Your nominations for the ILX AMBIENT ALBUMS POLL (nominations close on Friday, May 31st)

I'm considering edge-case albums like Sleeps with the Fishes by Michael Brook/Pieter Nooten or Lanterna's s/t debut, both of which have vocals and a few songs with guitar lines/drums but are def. ambient.

Steve Roden - Crop Circles

20/40

Please remove:

Schiller - Atemlos
(way too many beats and vocals)

and add:

Troum - Eald-ge-stréon

38/40

SPK - Zamia Lehmanni: Songs of Byzantine Flowers
Voice Of Eye - Transmigration

thank you, Tuomas, for deleting my nom.

do people really believe that Endless Summer (Fennesz) is ambient?

I do not, personally, although it's closer than any of his other ones except maybe Live In Japan

surprised nobody's nominated Xerrox Vol. 2 by Alva Noto

Alva Noto - Xerrox vol. 2
Jakob Ullmann ‎– Fremde Zeit - Addendum
Dirk Serries + Rutger Zuydervelt ‎– Buoyant
Phil Durrant/Thomas Lehn/Radu Malfatti - dach
Graham Lambkin / Jason Lescalleet ‎- Air Supply (fuck it, there are welcome surprises in here)
Stephan Mathieu & Janek Schaefer - Hidden Name (if you like Philip Jeck, you might love this album)
Bruno Duplant / Taku Sugimoto / Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble ‎– Chamber And Field Works (2015-2017)
Ryoko Akama | Bruno Duplant | Dominic Lash ‎– Next To Nothing
Rafael Toral - Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance
Michael Pisaro / Taku Sugimoto - 2 seconds​/​b minor​/​wave
Antoine Beuger / Michael Pisaro ‎– This Place / Is Love
Eva-Maria Houben ‎– Air - Works For Flutes And Organ
Cristián Alvear* - Jürg Frey ‎– Guitarist, Alone
Marcus Schmickler, John Tilbury ‎– Timekeepers
Stephan Mathieu - Wurmloch Variationen
Radu Malfatti ‎– Düsseldorf Vielfaches
Radu Malfatti / Klaus Filip - imaoto
Haptic ‎– Ten Years Under The Earth
Michael Pisaro ‎– Fields Have Ears
Taku Sugimoto ‎– Quartet / Octet
Stephen Cornford ‎– Empty Reels
Cem Güney ‎– Five Compositions
Stephan Mathieu - Radioland
Joseph Clayton Mills - Sifr
Rafael Toral - Wave Field
Stephan Mathieu ‎- On Tape
Klaus Lang ‎– SAIS.

1

I do not, personally, although it's closer than any of his other ones except maybe Live In Japan

― Ambient Police (sleeve)

fuck, i forgot to include Indeed by O'Rourke / Ambarchi ... so serene, even if it starts off a bit rocky. too late

Is this ambient?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvG-jqGsWSk

Peter Andersson - Music for Film and Exhibition II
Michael Brook and Pieter Nooten - Sleeps with the Fishes
Jeff Greinke - Cities in Fog 2
Lanterna - Lanterna
Lustmord - Heresy
Lustmord - The Word as Power
Robert Rich & Lisa Moskow - Yearning
Dirk Serries - The Origin Reversal
Stratosphere - Dreamscape
Stratosphere - Aftermath
Vidna Obmana - The River of Appearance
Vidna Obmana - Passage in Beauty
v/a - A Brief History of Ambient, Vol. 1
v/a - Ambient 2: Imaginary Landscapes
v/a - Ambient 3: The Music of Changes

37/40 - hanging on to three in case I remember any others!

christophe charles - undirected 1986 - 1996
christophe charles - undirected /dok
christophe charles - undirected 1992 - 2002
_zoviet*france_ - loh land
_zoviet*france_ - just an illusion
keith jarrett - hymns / spheres
isolde - all things fall to marching men
andrew chalk - the river that flows into the sands
nijiumu - era of sad wings
arve henriksen - sakuteiki
anna lockwood - glass world of anna lockwood

i think i have one left, so
dreams (james ferraro) - dreams

ooh yes loh land is excellent.

so is Just An Illusion! so many good ZF records, gonna get tough when I make my ballot

Then nom list should be up to date again. Remember, tomorrow is the last day to nominate!

both Venice and Black Sea (maybe Agora, too) are less overtly bristling / burgeoning with energy.. they feel far more dynamic, subtle, and varied, throughout their respective durations

In light of this: Tuomas, can you remove Fennesz - Venice?

I’m gonna just go ahead and nominate Mort Garson’s Plantasia and Philip Corner’s Satie Slowly just to keep the xls thorough

Also, I’ll nom Fennesz Venice

Philip Corner’s Satie Slowly

haven't heard this but i would really like to, if the title is accurate.

recently i was whining on a satie thread about how no one follows the instructions on the Trois Gymnopédies to play it as slowly as possible. the slower the better imo

recently i was whining
no pun intended

thanks for keeping track of the noms, Tuomas!

