Ambient Recommendations

xp Yeah that label delivers the goods very well. Ended up subscribing to zake in full.

I used to be obsessed with Honigpumpe so I'm glad to hear about some new Fehlmann

Honigpumpe is a fucking class album btw!

If I could be bold and recommend myself.

It began as sort of a salute to Tetsuo Inoue's 'World Receiver', one of my favourite ambient records.

Lot's of radio voices and environmental recordings tied with 12 pieces borne out of little keyboard improvisations in one hour-long track.

There's even a very loose version of a Broadcast tune.

https://nowherians.bandcamp.com/album/rabbits-make-mochi-on-the-moon

If you need something soothing and lord knows I do, I can't recommend this Takashi Kokubo collection enough (very much on the new age end of Kankyo Ongaku):

https://takashikokubo.bandcamp.com/album/healing-collection-quiet-comfort

Latest Blank Gloss is lovely: https://blankgloss.bandcamp.com/album/melt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6p4u7XT_CY

I thought for sure this revive was going to be about this:

My condolences to all the ambient artists linked in Samuel McLemore's @toneglow blurb for the new Space Afrika recordhttps://t.co/uwHe6yesT2 pic.twitter.com/HUSkQGxDEQ

— Joshua Minsoo Kim (@misterminsoo) September 6, 2021

Has that not hit ILM yet? Or is it happening in another thread?

Oof. Is it The Disintegration Loops he's referencing in that last paragraph?

Ah nm, seen there's actual links to those getting dissed on the review on the website

Blank Gloss has been a really nice discovery for me, very into January (2020) and look forward to checking out Melt

not sure it qualifies as ambient but Hideyuki Hashimoto's minimal, subdued piano pieces have been hitting the spot for me lately https://hideyukihashimoto.com/

what's up with that Samuel McLemore dude, seems very negative, maybe time 2 chill 2 sum ambient tunez

Ah, I kept seeing odd emails about "ambient" on Twitter yesterday but couldn't make any sense of them.

those tone glow review panels offer a safe space for today's youth to engage in rampant consequence-free challoping in bafflingly microscopic arenas, fuckin love it

i too came here for that revive

love the careerist dig. god forbid someone make a living (or even $20) from their (ambient) music! lol, what an incredibly remote possibility

not that this is news for any of you, but as someone who works weekends at a record shop with an above-average "left-field/electronic" section...99% of our customers don't know who any of those artists linked in that piece are. afaic, anyone who likes music and is open to new music is cool by me. any gateway into a new genre (esp one as niche as 'ambient') for a listener is rad + should be celebrated. and i like saying "this record sux" as much as anyone

hmmm, on one hand i completely agree with you.

but on the other, maybe ambient music is just way too popular now and it's starting to get a little annoying for ambient dudes to recommend stuff that other people have already heard. and plus the new people who like ambient don't properly understand what made the top-tier stuff so good. also, the new ambient music likers probably buy face masks and do yoga and stuff like, but not like the people in the 80s did it, back when all that was very very underground

the gates of ambient music must be kept strong. a gate is not a gate if everyone passes through. a fully realized gate must create and enforce ingroups and outgroups. and at the top of that gate are the keepers. i reside in the castle, eating raw onions and spitting all over myself

here is a new ambient album I like: https://nueen.bandcamp.com/album/circular-sequence-2

take that tweet to the pitchfork thread or trend forecasting thread something, wtf who cares

here are a few cool records

https://nikolaienko-faitiche.bandcamp.com/album/rings

https://dust-editions.bandcamp.com/album/varispeed-hydra

https://v-i-s.bandcamp.com/album/wanderung-durch-wald-und-flur

sorrrrrrrry

don’t apologize, I apologize for not knowing about that tweet before this thread revive and for not caring and for posting ambient recommendations that might not be ambient. we’re all sorry

no, that was an ambient sorry!

*looks deep down into the infinite well*

"sooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

jks all around of course <3

i am working my way through these recommendations, as always. i drifted off to the new Blank Gloss last night and quite enjoyed that! and now i'm listening to the Circular Sequence release. bongo do you know how many tapes there were before it sold out?

ohhhhhhhhh ok shit sorry KM

I gotta say i’m not really into the mallet ambient stuff or clean cleansing ambient or overly healing crystal ambient. And I admit I did roll my eyes when I saw the dude from grizzly bear put an album out on music for memory. what does this dude think about proflific post-vaporwave ambient eg Dream Catalogue and adjacent? I don’t think I want to know!

this dude: Samuel tweet guy. Ok done posting.

seconding the good tip on that Blank Gloss -- recall hearing + liking that track on Pop Ambient and completely spaced on them afterwards

xp yeah i've never read the sam dude or the toneglow substack, either! they seem angry and disappointed at the state of ambience though.

i think sometimes it's dangerous to get too deep into things. i'd rather be the little wooden thing rolling against the lip of a tibetan singing bowl

Cherry picking ambient albums that have a "gimmick" whether authentic in their attention or indeed for marketing purposes, doesn't really address all of the not so "stagnant" examples out there. Surely if there is a surge in popularity there will be an influx of good AND "bad"...

