Ambient Recommendations

i think the ultimate object in the world would be a textfile with all the tracks and timestamps. but i think that would take some sort of miracle god of ambient music to figure out

if you look at the archive.org page posted upthread (https://archive.org/details/stgigaarchive/St.GIGA+001) there's a link to the torrent of all files on the lower right-hand side.

xxp If you click "Show All" on the bottom right there is a torrent file. It's being seeded. 6.7GB. I guess this would be the same (but faster than) clicking the download button for "170 files"?

I am just catching up here. like what what now

oh yes there's also that "TORRENT" link :)

Good a place as any I guess to mention that Philip Jeck has died. RIP.

That tune at 40 mins in Dreamt Water-A has a distinctly early 90s chill out vibe. Reminds me a bit of System 7's water album.

Shazam has been very helpful for some of these tracks. Jam and Spoon's Secret Kind Of Love has become a nice edition to my collection ( think it is at the end of dreamt water-b).

Could do without this Peter Gabriel track on easy-wind A tbh.

Love that J&S track. Slight echoes of Moments in Love

I don't remember which recordings they were on, but some of my top tracks I've pulled out at:
D*Note - The Garden of Earthly Delights
Hector Zazou - The Long Voyage
Saeko Suzuki - Real
Andrew Poppy - The Object is a Hungry Wolf

Sadly, shazam doesn't always recognize the music. I think half the reason is the field recordings they often layer under them, and the other half is just that some of these tracks are very obscure at this point.

agreed, the Shazam results are often hilariously wrong

Loving "I Only Have Eyes For You- Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy" at end of ebb-tide A. So classic

Andrew Poppy - The Object is a Hungry Wolf

same

there was a track that played right before ‘mario’s cafe’ by st etienne that i couldn’t find on shazam and also google couldn’t find the lyrics which were something like “out of the blue our universal heartbeat”

Non GIGA related, but I think this was my favourite track of last year. Quietly radiant lowercase ambient.

https://homenormal.bandcamp.com/track/textural

Hi there droid.

Noel! Long time no see. How are you doing?

I'm obsessed with st giga. there's a moment around 36 mins into "ambient of forest - A" where some music starts coming in, after ~10 mins of running water/birdsong and it's beautiful

Listening to Mario's Cafe and realising, almost 30 years late, that Sarah's not singing 'Tuesday morning tennis' 😳 xps

Is it worth a dedicated thread for St Giga to stop derailing this one?

As like others, I think I'll be listening to these for a long time to come. Currently loving Angel Stream with its mix of Moodswings, Irresistible Force and *checks Shazam* Saeko Suzuki

Sure, as the one who delivered this derail, I can make a new thread.

Donezo: St. GIGA - Tide of Sound Archive (90's Japanese ambient/new-age/house radio)

I've stood dumbfounded at the gates of the great choppy maze that is Chihei Hatakeyama's discography too many times but I somehow stumbled into his Heavy Snow record from 2015 and yep, that was the most profound afternoon's snooze I've had in way too long. If you like yer ambient to transport you in the safety of some warm amniotic balloon, this is just the thing.

https://chiheihatakeyama.bandcamp.com/album/heavy-snow

ooh thanks, the only one I know is Minima Moralia but I love it

I’ve tried to keep up with Chihei but gave up a couple years ago. He definitely does have moments of profundity hidden in the avalanche of releases, if you have the patience to look.

I like his album mirror

His collaborations with Federico Durand ‎- Magical Imaginary Child and Sora are both excellent.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/arts/music/ambient-music.html?

wow. beautiful article.
the end is like an excerpt of my life with the Laraaji clip and account off the women's collective
just a day in the life! lol

Sora - re.sort

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mPJ2xnhqPM

I remember when this came out it was considered such an underappreciated classic. I tried searching for reviews and it appears most of them are just not on the internet anymore (its not the easiest album to search for). This is appropriate because the album itself feels like an artifact from a future that never happened - it blends glitch, ambient, and jazz (probably in that order) to create a very "ahead of its time" sound which actually seems quite dated now, because Daft Punk won instead of Four Tet. Regardless the music is beautiful and often capital-S Stunning, especially the final track

Ooh, I was not familiar with that Sora record, and it is right up my alley. Love this kind of playful, pretty glitch music.

also fascinating because the person who made it does not appear to have done anything else, in fact I can find virtually no information about him whatsoever. I guess he did a few remixes here and there.

Sora is new to me too. This is some of the prettiest, warmest glitch I've ever heard; thanks for the rec, frogbs! The cut-up sampling of acoustic instruments and vocals reminds me of the Books. It sounds less dated to me than a lot of "folktronica" of the era. Also caught a brief sample of Debussy's String Quartet in the first track--whoever made this had a great ear

mmm, yeah, nice one. looks like I hoarded this record at some point but don't recall ever listening to it... not uncommon haha

one guy in the style who's still carrying the torch (in a mellow, under the radar way) that I go back to here-and-there is miyauchi yuri:
https://miyauchiyuri.bandcamp.com/

and this remix in particular, which I love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7aGpp8zH1k

That Sora album is absolutely My Shit, thank you frogbs

+1 to Sora being great

it's kind of an odd recommendation, but the "Games of the XXI Olympiad" footage of the 1976 montreal olympics on hbomax.com is an excellent soundtrack to life

yeah thank you for this Sora rec. hopefully this is the start of re.sort getting the recognition it deserves. this is wild and beautiful

if you like re.sort, you'd like the following. my personal 2000s glitch/maxMSP sound picks:

pia by takagi masakatsu
frequencylib by stephan mathieu
matters by michael santos
open silence by hosomi
stdio by snd

Enjoying Grandbrothers' 2021 _All the Unknown_ right now. Missed it last year, checking it out now due to a Mogwai "Organism" remix. Propulsive piano/beats instrumentals.

Went back and listened to Sawako's 'Hum' again recently and really enjoyed it.

https://sawako.bandcamp.com/album/hum

Also enjoying re.sort. This SND album is also class. Didn't realise it was Mark Fell.

the other two .snd albums on Mille plateaux are fantastic as well.. I love makesnd cassette best. They have a lot of misc 12”s and stuff I haven’t heard.

big SND fan here as well

I've been listening to two ambient podcasts for years. They both offer consistently good, and consistently varied, playlists.

Ultima Thule

Hypnagogue

SND are super classic

I'd add aoki takamasa's simply funk and maybe toshimaru nakamura's first no-input mixing board record? (different scene but the end result sounds adjacent to me)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWzc1lY3Z9o

Enjoying this divergence into glitch. Listened to Sora, SND's Stdio and the Aoki Takamasa mentioned above and loved them all.

That early 00s glitch sound is one I've always enjoyed - still pretty hazy on how it's actually made though. People say Max/MSP and I'm none the wiser. I have a copy of Reaktor I've not used for years - maybe I should bust it out and try and make some of this stuff.

Please don't.

(Sorry, I have a personal distaste for this sub-genre, I find it incredibly annoying)

yeah I think kid606 used reaktor a lot

While we’re on this kick (well, not you table) I wanna point out the brilliance of Sketch Show’s Loophole album. It’s probably more glitch pop than ambient but I think it falls into the same category. Here are my two favorites on the album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFGV2bYcgys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbV6NnHdZZo

And yes, the band is 2/3rds of YMO, in case it sounds a bit familiar