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

I Am The Center is ridiculously good, ha

https://lustmord.bandcamp.com/album/the-place-where-the-black-stars-hang

Widely credited as the originator of the “Dark Ambient” genre.

An apt recommendation. So far it is dark without laying it on too thick, a bit cinematic though. I like the Bohren & Der Club of Gore too.

it's got great low-end if you have the speakers for it... cinematic yes, some latterday lustmord is literally video game music, he must have done a film score by now.

considering how wide the field for ambient seems to be, I'm wishing I'd nominated/voted for Mirrorring's Foreign Body now.

10. Stars of the Lid: Stars of the Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline (2007)
625 points, 10 votes 1 first place vote.

https://i.imgur.com/F8TxxaG.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp_uq5mHOD8

I love The Tired Sounds of... but it's never been a real go-to album for me. But this, this is something quite incredible. The fact that it's so long and dense almost put me off, but I've had it on my walkman going to work and back and it just *eats* the time because it's so beautiful.

I suggested a colleague give it a listen and he was actually misty-eyed by about half way through the second disc. It's difficult to pick a standout, but I think it would be The Daughters of Quiet Minds - at about nine minutes in it becomes pretty much the most gorgeous thing I have ever heard.

Does anyone else get a kind of spectral, one-tenth speed MBV feel off this at all - like the sound Loveless would make when the radio waves finally hit the edge of the galaxy...?

― Bill A, Monday, May 21, 2007 1:04 AM

so beautiful...

*ahem* some dust in my eyes

― rionat, Monday, December 21, 2009 11:00 PM

this one sure is a grower

initially it just sent me back to tired sounds. the electronic textures are a little stranger / other on that one, and the sections where they go for those long, long strung out endless swells on one chord... there are some Steve Roach records in that ballpark, many other classic space records I could mention, but since that's almost _all_ that's done on those records, it can get a bit wearying. but in the context of these records where the fully composed string sections suddenly roll over into these almost endless swoons, it's kind of devestating

the new one favors the strings even more, even closer to classical, which at first sounded duller -- sounded even less distinct from the 80's space music stuff that Tired Sounds seemed to be a 00's update of, but the compositions have emerged through repeat listening and now the streamlined classical move is absolutely working for me, a move closer to center that just works. probably works for a much wider audience as well because this new one's not as overtly 'electronic', just really strung out classical (like an _even sparer_ take on side two of Eno's Discreet Music).

― Milton Parker, Wednesday, May 23, 2007 1:33 AM

"december hunting" is playing on the stereo in my bedroom while my roommates' band is playing a song in the living room in the same key with fiddle and banjo and it sounds AMAZING.

― macropuente (map), Friday, October 26, 2018 6:06 AM

9. Laraaji: Ambient 3 - Day of Radiance (1980)
642 points, 11 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/QJ57wMa.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hes0hRY9v8

all praises be to the invisible infinite wealth which is now currently composing us and our experience. may we unfold as the alignment with this vibration, perfect presence of divine being, of most harmonious presence. may our appreciation for the infinite creator expand and receive greater depth in our personal unfoldment, and may we be released from the need to complete or perfect any person, place or thing, and free enough to be involved and enjoying the already eternal completion and perfection. with all praises be to this one within this one for this oneness as we are eternally this united channel of the infinite presence of our most beloved spirit soul.

― the late great, Sunday, November 24, 2013 8:53 PM

side 1 has three dances. side 2 has the ocean drones. it's beautiful, shouldn't be out of print.

― Milton Parker, Saturday, September 22, 2007 2:03 AM

Laraaji ? anything off of Day Of Radiance
If you going to cheat, cheat right away right? Unheard by me until a couple of months ago this record is Ambient (3) and hence the concept of song and track is pretty loose. Phasing (insert metallic, acoustic stringed instrument here) and tiny hints of Eno intervention maybe. Cool and luscious.

