[Snuggler]

Inspired by a recent post, I thought I'd make a thread for us to share our taste in Ambient music. My favorite genre, I'll get it started by listing a few of my personal favorites. I'd like to see what you guys have to offer, I'd love to find some new stuff as well. If you haven't heard any of this, I urge you to give any of these artists a listening. It's the perfect music for a late night drive or to listen to your iPod in bed at night.

AMBIENT

[removed since it doesn't really fit into the genre]



Seriously dood.

After you aquire that album.... do you like ambient electronic? Listen to Eluvium.

"Everything to Come"
"Indoor Swiming at the Space Station"
"New Animals From the Air"
"One"

If you enjoy this, listen to:
Brian Eno's Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks, incredible fucking album.

"An Ending (Ascent)"
"Always Returning"

For a (sort of) modern equivalent of Eno's ambient days, listen to Stars of the Lid.
"A Meaningful Moment Through a Meaning(less) Process"
"Dungtitled (In a Major)"
"Dopamine Clouds over Craven College"

[Empty]

Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 1 & 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z4cLmbw6q0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0q1g...eature=related

The second collection has been my go to sleeping music for years.

[Zeppu]

Classical Trancelations by Lowland.

Excellent remixes of classing trance tunes. Heard Seven Cities mix on di.fm and was immediately hooked. I highly recommend it.

Apart from that I love both of Sunlounger's Albums.
Another Day on the Terrace
Sunny Tales

<3

[djmattiepoo]

The Field - "Over the Ice"

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix OST - "Army Girl (Cammy Stage)"

Bvdub - "Dreaming Of Your Downfall"

Fripp & Eno - "Evening Star"

The KLF - "Madrugada Eterna"

Eluvium - "Zerthis was a Shivering Human Image"

"In the Radiator" by Bloemfontein is pretty dandy to me, too, but I can't seem to find it anywheres.

[subzero9285]

Vangelis has produced some excellent ambient music over the years.

Some examples;

Antarctica Echoes
Ask the Mountains
Prelude
Movement I, from El Greco
Memories of Blue

[OneEightZero]

Ooh, yes. Keep 'em coming.

I'll return the favor soon as I can return home. ^_^

[Visceir]

Helios? Loved their Eingya album.

Helios - Halving The Compass
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj55nG2tkKw

[Peru]

SAW 2 is a masterpiece.

'Music for Airports' is probably my favorite Eno ambient album.

[LethaL ImpuLse]

Oh hell yes. Ambient is one of my favorite genres of electronic music. Here's what I'm currently listening to:

Last Days. Seriously, shit is beautiful.

Some more from this artist: Fracture, New House

[djtiesto]

Thread needs an obligatory mention of The Orb. It's what introduced me to electronic music.

[AlternativeUlster]

http://deletedscenesforgottendreams.blogspot.com/

[umop_3pisdn]

Autechre
Atrium Carceri
Aphex Twin
Biosphere
Burial
Massive Attack
Fennesz

edit:

Autechre are still the best at minimal ambient, to me. And not just the best at that, either, since they don't fit into any genre as a whole very easily, and all of their music and not just their decidedly ambient stuff is pretty amazing... but tracks like parallel suns and Notwo just prove to me how great they are at creating more minimal and ambient compositions.

edit2:
Autechre - Parallel Suns
Autechre - Altibzz
Autechre - Notwo

All are from their most recent LP. In many ways it's some of their most subtle stuff.

[Critical Jeff]

Explosions in the Sky!

[joelseph]

Gaf's musical tastes and recommendations are so freaking strange!

----

Black Noise - Pantha Du Prince

[flyover]

"Thursday Afternoon" is my favorite by Eno:


It's a single, hour-long piece that's perfect background music for just about anything.

My favorite ambient album, period, is Stars of the Lid's "The Tired Sounds of..."


"The Lonely People (Are Getting Lonelier)" is a great song from that album. (Don't know why someone at YouTube used it for a video about spider hatchlings, though! :lol )

[Sraza]

Explosions in the Sky!

