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

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.

Yeah but it's got 'Ambient' in the title.

xp

I get a bit aggro by the end.

Like a cop?

Precisely. The zither police.

brb, writing Laraaji a ticket

'There'll be no cosmic belly laughs where you're going, Larry G.'

hahaha

irl lol

in all seriousness this makes me wanna see the 101-120 results even more, then I can make an imaginary poll without any Eno, SoTL, or beats

More like 101-200 amirite?

lol sure I was gonna say "why not take out Gas and Arthur Russell as well"

the only ambient record is david hykes' hearing solar winds

4'33 or gtfo.

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.

4. Stars of the Lid: The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid (2001)
795 points, 12 votes, 1 first place vote.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaSi7Gut7xM

Stars of the Lid's "Tired Sounds Of..." still ranks as one of my all-time favorite albums, even though I've never managed to stay awake for the duration.

― Sam Hunt (robosam), Thursday, February 5, 2004 2:58 AM

itunes tells me i listened to tired sounds...167 times this year. that's not counting playing it on my phone, or on spotify, or on cd, or anything else. some days i think i could only listen to the two parts of "requiem..." happily for the rest of my life.

― the oral history of (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Sunday, December 9, 2012 8:43 PM

tired sounds is more singular in tone to atrotd; atrotd goes for full-on widescreen euphoria, where tired sounds culminates with a series of endless blissed out drones. kinda like the difference between inner and outer space. both are some of the best music ever recorded imo so you need both really. even if you only start with one you'll get the other eventually.

― r1o natsume, Sunday, November 25, 2007 3:02 AM

"The Tired Sounds..." is one of the most self-descriptive album titles ever. It's one of those things I put on and actually forget there's music on at all -- like, I'll go to put in a CD and realize the Stars of the Lid is still playing. Which isn't bad, on its own merits. I mean, I guess it does what it set out to do.

― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, March 3, 2004 2:39 AM

The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid would make for a kind of epic ending to a life, and a peaceful one, too.

― Zach S, Thursday, March 16, 2006 11:08 AM

There it is. So it's going to be Music for Airports, On Land and Selected Ambient Works, Vol. II.

The holy trinity: light, dark and synth.

I guess the popularity of the Stars of the Lid kinda exemplifies the difference of scenes/generations evident in this poll... Apparently they were around in the '90s already, but I don't remember ever hearing that name back then, and even afterwards I haven't come across their music before this poll (though I have seen the name mentioned on ILX). They're from the US and from what I've gathered they come more from the art (rock) music scene than from the electronic club music? Whereas my roots are firmly in the European dance music scene, which I guess would explain why they've been foreign to me. The music does sound nice, tho.