Also, I’ll nom Fennesz Venice

I don't wanna start a fight here, so if someone retracts their nomination, it can't be renominated by someone else, sorry.

Dennis Young - Quest

9/30

I don't wanna start a fight here, so if someone retracts their nomination, it can't be renominated by someone else, sorry.

have you run one of these polls before? the arguing over the nominations is one of the most excruciating and tedious things imaginable. the correct answer to however the pollrunner wants to handle nominations is "ok, thanks. and thanks for spending an insane amount of your free time on this internet poll for my enjoyment"

That’s dumb as shit and ALSO thanks for spending an insane amount of your free time on this internet poll for my enjoyment

Whiney, as you well know, ambient is notoriusly hard to define. IMO it's much better that the "what is ambient?" discussion is happening here, and that it's reflected on the nominations, than if some controversial album makes it to the top 50 and people start arguing then. If multiple people have expressed doubt whether Fennesz belongs to the poll, and the person who nominated the album retracts it, I think you should respect that and not renominate it immediately afterwards. To me that feels like petty contrarianism.

Anyway, today is the last day to nominate!

i'd like to retract all everyone's nominations except my own please

Les Joyaux de la Princesse & Regard Extrême - Die Weiße Rose

40/40

recently i was whining on a satie thread about how no one follows the instructions on the Trois Gymnopédies to play it as slowly as possible. the slower the better imo

― i will never make a typo ever again (Karl Malone)

My nominations:

Strategy - The Infinity File ‎
Elodie - Vieux Silence
Toumani Diabaté - The Mandé Variations
Machinefabriek - Marijn
The Necks - Aether
Hisato Higuchi - Dialogue

good call on "Aether."

The Fun Years - God Was Like, No
John Luther Adams - Become Ocean

I think I'm done. Thanks to Tuomas for making sense of all this!

No prob. I'm going to sleep now, and I'm not gonna sort the final nominations until I get up, so you can still nom stuff until around 8am GMT tomorrow.

good call on the fun years.. i wanted to cite 'baby, it's cold inside', but it sort of crescendos / plateaus in a celebratory way. there's a stretch midway through the album where it becomes this all-encompassing, shuddering tremolo--it sounds fantastic on the stereo. their music feels like a rough blend of philip jeck-styled sound art and something like CODY-era Mogwai

*not a "rough" blend, but rather a very successful one

why is fennesz not ambient?

Sorry for the last minute noms, I'm on China time and it crept up on me.

Various - Pop Ambient 2006
Various - Excursions In Ambience - The Third Dimension
Kazumasa Hashimoto - Yupi
Biosphere & The Higher Intelligence Agency - Birmingham Frequencies
Dan HabarNam - From The Known

I really think Talk Talk's chill LP's should be allowed.

I had no idea there were so many ambient fans still on ILM. I had no idea there were so many folks still on ILM at all, I thought it was all pretty much just five-ten recalcitrant stragglers. Is ILM actually more active than ever, and if so does that explain why dad rock dominates the site now?

Veering sharply into another realm of me being a nuisance, I really don't get some of the ambient hipsterism on display here. If you're truly averse to calming music, why focus on ambient at all?

I'll show myself out...

...And another thing:

Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement - Ambient Black Magic

I really hope folks have given this a listen. Best ambient I've heard from the past ~decade.

i don't know about best i've heard in the past decade, but it is pretty good.

xpost

I don't listen to that much new ambient to be fair. Checking out your list, I definitely like the Loscil but it is slightly treacly. RSE have a distinctive sound which as a hot take I'd rate higher.

The only other artist I recognize from yours is Sunn O)) but I'm not much of a drone fan if it's harder than SoTL (I do quite like their more droney cuts). Which other one would you rate as the greatest of the decade?

Speaking of last minute, how about this Anthony Rother?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EOAqGAuWZk&t=3337s

I'm familiar with the last song which just popped up on my random but I haven't had a chance to check out the full release yet. Hi ho hi ho it's off to work I go...

Link is borked?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EOAqGAuWZk

why is fennesz not ambient?

I kind of feel that the intersection of drone and ambient is a pretty large overlap, and the sustained washes of Venice become texturally unobtrusive through its saturation, like minimalism through maximalism.

But as to why I denominated it, it's looking like I misread Lowell's post (I must have elided the "less"), haha oops.

Tuomas: please reinstate Fennesz - Venice.

thanks for the extension!

Thom Brennan – Mountains
Seconds in Formaldehyde – Suchness 3
Star Turbine – The Sleeping Land
Andrew Pekler – Tristes Tropiques

26/40

sustained washes? are you thinking of another album?

https://www.discogs.com/style/harsh+noise+wall

https://harshnoisewally.tumblr.com/