Yep, pretty much all of it. Although my favorite.
Explosions In The Sky - Six Days At The Bottom Of The Ocean
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wLXJASUOmI

[olore]

Will take awhile to go through all recommendations, keep `em coming GAF

[Critical Jeff]

Will take awhile to go through all recommendations, keep `em coming GAF

Best avatar on GAF.

[Cosmic Bus]

"Ambient" is one of those weird terms that's too broad for anyone's good. I mean, Pantha du Prince as ambient? Really? Even when you narrow it down to a more specific model, there's an absurd amount of material out there to digest, but like post-rock, even the weak stuff is pretty listenable -- but unlike post-rock, there's at least some variety within the genre, however wide-reaching it may be, and you don't necessarily feel like you're hearing the same quiet-loud-quiet shit a million times over.

http://deletedscenesforgottendreams.blogspot.com/

Yes. Also: The Cookshop + Anti-gravity Bunny + Shiannikureru

There are some great netlabels that offer their releases for free, too; High Linear is a favorite of mine.

Percussion Lab, Crónica and Fluid Radio each post a lot of ambient/drone material and mixes on a regular basis. I've found a shit-ton of amazing stuff through these sites.

[Buttonbasher]

Seconding Helios.

Check out The American Dollar too:

The American Dollar - Anything You Synthesize: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9wukyl_lyg

[Timo]

http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Shades...5924155&sr=8-1

M83's Digital Shades Vol. 1

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4t...the-kiss_music

By the Kiss is my favorite song off of the album.

[Miroku]

Tetsu Inoue

[teruterubozu]

Carbon Based Lifeforms -

Photosynthesis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_8G0zHMuwg
Tensor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbTUtCnCevU
MOS 6581 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtPTvyjtx3g
Set Theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23iuPKuPd30
Gryning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbYhE4y-FtY

Solar Fields -

Insum http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ACJDuMLHkU
Discovering http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXzeOLGXJeo
Cosmic Dessert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbfWUfzQYBA

[Sentry]

Don't know if this would even qualify, but I like it; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXFWrVTqIko

Some great stuff in this thread though, hard to keep up. :lol

[teruterubozu]

And of course, my favorite Eno albums:

[IMG]http://i49.************/10oldz8.jpg[/IMG][IMG]http://i46.************/a8th3.jpg[/IMG][IMG]http://i50.************/oayl39.jpg[/IMG]

[LethaL ImpuLse]

"Ambient" is one of those weird terms that's too broad for anyone's good.

Pretty much this. Some of the stuff that's been mentioned... like EITS, The American Dollar? It's great stuff, but I don't know if I would classify it as 'ambient', IMO.

Anyhow, I have another recommendation. An artist named 'Flica' from Kuala Lumpur of Malaysia.
Check this guy out if you enjoy Helios, Eluvium, etc. Really amazing stuff.



'Commes' from his album Telepathy Dreams

[b.e.r.g]

Carbon Based Lifeforms - Photosynthesis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_8G0zHMuwg Tensor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbTUtCnCevU MOS 6581 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtPTvyjtx3g Set Theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23iuPKuPd30 Gryning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbYhE4y-FtY Solar Fields - Insum http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ACJDuMLHkU Discovering http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXzeOLGXJeo Cosmic Dessert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbfWUfzQYBA

Now that's my kind of ambient... lovely! Thanks for sharing :)

[WorriedCitizen]

My favourite ambient album:

Between Interval - Radio Silence

[kitchenmotors]

+1 for M83's Digital Shades Vol 1.

Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 1 & 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z4cLmbw6q0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0q1g...eature=related The second collection has been my go to sleeping music for years.

Yes. I'm glad GAF did not disappoint me in this thread. :D

[Dr Bad Dude PHD]

My roomie always used to bust out Biosphere, I thought it was pretty good plus it had Twin Peaks samples in a few songs.

[Outdoor Miner]

So much good shit in this thread. Keep it coming!

