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

Agreed. My fave GAS album by far.

This is my favourite of all the Gas albums, it's magical in ways that are hard to put into words... Like, at this point things like "forest techno" or "sea ambient" have become sort of cliches, it's easy to create a sense of place in electronic music through established, recognisable signifiers. But the Gas project, and this album especially, seem to be more about ideals of places than the actual environments, so despite being named after a real forest, to me it invokes more the idealised concept of "mother forest", so well known to Germans (and Finns!) because it has been shaped and reshaped in the national culture since the romantic era. I don't actually enjoy real, physical forests as much as I do Königsforst.

Yagya are really good at this sort of thing as well, particularly with Rigning and Stars and Dust

19. Pauline Oliveros / Stuart Dempster / Panaiotis: Deep Listening (1989)
515 points, 8 votes.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U__lpPDTUS4

Deep Listening – recorded 14 feet underground in an unused cistern with a 45-second reverb time.

― aaaaaaaauuuuuuuuu (melting robot) (WilliamC), Monday, November 28, 2016 3:56 PM

I got to participate in what I guess was a deep listening piece at UC San Diego once. It was fun. Everyone laid on the floor with eyes closed and we were supposed to make vocal sounds imitating other sounds that we heard.

― Tim Ellison, Saturday, June 26, 2004 1:20 AM

Alien Bog / Beautiful Soop is pretty great. That Deep Listening stuff creeps me out a bit tho

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Saturday, June 26, 2004 8:19 AM

I concur with the love. Just today I found the "Accordion And Voice" album on Lovely Music from like 1981, so psyched to hear it. My favorite is Deep Listening I think. The one in the cistern.

― sleeve, Monday, March 26, 2007 1:08 AM

my #17 pick, definitely "deep"

Another controversial entry coming up...

Yagya are really good at this sort of thing as well, particularly with Rigning and Stars and Dust

― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Monday, July 1, 2019 9:10 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hear, hear!

Tuomas, your Köningsforst aubade resonates with me. It's very forest-y. What makes GAS stand out from the crowd, for me, is how he employs the beat. The beat is right there, but - to me - it never feels like it's front and center. It is just there to help you along, forward, on whatever path you're on. In what I consider ambient music, this is a rarity.

I find Gas too palpable (har har), although I admire the disquiet of his latest album.

18. Manuel Göttsching: E2–E4 (1984)
532 points, 8 votes.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq-kovIr2BE

I'm listeing to E2-E4 for the first time and thinking to myself "why the heck haven't I heard this years ago????!?!?!?!?!?! what's wrong with you octobeard?!!!"

I'm not even 20 minutes in and I'm floored. 1984? This sounds better than many seminal 1994 albums. WTF.

― octobeard, Monday, February 22, 2016 6:40 AM

E2-E4 sending me into inner space atm. That is all.

― WARS OF ARMAGEDDON (Karaoke Version) (Sparkle Motion), Saturday, March 20, 2010 7:31 AM

i saw harvey play a beach party here in hawaii just three days ago. a half hour before sunset he put on E2-E4. about 25 minutes in i went up to him and asked, "are you going to play this one all the way through?" he smiled huge and replied "of course, man!" it was dark by the time the song's 58th minute rolled around. the mixture of an epic sunset with an epic track orchestrated by such a master selector created something hard to describe. it will probably remain one of my top 5 musical moments for the rest of my life.

― grady (grady), Wednesday, June 28, 2006 11:18 PM

i love the psychogeographic feel of e2-e4, that feeling of leaving the centre, an acidpsyche trip from bethnal green to chingford

― 696, Sunday, May 27, 2007 9:18 PM

e2-e4 is so unbelievable. it never ever gets old and every time i put it on i have to listen to it all.

also e2-e4 is the greatest running music ever.

― ooooiiiioooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaoooooh un - bi - leevable! (LocalGarda), Friday, May 4, 2012 12:43 AM

An important, influential album, but ambient?

I didn't have the heart to vote for it here, not unlike Karl Malone's hesitance to vote for SotL's 'Tired Sounds' :-/

Not ambient, for me, one of my all time fave albums, for sure.

I couldn't vote for E2-E4 either but I fail to see how The Tired Sounds... isn't ambient. I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to discuss this anon.

I did vote for 'Tired Sounds', no mistake! Just referred to the ethical bind ZS found himself and that I can relate to that w/r/t what is ambient or what isn't.

17. Brian Eno: Discreet Music (1975)
577 points, 10 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/N7VnEzP.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl_z5JvrKlc

I like it because depending upon how loud you have it, you can hear ambient, "musique concrete" from your own surroundings. Your mind fills in the parts that are too quiet to hear - so you hear something different every time. Come to think of it, it's completely different from schlock.

