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

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

25. Brian Eno: Thursday Afternoon (1985)
421 points, 7 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/xG8Fd8M.jpg

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

An aside -- Didn't Brian Eno once try to make a film that was meant to be seen many times (I think you actually had to turn your TV on its side to watch it), with "Thursday Afternoon" as the soundtrack?

― Mark Richardson, Sunday, September 10, 2000 3:00 AM

With songs like "Thursday Afternoon," he was experimenting with what he called a "holographic" style, composed according to mathematical principles, in a series of repeated loops in which each component represents the whole. >> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/magazine/04funny_humor.html?_r=1

I enjoyed Wendy McClure's True-Life Tale (June 4) that chronicled the less-than-enthusiastic reception Brian Eno's ''Thursday Afternoon'' received in Rossi's, ''an amiable dive bar.'' I am concerned, however, that readers unfamiliar with Eno's work might accept the reaction of the bar's patrons as informed and legitimate criticism. In that setting, Bach's ''Goldberg'' Variations would have evoked a similar response.

'' Thursday Afternoon'' is an organically complex work best experienced through a quality sound-reproduction system, in an environment without intrusive noise that would obscure the myriad intricate details suspended through the recording's dynamic range. McClure's ''Ting . . . ting. . .ting . . .'' characterization of the piece, while not inappropriate in context, is analogous to reducing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to ''da-da-da-DUM''; there's really quite a lot lost in the process. >> http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE6DC1331F93BA25755C0A9609C8B63

― Andrew O'H, Monday, May 3, 2010 7:14 AM

my favorite was always Thursday, mainly because it was the longest, but also because I think it's the most complex his harmonies & feel for textures ever got while remaining subtle and ignorable -- though I loved them all, many of the other ones either get so busy that they'd distract me from studying, or stayed so simple that they'd numb me out if I tried to listen, and Thursday allowed either mode of listening. I would go back and forth between the 60 minute CD version and a cassette dub of the 80 minute video soundtrack version which seems to pick up exactly where the CD version fades away.

― Milton Parker, Monday, January 7, 2008 2:27 AM

Mine is Eno's Thursday Afternoon. That's the go-to record for sleepless nights, and I never listen to it any other time.

― Mark, Wednesday, June 19, 2002 3:00 AM

Oops, I had the wrong Youtube link there, here's the correct one:

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

Argh, let's try one more time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTHF2Dfw1Dg

The rest of the top 25 will be wall-to-wall Eno?

hopefully not, though I've given up on the two I most hoped would make the list

finally made an mp3 that crossfades the CD & video mixes into a 142 minute version. seamless enough that it does make me wonder if they were both mixed in one go.

Great to see Yoshimura place so high, did not expect that. I've only known it for some years now (as opposed to a lot of others here) but it'd be in my top ten all time ambient records (if I'd ranked my ballot).

24. Harold Budd / Brian Eno: Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror (1980)
424 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/L0b0EUy.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbFT7FXaggw

plateaux of mirror is it for me. the piano sounds as if it had exactly the dose of absinth you need to feel out of this world.

― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Saturday, January 21, 2006 10:53 PM

Harold Budd/Brian Eno – Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror (1980, synth, keyboards, treatments, instrumentation, producer) – With Budd falling into a Fripp-like role, this was pretty improvisatory, with Eno paring it down into spare, smooth results.

― Fastnbulbous, Tuesday, August 5, 2008 7:14 AM

But my fave has always been Plateaux of Mirror. The aural equivalent of jumping in a bed of cottonwool, the translation of the absinth experience into sound. Wooly, otherworldly bliss. How I love that piano sound.

― Ich bin kein Berliner (alex in mainhattan), Monday, January 21, 2019 9:09 PM

decided today The Plateaux Of Mirror is the best hangover listen ever. just the right balance of tragic, comfort and quiet.

― Jamie_ATP, Thursday, January 28, 2010 1:57 AM

Music for Airports confirmed #1.

