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

Too low, partly through my own fault (I forgot to vote for it!).

xp

I felt conflicted about nominating that album, but the second disc is definitely ambient of the found sound/field recording kind, and the first disc shows how they made awesome dub techno out of those sounds.

I didn't vote because NOTAMBIENT. Amazing album all the same and, perversely, glad to see it.

I do share your reservations, genre-wise. I tried to be as much of a purist as possible in my own ballot (although I nommed 76:14, I ultimately refrained from voting for it upon hearing it again and realizing that it's nowhere near as unadulterated as I remembered).

Someone should run a study about how ambient music induces taxonomically negative feelings in listeners.

98. Hatchback: Zeus & Apollo (2011)
198 points, 3 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/pXxhJP3.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-VuU2ulc_8

picked it up today (zeus and apollo). production is super spacious. this is going to be one stoned out summer.

― so confused (blank), 28. kesäkuuta 2011 7:06

Stupidly, stupidly great. Stately and luminious and just perfectly arranged, perfectly paced... Thank you dudes SO MUCH for bringing this to my attention.

― Clarke B., 29. kesäkuuta 2011 1:51

and it makes perfect sense as a progression from his previous stuff; he puts more emphasis on his lush, perfectionist sound design and goes further out into cosmic popol vuh territory by mostly eschewing the krautrock/disco element.

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., 29. kesäkuuta 2011 6:20

Gave a no-laptop-or-other-distractions listen to Zeus and Apollo today...what a great ride that album is, so wide-ranging and immersive but at all these different levels - like, when I think of "immersive" music, I sort of assume a certain sort of depth - bass depth, but also mood - but this thing hits all these different + to my ear very subtle moods and sustains them, really fleshes them out. Tremendous tremendous record.

― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), 17. elokuuta 2011

this album is definitely still holding up for me, one of my favorites of the year too for sure. don't want to get too REAL TALK here but it was playing in the background during some fairly traumatic/life-altering discussions for me this year and i still love it. just the right amount of melancholy and escapism, i feel like with any other record in the world the negative associations would kill the music for me but this all just keeps sounding so comforting

― a lagoon par la mer (psychgawsple), 17. elokuuta 2011 6:16

hey i remember this record! good memories

HAd doubts if it qualified, as I associate it way more with balearic. But the two can overlap, and it's a gorgeous album. It's in my top three of my 50 records ballot that I listen to the most.

97. Hiroshi Yoshimura: Green (1986)
201 points, 3 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/RdorN7C.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-k9Xu5O7AY

alan i've been going through hiroshi yoshimura's discography since you recommended him, he's so wonderful

― (曇り) (clouds), 8. joulukuuta 2014 8:21

The first music you hear on Green were the sounds of a stream and bird song. Once the “synthetic” part cycles in, they played a part of an unlikely ensemble; unobtrusive, complementary of the larger, sonic vision. Brian Eno once spoke of “Another Green World“, but with Green this one somehow remains the most impressive. It must be. It’s our green world, presented in these refinements, that speak of a golden period in time when Hiroshi graced us with one astounding vision after another, culminating in this utterly sublime masterpiece. My suggestion: gather, digest, and refresh.

Diego Olivas, Fond/Sound

96. Ekkehard Ehlers: Plays (2002)
201 points, 4 votes.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ev68XXZo6w

Look, I've had a love affair with both of these tracks for months now, but while I was listening to them again today they both kinda looked at me funny, cock-eyed like, and suddenly I just *knew*.

Seriously, I couldn't feel more strongly about music right now.

― mark p (Mark P), 4. tammikuuta 2003 5:32

i didn't realise the strings on "..cassavetes" were from the beatles until tonight.

― jed_, 22. marraskuuta 2008 2:14

Are you serious!?

From where, specifically?

― Their time's limited, hard rocks, too (mehlt), 22. marraskuuta 2008 2:56

It's a loop of a section from the intro to "Goodnight", very obvious in fact, not processed or anything. I would love to know what he does with it, exactly. One of the really fascinating things about that track is that you can't tell for sure if it's changing at all through most of it.

― Mark, 22. marraskuuta 2008 3:12

Loving the whole 'Plays' compilation despite not recognising any of the references. Glorious.

― Ctrl+Alt+Del in Poughkeepsie (fionnland), 30. syyskuuta 2018 18:39

I, er, Spotified "Goodnight" and "...Cassavetes 2" back to back two days ago, killing time at my mother's house. She was out of the room for some ten minutes but was then all "Is it still going? Wait, did The White Album have a locked groove as well?"