Omg weird did my hands type "attention" when I meant "intention"? I meant intention*

not sorry for posting that tweet, i think it's funny and dumb and interesting all at once, and the resulting conversation (that i saw) on Twitter was actually pretty evenly split between people who thought it was ridiculous and people who, basically agree

what i wanna know is ... Julianna Barwick a narcissist? wha?

also, my "not sorry" was going along w/ the jokes, though now it seems all indignant because other stuff has posted before

i guess i don't know if i'm sorry or not

it's better to hover on the edge of sorry, between the subliminal and the liminal states of perception of wrongality

*wrongitude

I will say that I don't really understand the Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith praise. I wouldn't call her a ghoul, though— the music just seems ratioed to hell. It's also strange that McLemore cites Speaker Music as a critical take without referencing how it's a critical take, and how people like KMRU (among others) are doing quite a bit to dispel the notion that ambient music is colonial, or white, music. Deforrest Brown, like all people, has an agenda, and that's to promote his own vision of what music should be— sonic weaponry. (Really, his latest EP is great, but it has more in common with the wilder side of Jamal Moss and the drum-programming of Theo Parrish than anything else. https://speakermusic.bandcamp.com/album/soul-making-theodicy-2)

There's definitely a lot of bad ambient out there, but that's fine, because there's a lot of bad music out there, period.

jks all around of course <3

i am working my way through these recommendations, as always. i drifted off to the new Blank Gloss last night and quite enjoyed that! and now i'm listening to the Circular Sequence release. bongo do you know how many tapes there were before it sold out?

― Karl Malone, Wednesday, September 8, 2021 9:44 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

seemed like a small run, I think it was like 100 or 150, but I didn't buy the tape for some reason

tbf it is interesting to see this weak vitrol making the 15 min splash that it is (I have heard about this irl from ambient people as of this afternoon), but I guess the ambient world is so scene-y that a lot of people tend to be openly uncritical (of course being extremely critical in private), plus there aren't any music criticism places anymore that aren't straight PR. My own reaction is that yeah it's kind of funny, but who cares

Thanks brimstead for reminding me of that great Richard von der Schulenburg album, one of my earliest Bandcamp purchases if I'm remembering right, so nice I'm gonna link it twice
https://v-i-s.bandcamp.com/album/wanderung-durch-wald-und-flur

(Also, listening now to that Nikolaienko on Faitische that brimstead likewise rec'd--had already cursorily wishlisted it at some point recently and kept it moving, but damn this is nice too, reminding me a bit of Bellows' amazing creepy/sleepy tape loop alb Undercurrents on Black Truffle from last year)

https://nikolaienko-faitiche.bandcamp.com/album/rings
https://blacktruffle.bandcamp.com/album/undercurrent

Just saw new Pendant was announced:
https://westmineral.bandcamp.com/album/to-all-sides-they-will-stretch-out-their-hands-ouest091

...and had to get that Nikolaienko after a couple spins, another one that totally slipped past me. V nice.

This piano/cello collab with lots of field recording vibes is hitting the spot for me.

https://nataliabeylis.bandcamp.com/album/whose-woods-these-are

Hoping new Pendant gets a physical release

Vinyl version (w/ digital) is at Boomkat now: https://boomkat.com/products/to-all-sides-they-will-stretch-out-their-hands

I would think Forced Exposure would have some as well, but not listed yet.

Excellent, thank you! I love MMKYS and I'm stoked for this

that Whose Woods These Are by Eimear Reidy & Natalia Beylis is v nice thanks

glad you dig! i'm a real sucker for cello-forward ambient. my album of the year is Anne Bourne's wave

i also listened to that yesterday and dug, table! i'll check out Anne Bourne later today. i always save your up your reccos for my painting time. really just any recco on this thread

FUCK!

i'm going to start punishing myself for typos. the carrot approach did not work. we're just using the stick now

Back when I wrote about music (late 00s/early 10s) I was all over the ambient/drone scene. Now, I'm back to being bewildered by the possibilities and this thread (and the other ambient threads) are my only real way into the scene (whatever that means).

When I can stop listening to the new Low record, I'll check these out.