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

voted!

Just voted. Like many have mentioned; I'll mostly end up voting for the stuff I nominated (or would have if someone hadn't beaten me to it). I only came up with, I think, 36 votes. My main thing is that ambient music tends to be a "singles" thing for me, so I ended up sort of halfheartedly voting for albums that I really only love one or two songs off of. Regardless of how this poll turns out; what a treasure trove of music to check out. It's sad how hard it is to find some of this music.

Voted! thanks to whoever nominated ABoneCroneDrone and Seconds In Formaldehyde. The former I had forgotten all about and the latter is a great new discovery!

every album on my list is a stone cold classic

will vote tonight!

I agonised over my ballot for a good while and then thought 'fuck it, it's everyone else's I'm interested in' and made my peace.

Voted (feebly and inadequately).

Sending my ballot tonight

I'm down to 50 finally, just thinking abt placement

Today is the last day to vote... I won't close the poll until I wake up tomorrow morning, which should be aroung 6AM GMT, so you still have 13 hours to vote.

Also, when you send your ballot, remember to mention in the message whether it's weighted or unweighted. I've answered all emails with ballots I've received so far, so if you've sent one but haven't gotten an answer from me, let me know in this thread.

I sent an unweighted ballot yesterday and didn't get a confirmation. Mine is a little skimpy at fifteen albums. I had some criteria in mind for deciding what was ambient and what wasn't, but thinking about my ballot I didn't really apply them consistently — broadly I was thinking of an emphasis on space and/or texture over melody and rhythm, but even under those broad guidelines (which don't really equate to "functional as background music") some tuneful things snuck in.

What is this other genre that some of you think these other artists ought to fall into, if not ambient? Too spaced out and atmospheric to be electronic, too melodic to be avant-grade. If I were to vote these albums into any poll, it would be this one.

^^^I don’t mean that to sound antagonistic, just sharing my logic for why I chose some artists that others here seem to be struggling with whether to include or not.

yeah, i have no idea. for example, tangerine dream. i really like both Phaedra and Zeit. somehow, i decided that Phaedra was not ambient enough (the pink floyd 'on the run' section about 5 minutes into the title track, in particular), but Zeit would qualify. but what is Phaedra? it's...electronic music? in a very different way, i also couldn't figure out whether morton feldman's Piano & String quartet is top of the line ambient, or not ambient

anyways, i will try to keep this in mind when we're all complaining about Tired Sounds of Starts of Lid placing high (which is one of my all time favorites, and which i didn't vote for because i don't think of it as an ambient album even though much of it is ambient and i've zoned out to a million times)

STARTS OF THE LID

A lid startler if ever there was one.

Same but Phaedra: yes, Zeit: no :) It's so arbitrary, and I like that.

Shame 'Music for the Rothko Chapel' wasn't nominated. I'd hit that as ambient. Piano & String too classically classical for me?

Same but Phaedra: yes, Zeit: no :) It's so arbitrary, and I like that.

Heh, it's the other way around for me.

Zoning out, music escorting you to a personal and highly particular ambient zone = ambient, to me. So I voted for Tired Sounds.

I sent an unweighted ballot yesterday and didn't get a confirmation.

Hmm, I wonder what's up with that... Did you send it to the address below?

https://i.imgur.com/yyJzfhr.jpg

Try to resend it to that address and report in this thread when you've done it, let's see if it gets through.

i forgot to nom that jon gibson two solo pianos w/ bonus tracks disc AND suzanne brokesch NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Shame 'Music for the Rothko Chapel' wasn't nominated. I'd hit that as ambient. Piano & String too classically classical for me?

yeah, i'd definitely vote for Rothko if it was there! my fav morton feldman (that i've heard - still exploring!), and yes, definitely more 'ambient'

I'm with "Zeit: ambient", "Phaedra: not" camp, and voted accordingly. To me Phaedra has a bit too much sense of direction to count as ambient, whereas Zeit feels like floating in space. But I do understand the case for Phaedra being ambient too, and probably some other albums I voted have even more direction than that, it's not clear-cut.