― Dave225, Thursday, January 24, 2002 3:00 AM

Except, “Discreet Music“ is anything but unimaginative.

True, there are some happy accidents there (he mistakenly played the finished tape at half speed to Fripp) and it is very much generative (so much so he apparently left the tape running while answering the phone and the like). But the way the lines unfold and overlap to create new melodies and variations is sublime and the tones themselves are evocative and deceptively complex (for evidence, read Tamm’s take on this, starting on page 30: https://monoskop.org/images/f/f1/Tamm_Eric_Brian_Eno_His_Music_and_the_Vertical_Color_of_Sound.pdf ).

It’s fine if you don’t care for long generative stuff—much of Eno’s is hit or miss—and he can sometimes talk about it as if he’s the first person any of this ever occurred to. But don’t think for a second that a lot of work doesn’t go into these pieces – and nothing about this one says “I don’t give a shit about my audience.”

― Naive Teen Idol, Saturday, August 25, 2018 4:47 AM

Discreet Music is fantastic. It's interesting to think about how it sounds at different volumes. I've tried to play it at a low volume level a few times, but I inevitably turn it up after about 2 minutes in.

― Z S, Tuesday, June 12, 2007 3:20 AM

don't know if it'd be possible but i'd LOVE an app version of discreet music, even if the generative nature of it would be less pronounced than scape, bloom, or trope. even minimal variation (and without the fades) would be preferable to just putting the 1975 recording on repeat. i'd rather spend 30 bucks on that than this newer thing.

― sciatica, Wednesday, February 8, 2017 3:08 AM

16. Tangerine Dream: Phaedra (1974)
580 points, 10 votes.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIQ0dd7B_FU

its like new age music, but totally cold and rad sounding

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Thursday, December 23, 2004 8:40 PM

Funny, I was just reading about this album. I guess part of its sound - or part of one song - had to do with the tendency of the temperature sensitive oscillators to go out of tune. Which is funny, because in that prog book I was just reading about Keith Emerson complaining about the exact same thing. He'd have to factor tuning his synths into all the other shit he had to do on stage.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, September 27, 2017 11:45 PM

I put on Phaedra earlier this month and was pleasantly surprised - I've got a buddy that's a hardcore ACDC/hardrock/powermetal fan, but loves his TD - never saw the connection myself - but you know what? - In their own way these guys have the rock ...

― BlackIronPrison, Thursday, August 9, 2007 5:48 PM

God I love that bit like 4:40 into "Phaedra" where it has that rolling bass line that sounds like a guitar

― frogbs, Wednesday, August 10, 2011 12:33 AM

put this on the turntable the night I lost my virginity. She made me change the record.

― Dan Peterson, Thursday, August 9, 2007 5:29 PM

ah, the soundtrack of computer graphics demos

drove to Portland and back twice this past week (2 hours each way, so around 8+ hours total) taking my wife & father-in-law to the airport to go to her brother's funeral and we had Discreet Music on rotation the whole time I was driving with them, it knocked my wife right out when we were driving back down at like midnight last Saturday and she spoke very highly of it when she woke up :)

15. Steve Roach: Structures from Silence (1984)
584 points, 9 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/r22jFrG.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsIjyJvhR9A

80's high point = Structures From Silence which is sort of everything that was good about new age -- if the digital synth textures sometimes seem a little simple, they really can be calming. I hated this stuff as a teenager in the 80's compared to trickier darker industrial or classic ambient or the more detailed textures of the Eno records, but this record's aged well. after his earlier sequencer-based albums that did a good job mining the post-Tangerine Dream lots, this was the transitional one where he turned off all the rhythms and went for duration, the last track is 30 minutes and I often just leave that one looping

― Milton Parker, Wednesday, May 23, 2007 11:09 AM

I bought Structures From Silence today on iTunes -- I'm a huge sucker for endlessly shifting analog pads. Sounds to me based on the articles I've read the last few weeks that the guy is an Oberheim Xpander ninja of sorts -- this record would seem to be evidence of that.

― Naive Teen Idol, Sunday, June 2, 2013 7:11 AM

absolutely the best music for driving around in southern california thinkin about your LIFE. for real. not bad for doing so in other states either but A+++ for doin this in california.