[sunsetsf]

^^agreed. Thanks GAF. Remote Viewer "Be Honest" is one of my favs.

[∀ Narayan]

Secede:

1.) King of Sanda
2.) Born in a Tropical Swamp

Listen to them in order.

[Peru]

edit: Autechre are still the best at minimal ambient, to me. And not just the best at that, either, since they don't fit into any genre as a whole very easily, and all of their music and not just their decidedly ambient stuff is pretty amazing... but tracks like parallel suns and Notwo just prove to me how great they are at creating more minimal and ambient compositions.

And their new (not yet released) 'Oversteps' is BRILLIANT.

[LethaL ImpuLse]

Secede: 1.) King of Sanda 2.) Born in a Tropical Swamp Listen to them in order.

+1 for this. Secede is beyond incredible.

Has anyone else listened to this gem?
It's Plume from Loscil - sustainably dark and riveting drone-like ambiance; probably one of my favorite albums of all time.



Here's the track 'Rorschach': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lWW7XSEd-8
The album was also featured in the indie game Osmos, which is also a great game btw.

[mattiewheels]

i'd never heard of harmonia until this year, when i saw brian eno's name on one of their albums. this album's been my favorite of the year so far...very intense ambient from the members of Cluster and Neu!

[turnbuckle]

Yep, pretty much all of it. Although my favorite. Explosions In The Sky - Six Days At The Bottom Of The Ocean http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wLXJASUOmI

Came into this thread to check out recommendations, leaving thread hoping to never run into avatar thief again. Had me confused for a second :lol

[arts&crafts]

Now I am not sure the definition of ambient we are using in this thread but I really love "post-rock" instrumentals like Explosions In The Sky and Balmorhea. Anyone have any other band recommendations in this style?

[Scythesurge]

<3 Brian Eno.

Also a lot of other good suggestions, if I come up with some others I will post them.

[dasein]

Actually, I find the natural sounds of planets and space to be pretty ambient.

You guys should definitely check them out.

The following are sounds from Jupiter, dubbed "electromagnetic voices". Very cool:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3fqE01YYWs

Download the full mp3 (legally) here: http://www.audiofarm.org/soundmaster...ager-recording

[Brettison]

If you want a wide variety you guys should check out this album!

Kompakt Label that releases these cds!

Pop Ambient 2010


Tracklist:

01 Marsen Jules: "The Sound of One Lip Kissing"
02 Brock Van Wey/BVDUB: "Lest You Forget"
03 Triola: "Shildergasse"
04 Wolfgang Voigt: "Zither Und Horn"
05 Andrew Thomas: "Clouds Across Face"
06 The Orb: "Glen Coe"
07 Mikkel Metal: "Blue Items"
08 DJ Koze: "Bodenweich"
09 Jürgen Paape: "864M"
10 Dettinger: "Therefore"
11 Thomas Fehlmann: "In the Wind"
12 Popnoname: "Deutz Air"
13 Brock Van Wey/BVDUB: "Will You Know Where to Find Me"

[threenote]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93oS2HcSt2E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWILQBVDHf4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2KaJnVs8N4
Avalon Sutra by Harold Budd
one of my favorite albums of all time.

[AlternativeUlster]

"Ambient" is one of those weird terms that's too broad for anyone's good. I mean, Pantha du Prince as ambient? Really? Even when you narrow it down to a more specific model, there's an absurd amount of material out there to digest, but like post-rock, even the weak stuff is pretty listenable -- but unlike post-rock, there's at least some variety within the genre, however wide-reaching it may be, and you don't necessarily feel like you're hearing the same quiet-loud-quiet shit a million times over. Yes. Also: The Cookshop + Anti-gravity Bunny + Shiannikureru There are some great netlabels that offer their releases for free, too; High Linear is a favorite of mine. Percussion Lab, Crónica and Fluid Radio each post a lot of ambient/drone material and mixes on a regular basis. I've found a shit-ton of amazing stuff through these sites.

Added those to my bookmarks.