23. Oneohtrix Point Never: Rifts (2009)
445 points, 8 votes.

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

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

yeah rifts all the way through is good at evoking that woke up from cryo sleep too early and contemplating the void thing

― teflon dawn (uptown churl), Friday, September 24, 2010 11:38 PM

it's the boards of canada vibes (subtle pitch bends, spacious tonal wafts) that keep me returning to returnal and rifts

― Palpatean Mists (Lowell N. Behold'n), Sunday, August 15, 2010 7:24 PM

i like rifts more than returnal, and play it front to back sometimes, but i usually start or stop somewhere in the middle. i like how sprawling it is. it can blur together, but i'm a total sucker for cosmic synth drones and arpeggios. current favorite is zones without people

― a fucking knitted scarf (another al3x), Friday, September 24, 2010 8:17 PM

i'll join the chorus of ppl who prefer rifts. i get that he couldn't keep making synth drone forever for fear that he'd turn into jean-michel jarre and, like, play casinos or something... but the synth stuff was so much nicer aesthetically.

― oneohtrix point zero (fennel cartwright), Friday, November 4, 2011 5:42 AM

rifts is great in a single sitting if you're tired, sitting in the dark, drinking scotch and posting to ilx (inter alia)

― the decline of the altbro-hongarian empire (nakhchivan), Friday, September 24, 2010 10:15 PM

22. Laurie Spiegel: The Expanding Universe (1980, reissued in 2012 with 100 minutes of extra material)
456 points, 9 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/vJm5OVs.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD8hkveKmYQ

I found The Expanding Universe on a blog, and I'm mesmerised. Lovely ambient Tangerine Dream-y sort of soundscape stuff, but also incredibly melodic and great sense of movement amidst all the drifting.

― Evren Kader (Masonic Boom), Tuesday, September 8, 2009 4:58 PM

her writings on computer software for music production are important and visionary -- her tone gets more frustrated in the 90's as consumer gear pushes the user further and further into narrow boxes, but I think the concepts & ideas she pioneered in the 80's are only going to come back around and be entirely validated. there were many people who wrote papers about the potential for the 'voice of the computer' being sounded as an improvising partner for real time performance, but I think she (along with the League of Automatic Music Composers) backed up their papers by making the most interesting sounding music -- that clip that Masonic posted, just look at where she was at while everyone else was just vamping over eighth-note sequencer loops

'The Expanding Universe' is wonderful, if you like that be sure to track down 'Appalachian Grove' from this amazing compilation. These are pieces where the computer is responding to her key inputs with algorhythms that constantly vary the arpeggios under her control, so she's improvising rhythmically in response to what the computer is doing with her inputs

― Milton Parker, Tuesday, September 8, 2009 9:14 PM

love the liner notes, especially the comparing of conscious interaction w/ programmed processes to conscious interaction w/ subconsciously generated processes (finger-picking patterns); there's some rich phenomenology in there. didn't realise the images that were posted upthread were actually programmed in a similar fashion to the music. that is so, so cool, i'd been thinking about this a bit after looking at databending & then, there they are. & she was a big john fahey fan!

― ogmor, Tuesday, September 18, 2012 12:49 AM

when all I had was an old scratchy vinyl copy of this, I preferred the range & sonic variety on her other records, especially Unseen Worlds, but now that this has been cleanly remastered, I've been listening to it constantly -- it is so simple and elegant -- and the bonus material helps with the immersion, now with two discs it lasts long enough that you don't ever quite burn out, it's always changing just enough to stay ahead of you, like a continuous stream

― Milton Parker, Monday, September 24, 2012 8:08 PM

I dunno if "The Expanding Universe" is ambient, well, the 28 minute title track certainly is, but probably not all of the extra material on the CD reissue. Anyway, I'm glad they reissued it, Spiegel is such a phenomenal and groundbreaking artist, and otherwise it would've been quite hard to come across all this wonderful and weird and inspiring material... So yeah, I had to rate it high in my ballot.

Love 'Thursday Afternoon', though not everyone does https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/magazine/04funny_humor.html

Bartender OTM.

lol

The bartender is clearly the person who put it on the jukebox.

I'd rather hear Thursday Afternoon than hear Under Pressure or Dirty Deeds for the twentieth time in a week.

(we used to put on Atom Heart Mother at the pool hall we hung out at but the bartenders could and did skip past it the second anyone started whining about it)

i've been a "regular" at a few bars in my life, and the only bar where they ever skipped past a song i put on was when i played the long version of Kraftwerk's Autobahn. i never returned to that bar ever again lol.