― Nag! Nag! Nag!, 1. lokakuuta 2018 12:21

Another two great records that didn't make my ballot.

That Ehlers album is fantastic. The John Cassavetes track is all time.

cool, a bunch of stuff I don't know! I have heard the Ehlers and some SOTL but not that one

95. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: Tides (2014)
201 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/Ex3Term.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMKBKjmM5xE

btw, pulled up the kaitlyn aurelia smith on spotify
first thing i heard were birdsongs and wind chimes
immediately saved that shit

― brosario nawson (m bison), 17. tammikuuta 2015 6:22

kaitlyn aurelia smith: tides - you just woke up and you can float above the heap of thoughts on suspended waves of synthesis for a little while, calmly

― home organ, 18. joulukuuta 2015 7:13

Grounded in the work of these early electronic artists, the album feels like a natural extension of their meditative project. Its production is also predicated on practical use. It was produced originally as a soundtrack for Smith's mother's yoga classes. The slow modulation of the Buchla simulates breath on "Tides III," while sustained resonance on "Tides V" builds hypnotically. It is, in a word, relaxing.

Arielle Gordon, Resident Advisor

Does anyone know what happened between the original release of Tides and its reissue this year? I got it from Bandcamp in 2014 or 2015, and back then it had ten tracks, but at some point it disappeared from Bandcamp (thankfully I'd saved my copy on the hard drive), and then this January it was rereleased there with the final track ("Tides X") missing. What's up with that?

Looks like I need to hear that Ehlers record!

Anyway, as much I've enjoyed Smith's journey into synthpop/IDM freakiness, I wish she'd do another pure ambient album like this one day. Tides is the one record of hers to which I return the most; the RA review criticises it for being too new agey and too functional as yoga background music, but to me that's just a plus, and I don't even do yoga.

imago to thread if to thread he would.

A Life Without Fear is my favourite Ehlers but it can't reasonably be dubbed ambient.

and I don't even do yoga.

lol Tuomas. Never considered KAS for this poll, even though I do enjoy her music.

Everyone should hear that Ehlers record, you too Siegbran!

I voted for the Deepchord album, and although I was aware there might be complaints that it wasn’t ambient enough it was a vote for the second “reduced” disc.

There were other ones I voted for that might also raise eyebrows but they’re ambient to me!

I... forgot to vote. This weekend was particularly busy.

I nominated Deepchord - Immersions, which is amazing too.

some of my choices were grandfathered in from a time in my life when A. I had not reified "ambient" and B. there was no Internet to argue about it on

frex Future Sound of London's Lifeforms, which is a superposition of definitely and definitely not ambient

Yeah this is from around the time that the term IDM did not exist yet and all this stuff (FSOL, Global Communications, Autechre, Aphex Twin, beats-era-Biosphere) was called ambient.

I think my first exposure to 'ambient' was around 92/93 and it was some swirly, beat-driven Namlook excursion into the heart of the sun/inner space so I guess I am being daftly proscriptive about what is/what isn't ambient on here, really. So it goes.

it's interesting how this lasted only briefly before the more complex/abrasive stuff was shoved under the IDM label, and the laidback beats stuff became "downtempo".

Time Recordings' Em:t series was big for me in this respect, they rejected the "dance music" label that electronic music had, but also weren't into abrasive or glitch stuff... often focused on an evocation of place, which is a foundational aspect of the best ambient works for me. Like you could call it the Ambient 4: On Land branch of the family.

I would argue that FAX records carried on with that inclusive early-nineties spirit of ambient right until Pete Namlook's death and the label's folding in 2012. Though sadly the audience for their releases gradually dwindled, even though they kept on releasing quality music throughout the years; some of the albums from FAX's final years are just as good as their '90s classics.

Plays was a new one for me from the nominations thread, really impressed on first listen and I'm sure it'll grow on me.

I love Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith but haven't heard that particular album.

94. Meg Bowles: The Shimmering Land (2013)
201 points, 3 votes, 1 first place vote.

https://www.megbowlesmusic.com/img/Shimmer1000px.jpeg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctOuviFsVf4&list=PL7CHOwWwIsi9pbsRPYwvgJYKdD68_1FQE

Meg Bowles is one of my favourite ambient artists, it's always nice when people discover her music. I've said it before here, but IMO she would be more acclaimed if her albums weren't self-published and labelled (by herself, admittedly) "new age". The sort of hippie elements a lot of new age artists have are completely missing from her music, mostly it's just pure cosmic synth drones. (Personally I love corny hippie new age too, but I do understand why those elements alienate people.) If her records were published by an established ambient label, they'd probably be considered classics of the genre.

