It's Ambient Week!
 

Really excited about Deaf Center's Owl Splinters this year. Probably my favourite ambient release, definitely top 10.

I don't listen to the genre as much as I would like, but this is certainly a favorite of mine

^ That`s a nice track.
When you`re making such subdued music, I imagine you have got to pay attention to getting the details just right, and that`s what The Fireman has done, with some subtle but intriguing sounds.

As far as I know, the whole ambient genre started with this guy`s simple but original idea, and the extraordinarily haunting album that resulted from it:

If you haven't checked out Peace Orchestra it's a pretty chill album. Not exactly ambient but somewhere on the spectrum.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...stra_Album.jpg


Edit: Actually just re-listening to that album it isn't ambient in the slightest LOL. Still nice stuff though.

One of the (unknown) masters of atmospheric music...



A track from my favorite ambient artist.

I was listening to about seven hours worth of dark ambient type music the other day at work on Last.FM. Had a good mix of ambient black metal, ambient jazz, ambient electronica, and just plain old ambient. And then occasional mixes of all of them at once.

Anyway, I'm really digging Bohren & der Gore Club right now. Dark ambient and jazz, and they themselves claim doom metal influences... very cool stuff.

Also my favourite. Stars of the Lid are one of my favourite groups in general, actually. I like most of the Kranky ambient/drone artists but none top SotL.

this is my fave ambient piece:-



others are:-

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Volume 2
Future Sound of London - Lifeforms

can't really put any single one track cos both needs to be heard in their entirety

http://www.trebuchet-magazine.com/im...rtwork_350.jpg

Tim Hecker - Ravedeath 1972 (2011)

This artist has been getting a lot of plays from me this year, this album in particular, but his older stuff is just as good. It's not quite dark ambient, but it does a great job at straddling the line between background and foreground noise. It's something you can actively listen to, but not have it get in the way of whatever it is you're doing (for example I listened to this while working on a 45-page paper last semester). The sound can best be described as desolate, the soundtrack you'd expect to be playing while walking through a ruined post-apocalypse city or something. Definitely worth checking out if you're looking for something from this year.

Bass Communion - Ghosts on Magnetic Tape.

Yesyesyesyesyesyesyes

I find that there is a crossover of music that is put under the umbrella of 'Ambient' and it can mean many different things to different people. Balearic Chillout, Muzak, Minimalism, Krautrock and even Prog Rock could all be classed as one form of Ambient or another.

Personally I don't think that any one particular genre is more relevant than another and although in the true sense of the term Ambient suggests to most a steady and stable sound that eschews rhythm and instead relies on monotony, in pure listening terms I am in the camp of those that get the maximum enjoyment from laid back sounds no matter what genre they come from.

So ALL these songs are Ambient to me:





Kudos to the Stars Of The Lid mentions. They occupy the minimalistic side of Ambient but hold the attention beautifully if you are in the mood for such a stripped down sound.

Probably the finest of early 20th century composers that fit the bill:



I could throw out names like Steve Reich, Rhys Chatham, The Field etc but I am sure many people know about them too and that their music is so pure that we may fall asleep ;) I am a fan but a snippet of Chatham is not the best convincer in the short term.

To me, keywords are evocations and atmosphere.

*Jean Michel Jarre: Waiting for Cousteau. Imagine the ocean depths. And Zoolook: in my opinion, a great album. It is from 1984, but its sound still surprises me.



*Mike Oldfield's album The Songs of Distant Earth. Inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's science-fiction novel.



*Jam & Spoon, a German band (1991–2005):



*A very particular subgenre: Flamenco Chill. This group is Chambao:

Of course it's ambient week! I've been listening to a lot of ambient latley, what a coincidence. Latley I've been digging the likes of Brian Eno, Mike Oldfield and Aphex Twin. Last couple albums I've bought were Brian Eno's 'Ambient 1: Music For Airports' and Aphex Twin' Selected Ambient Works '85-'92.

I got into ambient through psytrance and downtempo music. It's not so exciting, but it makes for excellent sleeping music, smoking music, or contemplative/meditative music

So, so pleased to see "Ess Gee" mentioned here. My love for Underworld knows no bounds and that selection is a fond favorite. Underworldfan94's Extended Ansum Edition of A Hundred Days Off from 2016 was one the best fan mixes ever to come out of the Dirty forum.

And I was going to keep this a secret until my Christmas post, but I treated myself to two essential grails of the ambient genre on vinyl to celebrate the holiday. Here are Stars of the Lid's And Their Refinement of the Decline and The Tired Sounds of... on wax.

https://i.imgur.com/7Nbbea4l.jpg

Great band!

https://is4-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/t...1200x630bb.jpg

masayoshi fujita & jan jelinek - bird lake objects