Arctic ambient is a minimal and obviously chilling style of music. It’s basically what thirty below sounds like. More isolated than most other things. The wall of ambient sound will sometimes resemble harsh arctic winds and the like. It’s generally full of nuances and different textures, it may as well be snow in audio form. This kind of minimalist stuff is more engulfing and calming than other types of ambient in my eyes. Easier to get lost.
Thomas Koner here is top of the game. Welcome to the north pole.
SleepResearch Facility - Deep Frieze
Now here’s a stunner, possibly the best I’ve heard from the genre.
Described as "Ultra deep, glacial Dark Ambient, based around Antarctic co-ordinates", what else do you need to hear? An entity of sound. Then again, I am no album review expert, and while I love this music, I lack much of the proper musical and sound knowledge to go too far in depth with the ambient reviews… Still...
...there is a certain comforting warmth in the encroaching slumber of hypothermia
Battle Dagorath
This is a cut above the rest in my eyes. Incredibly solid atmospheric black metal. They utilize minimalism and repetition to the fullest, creating long icy jams. This album here is my favorite, and one of my black metal favorites altogether. In the vein of Paysage d’Hiver and things like that, a perfect mix of freezing ambience and raw walls of sound. Now these guys have surely dedicated everything to cold. Look at all their covers. Read the song titles. Snowy mountains and trees, souls and darkness and all that. Among the most monolithic and massive of the style. I was already hooked though, before even hearing the music, just seeing that awesome name.