It's Ambient Week!

[Paedantic Basterd]

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric",[2] "visual"[3] or "unobtrusive" quality.

Originally Posted by RYM

Ambient is a style that describes a large spectrum of music. Ambient music puts more emphasis on actual sound than musical structure, aimed at forming a particular atmosphere or mood with the help of conventional and unconventional instruments, sound clips, and sometimes vocal clips. Singing in ambient music can be done, although a good deal of ambient is instrumental.

Ambient music is not limited to any particular mood or sound, but rather embraces the idea that any mood or atmosphere can be achieved through sound alone, rather than needing to rely on music composition or song structure. Ambient has been incorporated into a large amount of various already-existing musical genres, due to its extremely compatible usage and versatility.

Top Ambient releases as rated by RYM users

[Paedantic Basterd]

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

[Electrophonic Tonic]

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

[Lisnaholic]

^ 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:

[Stephen]

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




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

[TockTockTock]

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



A track from my favorite ambient artist.

[Blarobbarg]

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.

[GravitySlips]

Originally Posted by Jack Pat

A track from my favorite ambient artist.

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.

[Howard the Duck]

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

[LoathsomePete]

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.