Zeit is definitely ambient to me. Phaedra is too propulsive. And Stars of the Lid has to be ambient, dunnit? Not sure where else I'd place it. Emobient, maybe.

The only albums I sort of regret nominating and voting for are the two Growing albums. In both cases the first tracks are epic drones, and that’s what I think of when I think of them. But subsequent tracks really aren’t remotely ambient. Oh well. If I’m the only one who voted for them in the end you can strike them.

^^ I've had that, where in memory or in 'feeling' records are ambient to me, but when listening w/ this poll in mind I think: wait, no, actually...

Yeah, that happened to me too, I had to scrap a couple of albums from my ballot cos I remembered them as being ambient based on how they begin, but upon listening to them I realised they got way too progressive later on.

that was my reaction to listening to 76:14 again, i was surprised how beat-heavy a lot of it was

Ah thanks, Tuomas; I did manage to mess up your email. Ballot re-sent! Got your confirmation.

What is this other genre that some of you think these other artists ought to fall into, if not ambient? Too spaced out and atmospheric to be electronic, too melodic to be avant-grade. If I were to vote these albums into any poll, it would be this one.

A basic problem I have is that the albums I like best on the noms list don't necessarily seem purely ambient (i.e., I love Phaedra and voted for it but the arguments against it above make sense to me... but I don't love Zeit, so I didn't vote for it).

Actually, Chinaski's solution to this problem was probably better than mine. Still, I'll be pleased if anyone else votes for Tierbeobachtungen.

I’ve always thought of Biosphere’s Patashnik as ambient but there’s surprisingly little material without beats on it.

Patashnik definitely is some kind of a ambient/techno hybrid, as was Microgravity before it. To me, Substrata is the first true ambient album by Biosphere. For a guy who's known as ambient musician first and foremost, Geir Jenssen certainly has done a lot of music based on beats and rhythms. He even released an EP a couple of years ago, The Petrified Forest, which is an obvious throwback to that Patashnik sound. It's a great record, but again, it doesn't sound sound ambient enough for me to have nominated it.

Voted

Departed Glories is the one for Biosphere

voted!

voted!

Departed Glories is the one for Biosphere

You don’t have to choose just one though! 50 votes, plenty of space.

I’m also surprised at how many people feel this way about DG. Doesn’t reach the heights (or depths) of Substrata or Cirque for me, but maybe I need to open my ears.

(also had many instances as noted upthread of "shit, I should have nominated ambient album x)

^^ same here.

Voted!

voted with a split ballot, it turns out I can in fact pick only 25 ambient albums that are truly close to my heart

the only new one I included was one of the Voice Of Eye noms, I love that double LP of early stuff that VOD put out but had never checked out the later stuff.

I'd like to attempt a Spotify playlist of all the noms, but can't guarantee anything

There is a Spotify playlist

oh I missed that! thanks.

damn I coulda been shuffling all this time

for reference cuz I don't think it was linked in this thread:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4fPPFJHHNihMjlO9GVEs6F?si=hVKygUYXRJSuCafBZrfzlQ

The voting is now closed, thanks to everyone! I'll start the results rollout later today or tomorrow.

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

top 3 albums I slightly regret including on my ballot:

Belong - October Language (soothing noize ≠ ambient!)
Slowdive - Pygmalion (too pop! parts of it have a backbeat and proper hummable melodies!)
Tangerine Dream - Phaedra (too much chug-a-chug-a sequencer action!)

my ballot started out super purist, but then I got the notion of voting for 50 albums by 50 different artists, so I ended up padding it out with some stuff that wasn't a perfect fit, oops

anyways, here's some great cosmic horror ambient that idk if anyone else voted for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE9RPDgCn2w

(Tholen - Sternklang)

Results rolling out here: The mind revealing itself to itself: the TOP 100 AMBIENT ALBUMS as voted by ILX