― Tuomas, Saturday, February 2, 2019 12:49 PM

Liking the Meg Bowles album. I think 'new age' would have seemed like a pejorative up until a couple of years ago but that sound is unexpectedly coming into vogue it seems.

― mirostones, Saturday, February 2, 2019 2:31 PM

Shimmering Land is the arena where tone poems meld into a galactic National Geographic of the spaceways before coming back to meditate in Earthly deserts. Everything, however, has a very very slow underlying pulse, and the listener is set within strange lands in order to contemplate what lies on the other side of so-called civilization and progress, places where Nature reigns supreme in all her brooding mystery…and not all that impressed with human beings while inviting consciousness to shed its limits and bask in primal oneness.

David N. Pyles, FAME

(Sorry about the self-quote there, but ILX doesn't have too many posts about Meg Bowles.)

Hmm, looks like that Youtube link didn't work, here's another one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctOuviFsVf4

This was my number 1 vote. Ambient music serves many uses in my life, but probably the most important one is that it helps me relieve stress and calm down. And ever since that album came out 6 years ago, it's been my top choice when I'm feeling anxious or stressed and need some music to take off the edge. There's no gimmicks or "wow!" moments, just some beautiful, serene soundscapes. So I couldn't anything else but put it on the top of my list for what it's done for me.

Oops, sorry, there was a typo with The Shimmering Land, it got 202 points, not 201.

Interesting. I'll be sure to check it out.

xp

Tuomas I really appreciate doing a top 100 here instead of 77 or 50

I've never even heard of this, I'm intrigued.

Will check it out too. Also reminds me that I bought a Lucette Bourdin album on Bandcamp after your recommendation and then forgot to include it when I voted, despite really enjoying it :(

i woke up on Sunday morning and my first thought was: "I forgot to include one of my favorite albums on my ballot."

So, everyone, please please please spend time with David Behrman's On the Other Ocean.

Also, this Meg Bowles record is gorgeous, thank you Tuomas

93. 2814: 新しい日の誕生 (2015)
202 points, 4 votes.

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4099353330_10.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9L4q-0Pi4E

I’ll be satisfied when 2814 is a brand and I can buy a faded T-shirt with the cover of 新しい日の誕生 on it at target

― calstars, Saturday, March 3, 2018 12:17 AM

2814 isn’t vaporwave. More like ambient phaser slush

― calstars, Thursday, May 10, 2018 5:54 AM

新しい日の誕生 sets itself apart with a vivid, picturesque scope and wide ambient landscapes. The dominant theme here is drift. Sometimes the duo deal in drone—like on "テレパシー" where they luxuriate in a constant tone for over 10 minutes, savouring every miniscule tonal change and decay across the lengthy runtime. And decay is another prominent aspect that separates 新しい日の誕生 from the pack. Where vaporwave is often resolutely digital and clinical, the duo indulge in Basinski-like looping.

Andrew Ryce, Resident Advisor

Table is Table, don't worry, your favourite album might show up anyway. :)

Too low. :(

Might not be trve enough anyway.

Will check it out Table!

xp Aw yeah, 2814!

Btw Calstars, did you get to vote in this?

evocation of place, which is a foundational aspect of the best ambient works for me

Yes!

I'm very happy with the title of this thread. And the last-place album receiving three votes seems pretty decent to me.

Agree about landscape being a fundamental part of ambient - it informs a fair chunk of my ballot.

And, table, I voted for Behrman!

Oh god, thank you all for redeeming my absentmindedness. I really don't know how I missed the Behrman on my ballot. I think I was the one who nominated it, even!

92. Labradford: Fixed::Context (2010)
204 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/SfddtsX.jpg?2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEvSf8PDTwQ

Fixed:content is so... Stately and Elegant.

― nerve_pylon, Thursday, October 14, 2010 7:00 AM

It's slow, contemplative music. There are no pyrotechnics and leather-pants. Perhaps boring for some tastes, but in my book Labradford-- particularly on their last 3 albums-- is among the most interesting and affecting bands I've ever heard.

― Dog/Face/Chain (res), Thursday, October 23, 2008 11:14 PM

The last three are great and would serve perfectly as soundtracks for David Lynch movies.