― LRJP! (LRJP!), Sunday, September 4, 2005 1:55 PM

on my one (half-tab) acid trip c.'82 someone put Evening Star on at dusk and sure enough there was an evening star! actually it was real bright so probably a planet. earlier we sat in a pagoda listening to Day Of Radiance…

so many people have listened to Eno's music while asleep I wonder if it has an additional subconscious resonance (burned into memory?) for them/us.

― Paul, Thursday, July 10, 2014 7:54 PM

I prefer Stephan Micus fwiw.

TOO HIGH

Ultraworld is one of my favourite albums but I only threw it a token non ranked vote here as it's too beat heavy to be ambient.

Refinement is my favourite SOTL record, think it was top 5 on my ballot

8. William Basinski: The Disintegration Loops (2002)
688 points, 11 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/ZuUYuJ1.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjnAE5go9dI

Oh, veel meer dan enkel 'de moeite waard'. Ik vind het een duizelingwekkend epos, een muzikaal monument voor vergankelijkheid en teloorgang. Het overstijgt de platische idee van enkel een uiteenvallend tapelint en stelt allesomvattend de trage maar onstuitbare ‘ondergang der dingen’ centraal. Het gaat over leven en dood.

― Gerard (Gerard), Tuesday, August 3, 2004 11:52 AM

reminded me of 'i am sitting in a room' in the way that distortion slowly, gradually take over.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Sunday, June 20, 2004 1:08 PM

Yeah, I was wondering about the Basinski angle- as I see it, melancholy and memorialization are also critical and reflective modes, albeit oblique ones. It seems like he just regarded it as symptomatic of a certain shock rather than explanatory in a wider sense, and criticized the pieces for only working along those lines.

He essentially stated that repetition in "The Disintegration Loops" represents a precise re-enacting of the events as they happened, as opposed to a replaying and correcting of the events as he (Dahlen) would have hoped for.

To me, this runs contrary to what "The Disintegration Loops" is about. It takes brief, bewildering moments of fear, melancholy, and shock and stretches those moments into hours. The reflection and explanation isn't there because those "source" moments don't leave any time for that sort of reaction.

So yeah, why Dahlen criticised the piece for being so submissive is a bit confusing.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Monday, March 28, 2005 8:46 PM

William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops - hopefully you'll only need part 1 if you're sleepy. If you're awake, they're genius.

― southern lights (southern lights), Wednesday, March 17, 2004 2:34 AM

I only have the four Disintegration Loops and I love all of them. I used to work at this all night cafe and around 4 the place would clear out and I would play these as I would mop and clean up. I miss jobs where I could play music late at night.

― Jacob Sanders, Thursday, February 4, 2010 2:34 PM

7. Brian Eno with Daniel Lanois & Roger Eno: Apollo - Atmospheres & Soundtracks (1983)
711 points, 12 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/DpD9uSl.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcWwtQmAt7E

apollo = stunningly beautiful, one of my most played albums in recent times.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Wednesday, July 21, 2004 6:42 PM

apollo sounds dated (very 80's discovery channel music) but it WORKS.

― cutty (mcutt), Sunday, April 11, 2004 9:50 AM

Ambient music always meant more than that. It may be perceived by some as functional, but by its very nature it cannot possibly be classified as "background" music. Take "Music For Airports" for example - the purpose was to give the listener the sensation of flying, so prepare them for the experience of being airborne, to whet their appetite, so to speak. This is a challenging and ambitious aim, that perhaps reached its zenith with "Apollo", a series of soundscapes inspired by the Apollo moon landings. And yes, they do give the listener the sensation of floating in space without the aid of narcotic enhancement.

This is what makes listening to ambient music, an active as opposed to a passive experience, as it's raison d'etre is to stimulate the mind and imagination of the listener.

― Brian Peter George St Baptiste De La Salle Eno, Tuesday, November 20, 2001 3:00 AM

"An Ending (Ascent)" is probably the prettiest thing Eno has done with (more or less) the same progression as "The Big Ship" from "Another Green World" (see also: "Spinning Away," etc.). It's actually quite remarkable how well the music goes with the truly inspiring "For All Mankind" movie.

― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Sunday, April 11, 2004 8:46 PM

A word on my favorite of the ambient recordings: Apollo has been my before-bedtime album for almost twenty years: I love how it's never quite unobtrusive enough, coughing up sounds and textures that dare you to dismiss them, especially in the second half.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, April 19, 2018 3:36 AM

I just hope Another Green World was left out.

It wasn't nominated.

hopes of ZF landslide diminishing rapidly ;_;

i shall, however, be marking exams to the shutov assembly as this things unfurls

Namlook not going to make the top ten either? Was there any one consensus selection for him?

for my top five i listed the ambient records that have the top five plays across platforms in order— "And Their Refinement..." won by a long shot. i never turn it off when it comes on, and it is the first thing that i put on whenever i enter an airplane. so yeah, i was the #1 vote there. still a little mystified by those who like "Tired Sounds" better, but all good.

Tired Sounds was one of the very first ambient albums that won me over, and it's on the saddo end of their shtick, which was just what I needed at the time. I had to pay tribute to it somehow…

As usual, much of these rankings boil down to generational concerns. Granted, these are quite broad, but certain allegiances remain.

Namlook not going to make the top ten either? Was there any one consensus selection for him?

There were only two Namlook solo albums nominated. I nommed Silence V, because IMO that's the best of the Silence series, and someone else nominated Air 1. As for the collab albums, Dreamfish 1, Shades of Orion 2, Move D/Namlook XII, Fires of Ork 2, and 2350 Broadway 4 were all nominated.

I don't really think the issue is with lack of consensus rather than FAX albums having become rather obscure, and since (as we've discussed above) that kind of techno/house/trance-influenced, playful and cosmic ambient hasn't been in vogue for a while, there hasn't been much impetus for people rediscovering them. I can't imagine people who are familiar with FAX not voting for anything released by the label, but I suspect a lot of people simply don't know them these days.

6. Biosphere: Substrata (1997)
734 points, 11 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/7H6vh1b.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg2VpYtUZj8

Great winter album, love the use of the Twin Peaks sample.

― Home made ectoplasm (I am using your worlds), Sunday, December 14, 2008 6:23 PM

there are no beats on substrata and sonny, you should purchase it immediately. i had a similar experience to (k*l*an) in that the album quite stealthily became something i constantly played. it's perfect ambient music. the cover art on the touch rerelease is absolutely gorgeous, too. plus the touch release comes with a bonus disc for biosphere's soundtrack to man with a movie camera. i have shenzou, but it doesn't come close to substrata imho.

― tricky disco (disco stu), Friday, February 20, 2004 5:42 PM

man, Chukhung has to be high on my list of favorite songs. has haunted me since the first time I heard it. It's one of those tracks that makes me wish I was a movie director.

― richie aprile (rockapads), Saturday, August 21, 2010 5:38 AM

I like some tracks on Substrata. The opener (actually the second track, as the first is just a field recording, I think?) and the one with the voiceover (in Russian?) are my favourites, probably because of the semi-orchestral "cinematic" quality they have—muted strings and such, I respond to that kind of thing in a near-Pavlovian way.

― Blau, Friday, August 27, 2010 10:27 AM

Falling asleep to Biosphere's 'Substrata' is a lovely experience except for all these crackly, walking on eggshell type noises towards the end.
― Johnathan, Wednesday, June 27, 2001 3:00 AM

As usual, much of these rankings boil down to generational concerns. Granted, these are quite broad, but certain allegiances remain.

― pomenitul, Tuesday, July 2, 2019 5:32 AM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

hmm. for myself, i don't think that's definitely true? my top ten include SotL, Henry Flynt, Charlemagne Palestine, Eno/Budd, Aphex Twin, and Loscil, as well as Seven Fields of Aphelion. again, i used a playcount metric for my top ten, then moved on to a preference metric. my top 20 includes a LOT of Eno, as well as the Necks, Turman, Skelton, and some others.

i'm 34, btw. i guess i'm interested in what you think those generational influence might me?