[valkillmore]

If you want a wide variety you guys should check out this album! Kompakt Label that releases these cds! Pop Ambient 2010 Tracklist: 01 Marsen Jules: "The Sound of One Lip Kissing" 02 Brock Van Wey/BVDUB: "Lest You Forget" 03 Triola: "Shildergasse" 04 Wolfgang Voigt: "Zither Und Horn" 05 Andrew Thomas: "Clouds Across Face" 06 The Orb: "Glen Coe" 07 Mikkel Metal: "Blue Items" 08 DJ Koze: "Bodenweich" 09 Jürgen Paape: "864M" 10 Dettinger: "Therefore" 11 Thomas Fehlmann: "In the Wind" 12 Popnoname: "Deutz Air" 13 Brock Van Wey/BVDUB: "Will You Know Where to Find Me"

That's the same Wolfgang Voigt behind GAS, one of my favourite ambient/drone outfits. They actually have a four-LP album up on iTunes right now, which is a 'box set' of sorts of their four main releases, which are very difficult to find on CD at this point. I paid $40 for GAS's 'Pop' about two years before this set was released.

I've still got Stars of the Lid's 'And Their Refinement of the Decline' in heavy rotation. Articulate Silences 1 & 2, I've probably listened to each of those tracks at least 100 times alone.

I'm also a huge Eno fan, Ambient 2 being my favourite album of his. Was pleasantly surprised to hear tracks off that album at the beginning of The Lovely Bones, worked very well.

[umop_3pisdn]

And their new (not yet released) 'Oversteps' is BRILLIANT.

I've never been so excited to listen to an LP... I didn't know it was already leaked (?!)

edit:

Just gave it a listen. Holy shit. How do Autechre keep getting better? I mean I knew they had far from peaked... but I suppose Autechre are always pregnant with surprises. It's February/March, and already the best album of 2010. These guys are incredible.

[ElectricBlue187]

I like Ambient music that's very quiet, basically white noise it helps me study

[Antagon]

Future sound of london - Lifeforms is an excellent album as well, especially for the people that like selected ambient works vol. 1 and the orb.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csOw3...eature=related

[flyover]

I like Ambient music that's very quiet, basically white noise it helps me study

Yeah, I often like when it's not too dynamic, and I don't usually like mine with beats or glitches. The Dead Texan (1/2 of Stars of the Lid), Hammock, and Johann Johannsson are about as aggressive as I like for background music.

With Eno, I also like when there's a little more randomness to his music. That's why I prefer his Thursday Afternoon to, say, Ambient 1 -- which is beautiful but sometimes too repetitive for me. (Love "2/1" though)

[Cosmic Bus]

Felt like reviving the topic after spending my evening lost in Ben Frost's work. He seems to have been transitioning over the past several years from more straightforward (yet exceptionally good) dark, fuzzed-out ambient to this terrifying, almost unholy sound on By the Throat. It's unnerved me tonight like few things can, and I say that in the best possible way.

