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

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

https://harshnoisewally.tumblr.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UerLIFo4d6k

One more nom

Broken Hearted Dragonflies: Insect Electronica From Southeast Asia

Also don’t forget

FM3 - The Buddha Machine

The Buddha Machine is not a record, so it's not eligible, sorry. If you want, you can nominate some of FM3's actual albums. Also, someone has already nominated Robert Henke's Layering Buddha, which is an album made by sampling the Buddha Machine, so you can always vote for that.

It doesn't look like I have the time to go through the nominations today, so I'm gonna give you 24 hours more time. The nomination process ends this time tomorrow.

Boris - Flood
Julia Kent - Temporal
Julia Kent - Character

Speaking of last minute, how about this Anthony Rother?

I have that album (62 Minutes on Mars), and while it's not among my favourite FAX releases, it's indubitably ambient. So feel free to nominate it, if you wanna.

many xposts to Viborg, I really think that Richard Skelton's work (Landings in particular, as well as his work as A Broken Consort) is probably my highest-rated of the past decade after SotL. it's definitely more influence by Arvo Part and a sort of academic minimalism, but it has an emotional depth in its slight variations that make it really worth for me.

Here's one from Landings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NTvcfkPq4Y

and here is how his latest is described:

Music for the retreating ice-sheets of Iceland, produced whilst on a 'Frontiers in Retreat' residency in Seyðisfjörður in 2016.

www.frontiersinretreat.org/artists/richard_skelton

Front Variations is composed from sine waves subjected to increasing amounts of feedback in order to simulate the so-called 'ice-albedo' feedback mechanism.

This is the process whereby the action of melting glaciers reduces the global surface area of ice, thereby reducing the amount of solar radiation that glaciers reflect, which in turn increases global temperatures and causes further glacial melting.

Ring modulation and distortion were also used to further deteriorate the sound signal.

Front Variations is also available as part of Quoin 4 - the annual publication for friends and patrons of Corbel Stone Press. Quoin 4 features data collected by the World Glacier Monitoring Service and aerial photography of arctic glaciers from the US Naval Oceanographic Office.

https://aeolian.bandcamp.com/album/front-variations-one-two

Kyle Bobby Dunn - From Here To Eternity

just came out, and it's really good

The Buddha Machine is not a record, so it's not eligible, sorry.

― Tuomas, Saturday, June 1, 2019 2:59 AM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is an absolute horseshit decision, you can listen to it on spotify*

https://open.spotify.com/album/7COTnWvHjhkq10ph3q4xH4?si=koVhRwTiQLmeodVPb4NbMg

*also thanks for spending an insane amount of your free time on this internet poll for my enjoyment

Can I sneak in:

M. Geddes Gengras - Ishi
Omicron - Acrocosm
V/A - Plug In + Turn On Vol. 2
Skyramps - Days of Thunder (is this ambient?)

lol whiney

It has an entry on Discogs too, idk what else you need

https://www.discogs.com/FM3-Buddha-Machine/master/517873

According to that Discogs tracklist it’s too short!

Bonus time! I'll submit my final three:

Löwenritter - Prelude: Ten Seconds Before Sunrise
Vangelis - Fais Que Ton Rêve Soit Plus Long Que La Nuit
Cernunnos Woods - Awaken the Empire of Dark Wood

Cernunnos Woods, now there’s a name I haven’t heard in over twenty years.

Great call on Kasumasa Hashimoto, I must revisit his stuff, I love that little boutique label he was on, Noble Records, they have some lovely music, much better than Childisc.

dark forest ambient! it has some spoken word bits, but then so does the Harold Budd/Clive Wright stuff

Dang it *Kazumasa

was considering Midori Takada's "Through the Looking Glass" but it seemed a bit too dynamic.

Kazumasa Hashimoto can be a bit twee but I find it delicate and poignant at its best. I don't want to discriminate but it seems like the urge to sweeten the mood is a common strain in much of the Japanese electronic music I've heard. There's a Japanese artist called Pass Into Silence who's made releases on Kompakt, the songs are some of the most exquisite ambient creations ever (I'm not so familiar with LPs). But it definitely has a lullaby quality about it.

MaresNest, what else do you especially like on Noble Records?

Saw1

I find that Japanese musicians have a hard time making garden variety flat-line ambient or drone, they like to add more movement in there than is common sometimes adding more unusual chords and so on...

For noble records, I would recommend maybe Cinq, Midori Hirano, World's End Girlfriend, oh and Yasushi Yoshida especially.

I have an urge to embitter the mood, but still keep it sweet, like a foodie dark chocolate bar.

Spotify playlist not *quite* three weeks long. Its growth really slooowwwwed in the last few days, with all the retractions and generous helpings of not-on-Spotify stuff.

After consideration, I'm gonna allow the Buddha Machine in the poll. It's true that the individual loops only amount to 3 minutes of playing time, but on obviously the way it works means the music goes on as long as you want. And it certainly meets both the functional and aesthetic definition of ambient music perfectly.

The nominations are now closed, thanks to everyone for nomming such cool stuff! I'll finish the album sheet and probably will start the voting thread later today.

Thats too bad I forgot to nominate my refrigerator, it makes a very pleasant hum.

Eh I find your fridge to be a bit cold and empty with just a few stale old reheated ideas. Never enough to chew on and yet I keep coming back to it thinking there’ll be something new.

Fair enough, I retract the fridge.

Lots of found fridge sounds among the current noms tbf.

ILX AMBIENT ALBUMS POLL: the voting thread. Voting ends on Sunday, June 23rd.

Woooooo!

I haven't got a chuffing CLUE about how to rank my choices. Might have to go unweighted for the first time ever.

Weighting feels very counter to the ambient spirit ;-)

XP - Rothko at the top plz :)

Can I at least hear the fridge to judge for myself before it's denommed to the abyss?

of course, it's playing right now, you just have to listen for it ... very carefully