(it's also worth noting that a lot of the rest of my ballot was dark ambient and synthy doom stuff)

Biosphere might be an example of something *I'd never heard* until this poll started. maybe it was the art, maybe it was the group's name, but i was just never exposed to them. i also came to ambient music through "new music" and my interest in the drones found in classical Indian music, for what it's worth...

also, apologies for rampant typos in my last post lol, i need more coffee

I absolutely this techno/trance-derived ambient but yeah nothing I voted for in that style placed. No FAX releases nor anyone from the Ultimae roster, nor Ishq, Entheogenic, Solar Quest etc. I guess there's love for the handful of canonical records (FSOL, Orb, Global Comm) but not much deeper?

(edit: I absolutely *love* this, etc)

Substrata has a special place in my heart 'cos it's the first "proper" ambient album that really got me, back in 1997 when I was 18 years old. I was obviously already familiar with early '90s ambient house, as well as Patashnik, which I loved, but like I said upthread, that one is more of a techno/ambient hybrid. So Substrata was the first one that made me really appreciate ambient as mood music, as something to let flow on the background instead of focusing on it. I remember one weekend in 1997, when my mom and her bf were away for the weekend, so I invited a bunch of friends to our place. We drank some beer, smoked a bit of weed, and at some point people were starting to get ready to go to sleep in the living room, so they asked me to put some music on the background, and Substrata was really the only album I had back then which could function as sleeping music, so I put it on. The following morning not just one but two of my friends told me they'd had weird, disturbing dreams during the night... Maybe it was those Twin Peaks samples?

Anyway, it's not a perfect album, I can't for the life of me understand why Geir Jenssen decided to put that track in the middle of it with him strumming the guitar and singing. Talk about breaking the immersion! But since Substrata has been such an important record in my life, and essentially my gateway to ambient music, I had to rate it high in the ballot.

Can't complain at all about Substrata this high, it is absolutely superb.

Biosphere might be an example of something *I'd never heard* until this poll started. maybe it was the art, maybe it was the group's name, but i was just never exposed to them. i also came to ambient music through "new music" and my interest in the drones found in classical Indian music, for what it's worth...

5. Gas: Pop (2000)
771 points, 13 votes, 1 first place vote.

https://i.imgur.com/Yu1Tapr.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB7lTEEji08

it's such a weird, weird record. it's got this uneasiness to it, even in what most people think are the calming tracks. the way it shifts moods from soothing to disturbing, contemplative to restless, etc., makes it such an interesting listening experience.

― Mark Clemente, Friday, January 11, 2008 1:32 AM

pop is the only one i'm overly familiar with outside of the tracks on deluze and mods and trans 4. ian penman had a review in the wire when pop came out which pretty much nailed the concerns i had: "virgin pure" vs. "vergin bland", how much does this stuff differ from teutonic new age?, couldn't we just tart it up a bit on occasion? (yes, i know that's not voight's intention, but it's much the same problem i have with pole...the tenative line between narco- hypnosis and complete negligibility.) it's a risk that all ambient- style music runs, the tension between "furniture music" and being active listening, losing the listener completely via boredom rather than contemplation. it's probably a topic we've broached and needs more space than i can give. a guy who came into the store today called it "electronic classical mood music" so there ya go.

― jess, Thursday, December 13, 2001 3:00 AM

Okay, I see what you're getting at. And these are interesting questions that have NOT been discussed here, at least not to my satisfaction: When does ambient become new age? What ingredients turn empty background music into something more? Where does Gas fall?

These questions assume that all who follow music passionately hate new age, an unspoken given since the late 80s. Most people say that modern ambient music has a tension that 80s new age lacked. The latter was about placid relaxation, while the former has a darker thread that makes it more complex, sophisticated, etc. I’m not so sure. In any case, Gas’ Pop is the perfect record for such a discussion, because those first few tracks have zero tension and much relaxing surface beauty (things change as the record progresses, though.)