In the space of just a handful of records, Australian-born musician Ben Frost has defined a very particular sound, which blends in elements of modern classical, metal and electronica into haunting cinematic soundscapes. Although his first album proper was published on Room40 in 2003, it is with his debut contribution for Valgeir Sigurðsson’s Bedroom Community, Theory Of Machines (2006) that he began to receive the attention he deserves. With his latest opus, By The Throat, Frost has developed a much more organic sound, which he developed with a number of collaborators, including Valgeir Sigurðsson, Nico Muhly, Sam Amidon, Swedish hardcore metal band Crowpath, Arcade Fire drummer Jeremy Gara and Icelandic string quartet Amiina. How did you come to music, and who influenced you in your formative years? I studied piano from the time I was like seven or eight years old and then studied music theory all through school. But my first real connection with a particular kind of music outside of the classical realm was probably with Metallica’s Master Of Puppets, Ice T’s Bodycount, and also my parents listened to a lot of Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Fleetwood Mac… A sizeable portion of my initial exposure to music happened in the mid eighties- when Tears For fears ruled the world (pun intended), later on I guess I found Nirvana, The Birthday Party, The Dirty Three, the Smashing Pumpkins, Trent Reznor, and then I suppose through those bands I found a lot of material I missed because I was too young to appreciate it at the time- specifically The Cure, Joy Division, Swans, Big Black, Coil… I don’t know really, I could go on forever… then, I mean, the first truly electronic music I remember taking an interest in was Autechre’s Amber LP and Mick Harris’s Scorn recordings, long after I had started playing in bands, I had never really heard anything like that before. _______________________________ Your first album, released as Frost, was entirely guitar-based and very ambient. How did you work on that album, and do you think you will ever return to something so bare? Even at that point in time I knew myself well enough to know that in order to make a record that simple I needed to restrict it with both time, influence, space and instrumentation. I packed my car with a couple of guitars and amps and rented a small house in the middle of nowhere, with no net, no phone, not even a radio. I had to come home with a finished record. It was really that simple. I made the rules and then obeyed them. If I wanted to I could do it again, no doubt. In fact Lawrence (English) and I have talked about it at length just this last month. I just need to decide what exactly it is I want to do and where I want to do it and then just set the time aside. Your first album for Bedroom Community, Theory Of Machines, was a pretty complex and dark affair, where guitars still appeared, but very often in treated form, and the inspiration seem to be pretty far reaching, from electronica to metal and to noise and drones. Was working on the album a very different process to what you’d done before? Leading up to that record my music was just getting better I think, becoming more concerned with form, and overall shape rather than influences. I was studying with Darrin Verhagen and Phillip Samartzis who were both, in their own ways very hard on me, and made me face the weaknesses in my work and address them, which I owe a lot too particularly in regards to Theory Of Machines. I was searching for something that was more immediate and dangerous. At that time, that sort of 2000-2004 period, Melbourne had become engulfed in this fender twin, reverberated post Mogwai shoegaze thing that I, along with everyone else was drowning in. I walked into a record store one day around 2003-04 I guess, which at that time was owned by Oren Ambarchi and I recall mentioning how I had found my way back to the Swans, Big Black and a lot of metal because for me that was kind of an antithesis to everything around me then, but how also I was actually fascinated by some of these nu-metal records, the texture of them; so hi-fi, so clinical and so brutally cold. It was fascinating to me; Slipknot, Korn, The Deftones… I couldn’t put my finger on what I meant exactly, I mean, the music itself was mostly irrelevant, but I remember at one point I said, “what is there that sounds like this, but works like this” and I held up two records: (The Deftones’) White Pony, and Arvo Pärt ‘s Tabula Rasa. He couldn’t name anything, and in a very crude and simplified way, I knew there and then there was a record that needed to be made that could feed on that space By The Throat, your new album, is possibly even darker than Theory Of Machines, but it is also very different. How did you approach it? Did you have a clear idea of where you wanted to go with this one, and is the finish product close to your original idea of it? It’s interesting to me that the description of music in print often comes down to basic visual metaphors like light and dark when what is really being described is the emotional hue, or “colour” of a record. We need a better lexicon for the description of music I think. I always knew the colours would be different, it had to be warmer and have more distance than Theory, and a luminescent glow to it where Theory Of Machines was unashamedly stark and clinically defined. But I also knew it would be a “nocturnal” record too. From day one this record evoked a fiery, burning glow set against ink black.

Audio

"You, Me and the End of Everything"
"We Love You, Michael Gira"
"Killshot"
"Through the Glass of the Roof
Through the Roof of Your Mouth
Through the Mouth of Your Eye"

Youtube

"Leo Needs a New Pair of Shoes" live at Greenhouse Studios
"Music for 6 Guitars" live at Iceland Airwaves

[hateradio]

I always liked Tujiko Noriko, although she has vocals.

There's this guy by the name of Galerie Stratique: http://www.archive.org/search.php?qu...20Stratique%22

That you can get and listen to for free from archive.


Also I like Dictaphone and Baja.


So, some that hadn't been mentioned.