― Melvin van Osterlow, Jr. (res), Sunday, January 17, 2010 6:19 AM

Labradford are a band I keep coming back to - something in the stately progress, that sense of metallic dust in abandoned rooms... I always listen to them on planes, for some reason.

― Sunn O))) Brother Where Art Thou? (Chinaski), Monday, January 16, 2017 2:46 PM

91. Richard Skelton: Landings (2009)
205 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/eujq05U.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b2JekoRxR8

Richard Skelton is one of my very favourite musicians of the last few years. Everything he's done that I have is amazing; particularly notable is the attention to the physical packaging etc (though even without that, the music is amazing).

― toby, Wednesday, January 13, 2010 8:59 PM

Want to echo the Richard Skelton love upthread - Landings is great. Maybe I just don't listen to enough of this sort of thing, but the strings on it sound fantastic, there's a really earthy resonance to them.

― We should have called Suzie and Bobby (NickB), Saturday, February 13, 2010 10:46 PM

Man... just discovered this today and it's jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Fantastic, meditative and ethereal music. Shoots straight to my heart.

― Y Kant Lou Reed (Le Bateau Ivre), Saturday, November 5, 2011 3:54 PM

cool, don't know that Skelton one at all

i used to work in a very special sector of retail, and the music was perhaps one of the only redeeming qualities of the job, alongside the copious free stuff. (i worked for a notoriously pricey luxury skincare brand from Australia in their brick and mortar stores in SF).

i played SotL endlessly, and we also listened to lots of Hammock, Andrew Chalk, and the soundtrack to The Proposition. all of this was on a work iPod at some point.

later, when i was able to choose from "stations," i often played the "postpunk" station and could be found slathering face cream on rich folks while rocking out to Kitchens of Distinction lol

good work/music crossover there

would this be a skincare brand people tell fables about

Vitamin Aesops?

xposts yes, that company.

chill out stores

Discovering so many great new records thanks to this thread. You guys knocked it out of the park again.

https://imgur.com/w3eE03K

This thread continues to reveal riches. My latest find is Pentamerous Metamorphosis which, with the garden full of late, golden light, is just about perfect right now.

I've been slowly working my way through the top 100 and so far my number one discovery is Apollo which I would have had in the top three of my ballot if I'd heard it befor voting. I picked up the reissue on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing as well, so that was nice.

It comes with a bonus disc of new material from Brian and Roger Eno and Daniel Lanois which is well worth checking out. This was a pleasant surprise as I've not been too impressed with Eno's work from this century (not that I've heard much of it).

Ending (An Ascent) from Apollo would surely be in the top three if we did an ambient tracks poll

Er I guess it's "An Ending (Ascent)"

I bought that David Behrman CD, so good

I Am The Center is the best new discovery for me - so far!

The weird thing is a went on a long meditation retreat at the beginning of the year and swear to god the view was exactly like the cover - same configuration of peaks, bathed in moonlight etc.

Please take me to your meditation retreat. I will literally say nothing!

i've made several great discoveries through this but one i just can't get my head round is the Constance Demby. Apart from a sublime 5 minute section on side 2 it is just so bombastic, as if John Williams went New Age. i just don't get it at all. What am i missing?

all the Hearts of Space stuff seemed indefensibly patently false to me as a teenager. then I turned 30. around 2003, those digitally sampled violins & oboes & choral pads became hilarious instead of offensive, then charming, and then 10 years later vaporwave further fused the strengths and weaknesses into one weird mess once all those sounds showed up in software, and now... I just don't know any more but laughing's more fun than crying

(Novus Magnificat would not be first stop for me but I give it props for being inescapable, the opening of side 1 got used as a bed on 80's episodes of Over The Edge all the time)

the eponymous Hearts of Space track sums up the tightrope of good & bad taste -- the first half is so ridiculously great, you feel almost incredulous it doesn't get namechecked in the avant / modular synth field more often, and then... the horn solo starts and you understand exactly why. in the same way that Wolf Eyes was named after a Paul Winter record, the only appropriate sequel to this poll will launch from the '500 most extreme noise albums of all time' thread so we can see which albums are nominated to both

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L9_6EXei5A

posted on his dedicated thread, but saw Charlemagne Palestine perform an aural ritual for Tony Conrad a week or so ago, and it was sublime.

I will give the Constance Demby another 20 or 30 years then and report back.