Personally, I think there is something to the idea that some Kranky artists and folks like Gas really are new age for the discriminating young record buyer. That is, I don’t think they are all that different. Maybe it’s more important for people to own up to liking some qualities of new age than come up reasons why Windy & Carl or Labradford are so different than Mark Isham. This is probably all material for another thread, sorry, just trying to entertain myself here at work.

― Mark, Thursday, December 13, 2001 3:00 AM

imho pop has too much light but 6 and 7 is what I expect to listen once I get admitted to heaven.

― wolves lacan, Saturday, July 27, 2013 7:31 AM

i fell asleep to "pop" today. while in class. i was dreaming about 'that 70s show'. and then my friend taps me on the shoulder, i wake up, look at him, and then at the annoyed/bemused tutor hovering above me. i said i was "brainstorming".

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Tuesday, April 1, 2003 7:43 PM

I remember in the 90s badly wanting to hear FAX stuff, but pre-Napster (and even for a while post-Napster) I simply could not find any. So I focused on Em:t stuff, which I could find! They seem to be mostly forgotten now.

Tuomas, yeah, I was just referring to a "group" because again, I am ignorant of Biosphere's works, or at least I was until this poll.

I can gather from listening that it's not droney at all...that might be why I never encountered it!

I absolutely this techno/trance-derived ambient but yeah nothing I voted for in that style placed. No FAX releases nor anyone from the Ultimae roster, nor Ishq, Entheogenic, Solar Quest etc. I guess there's love for the handful of canonical records (FSOL, Orb, Global Comm) but not much deeper?

this is certainly a generational thing, but also very much a preference thing. a lot of the stuff on Ultimae and the entirety of Entheogenic's output is just much too trance-y for my tastes, but additionally, by the time i came of age, trance was very much *not* in vogue.

table, we're the same age, and I share your resistance to trance, which I am retrospectively learning to overcome.

yeah pomenitul, i have also become much more receptive in recent years. not so much to the ambient-trance spectrum, but to the hard trance and psytrance side of things. for some reason i'm able to forgive some of trance's excesses when there is a pounding groove behind it, but i have trouble with a lot of ambient trance's....forced aimlessness, or "far-out" ness? it might also be the culture, tbh.

I'm the opposite: hard trance still mostly bores (holes into) my eardrums, but the hippie, adrift-on-a-floating-lotus type stuff has slowly made its way into my diet. Both sides of the culture are a turn-off, although I'm on board with certain, very specific bits of it.

wait could I have voted for Shpongle on this

interesting. i'm certainly more receptive to the 4/4 pounding stuff because i DJed and wrote about house and techno for many years, and now find myself more drawn to the DJing style of people like Mama Snake than others...

anyway., on to more gentle climes.

There is really not a lot of distance between this "trance" psybient/psydub and supposedly more 'credible' techno-derived Orbital, FSOL, Orb and Global Communication records, in my ears it's a pretty straight evolutionary line (via The Irresistible Force, Solar Quest et al) that doesn't really have anything to do with Tiesto or anything like that.

I would absolutely take a playlist/recommendation list for the more beat driven/trance stuff of the early-mid 90s as I'm largely ignorant of it - partly down to aesthetics (which I'm working on) but like I say, mostly it's a case of not knowing where to start.

i don't think one is more credible that the other, Siegbran, i just have... a hard time with the psybient/psydub stuff. it just sounds wildly cheesy to me.

like it's a very personal judgment, i'm fine with others going wild over it

kind of funny to see that "ambient is good, new age is bad" distinction referenced from nearly 20 years ago. new age is, like, cool now. there isn't much of distinction

also i love trance tbh

Laraaji TOO HIGH, NV otm

Apollo too high as well imho

Cool or uncool, I'm still wary of new age (with exceptions). Old habits die hard, I suppose.

Agreed on Laraaji. A little zither goes a long way.

you're all bonkers, Laraaji is awesome

just put on Meditation #1

i like that album well enough but it's insanely high here

I think he's great! But over the course of that whole album, I get a bit aggro by the end.