and-bustle of a morning commute or a long flight (as Huerco S noted in interviews surrounding his 2016 Yoshimura-indebted ambient LP, For Those Of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have)). But a sense of place remains central to Music For Nine Post Cards. On "Urban Snow," Yoshimura quietly intones: "Snow... this is Tokyo."

Matt McDermott, Resident Advisor