― Twink Will Ferrell (J0hn D.), Wednesday, March 31, 2010 4:08 AM

The opening “Reflections in Suspension” lives up to both its name and that of the album’s, slowly emerging from deep quiet only to again fade away, a pattern repeated on the other two original tracks. While this itself is a common enough pattern in the field, it’s the arrangement’s focus that calls attention here, pared down and extremely deliberate. It’s almost shocking to hear something so deceptively simple take shape, a soft, very slow lead melody of sorts in a steady loop while deeper layers of sound sometimes wash up like a just-on-the-horizon slow wave waiting to come in. Structure over silence indeed, but also suspension as tension, a surface beauty that suggests potentially dark as well as vast depths.

Ned Raggett, Wondering Sound

14. Harold Budd / Brian Eno with Daniel Lanois: The Pearl (1984)
597 points, 11 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/D3ifNdC.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om-iZHrE1S8

The Plateaux Of Mirror (1980) / The Pearl (1984) - Credited to Budd & Eno. The quintessential Budd albums. "The Pearl" takes the "Plateaux" sound and places them within deep, shimmering Eno landscapes.

― Hideous Lump, Thursday, May 20, 2010 5:21 AM

I've been listening to a ton of The Pearl of late and trying to suck up everything I can about how Eno and Lanois did it.

― Naive Teen Idol, Saturday, October 13, 2012 3:57 AM

The Pearl - Eno Budd came out in 1984. That's the album I've literally heard the most, as it was the "everybody go to sleep now" album when my kids were little. But I would often stay awake for the whole thing, hundreds of repetitions in - it's a unified composition, not just soothing sounds.

― Vic Perry, Saturday, July 14, 2012 8:12 PM

I'm vaguely anxious about something but I'm not sure exactly what. Also my back hurts -- the upper part, below the neck and between the shoulder blades.

Drinking tea; about to put on Harold Budd & Brian Eno's The Pearl.

― stockholm cindy (Jody Beth Rosen), Saturday, April 10, 2004 9:32 AM

The next entry might be disappointingly low for some of you.

I love that Steve Roach album

The next three entries, actually.

:o

13. Global Communication: 76 14 (1994)
606 points, 9 votes, 1 first place vote.

https://i.imgur.com/vgZDyr4.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7-PD2oBvyY

Not to get all Kraftwerkian here, but 76:14 and the Chapterhouse remixes have soundtracked my last three bike rides. And it's not because of any silly ambient-elecrtronic-to-pump-you-up nonsense, but it's that I fucking love these albums but I have to listen to them all the way through start to finish. I cannot bail-out midway through. Almost like a classical piece I suppose.

― Elvis Telecom, Friday, January 24, 2014 11:38 AM

i must have slept to this album 7614 times by now.

― cutty (mcutt), Thursday, December 8, 2005 6:32 PM

can someone tell me about more moments in music like the moment 10:02 into 14:31, that might be the most sonorous moment i've heard in all my ambient listenings

― dyao know what i mean (acoleuthic), Saturday, December 19, 2009 3:31 AM

that track has healing properties for real

― jabba hands, Saturday, December 19, 2009 3:45 AM

76:14 used to be my going-to-bed-on-a-comedown music. Perfect apart from the ticking clock, which used to freak out my wife.

― Get wolves (DL), Thursday, July 26, 2012 4:01 PM

that album ended up pretty low on my ballot because as a whole it has too many beats, but "4:14" is one of my all time favs

side a of discreet music is my religion

ah, the soundtrack of computer graphics demos

― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Monday, July 1, 2019 9:54 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You say this like it's a bad thing!

Would've thought 'The Pearl' was a lock for the top ten.

assumed both Structures from Silence AND the Pearl would be top ten!

12. The Orb: The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (1991)
613 points, 9 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/Nfy3Qcd.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwPZu4ECwnw

Spanish Castles In Space!

That is all this record needs. I could listen to it for 72 days.

And the rest... classic!

BTW, it took me 10 years or so to realize that the samples saying "Hello you're on the air" and "I've been waiting for music like this all my life" are taken from a Sex Pistols radio interview on the Some Product album

Which of course makes this even more classic. Disc 1 is maybe the best comedown record ever made.

― sleeve (sleeve), Monday, May 1, 2006 6:40 PM

Would still be CLASSIC even if it hadn't been totally imprinted on my head by so many nights of spiritual/psychic voyage in high school and college. One of the ultimate soundtracks to any extracirricular activites you may be up to. Also, sounds strangely undated to my ears, but again, I'm probably not the best judge of those things.

CLASSICK, CLASSIQUE, PURE CLASS

Also, amazingly after all these years I'm still not the slightest bit tired of Rickie Lee's mantras. "they ran on forever...."