Oddly, despite waiting for the horn solo on the Kevin Brahenyh to fill me with disgust I quite enjoyed it. I don't think i would have even just a few years ago.

slippery slope!

got to that Meg Bowles record that made the list. full on Hearts of Space renaissance! still sounds modern though.

even though both Windham Hill and Hearts of Space were frequently typed as stereotypical 'New Age' labels, they were basically diametrically opposed sounds - former being cleanly recorded acoustic chamber folk, and latter being the US response to 70's EU synth / kosmiche / space music. almost diametrically opposed - I can think of only one artist who was on both labels

now that the blanket 'New Age' term has stopped being as much of a perjorative, I'm seeing it's usually the HoS side of the aesthetic that's getting reclaimed

if anyone is interested in a recent iteration of a more Windham Hill style of ambient, I highly rec this record by Kayla Cohen, who records under the name Itasca. her more recent efforts include vocals and are also quite good, but this one is definitely for the Alex de Grassi fans. https://itasca.bandcamp.com/album/anns-tradition-2015

^^ I saw her play with Sarah Louise and Marisa Anderson, great show

cool! i missed her the last time she came here, sadly.

I just discovered Watermusic II by William Basinski through youtube autoplay and am loving it. Quite a lot better than Disintegration Loops for me.

Also Structures From Silence is absolutely amazing

check out The River as well, I love that one

a LOT of his stuff is better than Disintegration Loops!

i love disintegration loops, but i don't even think it should be directly compared to anything else he's done. as far as i know, that's the only "experimental" thing he's made (in the Nyman sense, of the outcome/results being uncertain) since it was based off a unique process, whereas everything else he's done is composed, right?

I think so, yes, good point

if you haven't ever heard the albums he did under the F.P And The Doubling Riders name, I love them very much

So it turns out Spittle Records (don't know them) released a six-CD box set of all the Doubling Riders stuff just this year, which I got! So far it sounds pretty great... only listened to Doublings and Silences Vol. 1 so far.

oh that's super cool! I might have to get that for the rarities disc.

My favorite basinski is probably el Camino real

^^ Mine too, but most of his records beside TDL are great imo. 'The Garden of Brokenness' is another great one, just like Melancholia and, indeed, The River.

my copy of the newly reissued Still Way by Satoshi Ashikawa arrived in the mail today!

although it was my #1 in this poll, i must admit that was a bit of a strategic vote (which didn't work).but still, it would have been in my (real) top 15. but that was based on a well-intentioned but scratchy youtube full album stream that i've been relying on for years. played through laptop speakers, or listened to on headphones.

listening to a clean copy of it, playing on my speakers at a moderate volume, with the sounds of the AC coming off and on and airplanes overhead, i must now recognize that it is in fact a top FIVE ambient album..of ALL TIME. it is a contemporary of releases by Hiroshi Yoshimura (who designed this cover) and Midori Takada (who plays vibraphone on this album, albeit "without expression" per ashikawa's request for the instrumental performances in the recordings), but where those albums succeed in part by being transportive, Still Way is more transformative (and that rhymes!). what i'm trying to say is that this 1982 album is minimal and repetitive but takes a completely different path than the celebrated minimalist composers. it's not just the sound palette, which is always lovely, with muted vibes, sustained harp string tones and intertwining flutes. maybe it's the way that extended passages loop for so long that they become distinct objects in themselves, only to slowly morph into a malleable form, almost always with the same instrument playing a variation on the melody, only it's hard to pinpoint when exactly anything changed. in the liner notes, from 1982, Ashikawa mentions being inspired by the sounds of a shaminsen in the neighborhood being gradually overtaken by rain, and then the shaminsen gradually reemerging as the rain dissipated. that's what this album is like. there you go - that's what i mean about this album. Ashikawa's liner notes manage to provide a better description of his music in a simple two-sentence story than all of my ravings.

my goal is to get someone who knows how to explain this better than me to write about it. this album deserves to be the Kind of Blue of ambient music

that sounds awesome

Will check that out. I just heard Soliloquy for Lilith by Nurse With Wound recently and am surprised it didn't feature in this

Bohren And The Club Of Gore are amazing by the way. Another awesome discovery from this thread so thanks to whomever nominated them

I voted for NWW! Also highly recommended: Salt Marie Celeste

i swear this is the poll and topic that just keeps on giving. you guys are amazing.

#153 Steve Roach - Quiet Music: The Original 3-Hour Collection, 2 votes, #1 votes, 141 points

how is this not top 10?????????????????

Do I have to listen to all three hours before I'm considered qualified to answer that question?

No cap but people really sat through many hours of bad music back in the days before electronic media didn't they. No wonder Stravinsky sparked a riot, those audiences were on short fuses!