― rentboy (rentboy), Monday, May 1, 2006 2:35 PM

My first exposure to this album ca. 1991 was actually the Peel Sessions. I have vivid memories of listening to this in my childhood bedroom that summer while trying to get to sleep – I was a bit struck by how crude the sampling sounded on "Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain" (probably aided by the bitonal addition of the "Lovin' You" sample) and completely smitten by the funky drummer on that mix of "Back Side of the Moon."

― Naive Teen Idol, Friday, December 30, 2016 7:04 AM

I remember almost to the day in 1991 when my girlfriend was telling me about this amazing music she had heard at a party, I had read about the album and I asked "did it sound like "Music For Airports" mixed with techno?" "YES!!!" she replied.

This still holds up so well...

― sleeve, Saturday, April 30, 2011 1:51 AM

Great timing, I pulled out this album last week. It's one of the few that I used to put on and stare at the ceiling and wonder what I should do with my life. I think it's probably time to listen to it some more.

― mike h. (mike h.), Monday, May 1, 2006 9:40 PM

Sleeve <3

like, Structures from Silence should be top three

haha thank you for the pull quotes, I was gonna weigh in on the source of those voice samples

For reasons I still can't quite fathom, I didn't trust Steve Roach for years*. I 'got' him via the Desert Collection stuff and everything else has fallen into place. Structures From Silence is magnificent.

*it might have been the mullet.

really weird to click on a thread I haven't been following to see something I said in 2006!

guess it is once again time to venture beyond the ultraworld

you should see Vangelis these days, he's majestic as fuck

guess it is once again time to venture beyond the ultraworld

it's so hard to leave ultraworld, is the problem

11. The KLF: Chill Out (1990)
614 points, 9 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/c7ffEk3.png?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTYaAy64hgQ

They were funny and subversive, they made a joyous cultureclash single with Tammy Wynette, a wonderful album in The White Room, and the best chillout album ever, Chill Out. Add the hilarious early sampling extravaganzas and the dumb gesture of burning £1m, and how can you not adore them?

― Martin Skidmore, Saturday, February 23, 2002 3:00 AM

From a certain perspective, sure, it could be monotonous/pretentious/boring/whatever... but personally, it's so much more. Blame my suburban Midwestern upbringing, but it so perfectly evokes those aimless, nocturnal, frost-covered 20MPH drives through rural subdivisions, all AM radio crosstalking, songs bubbling in and out of the mix. Whether it's a high-concept gag or a genuine evocation of such things, it hardly matters. It's a beautiful, timeless record.

― Myke. (Myke Weiskopf), Saturday, August 26, 2006 5:06 AM

Is it a good starting point? Well for post rave chill out music, Yes. So much which followed on uses the techniques on chill out, but as usual without the wit and wry inventiveness.

Is it a good starting point for the KLF? A qualified yes, as it's rather atypical of their work which tends to be rather more frenetic.

― Billy Dods, Thursday, March 7, 2002 3:00 AM

listening to this album is like having a staring contest with god
and winning
and driving off into the night

**

i'm not gonna front, though. i only heard this album for the first time, like, a week ago. my life has changed. my life is 1000x better.

― andi, Saturday, August 25, 2007 9:59 AM

it's great for driving late at night though... i've even listened to it while driving along the route it describes in the track listing! of course the album ends way before the trip does.

― fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Saturday, October 22, 2005 8:47 AM

Kinda funny to see these three albums back-to-back, I assume a lot of people (myself included) expected them to be in the top 10. But as someone said upthread, this branch of ambient music hasn't been very fashionable for a while.

Anyway, that's all for today, will post the top 10 tomorrow. Feel free to speculate!

booooo

voted for both those last two. Chill Out is still sort of a perfect album to me so I rated it higher. Love Ultraworld too but there are some bits on that album that haven't exactly held up...that said, a surprising amount of it does. pretty impressive considering it's nearly 30 years old by now!!

The Pearl: TOO LOW.

I thought Playthroughs was a lock so what do I know.

On Land
No Pussyfooting
SOTL
Basinski
SAW II

and Music For Airports

and Pop

maybe the Eyvind Kang album?

No Pussyfooting already appeared, at the 44th spot.

I more or less expect SAWII to be top five but somehow it feels ~wrong~ for that album to be in a top five ambient all time thingy? (I love it but didn't vote for it, it's not an ambient album at all, for me)

didn't vote but i'm going to see Steve Roach play in August, he's doing the legacy album thing and playing Dreamtime Return.

One thing I've found interesting is how much Eno there is in the poll... Sure, he's the codifier of the entire genre, but would a top 100 funk albums poll have 20 James Brown records on the list? Possibly?