Your nominations for the ILX AMBIENT ALBUMS POLL (nominations close on Friday, May 31st)

Okay, people asked for an ambient albums poll, so let's do it! Here's the rules:

* You can nominate up to 30 records.

* You have until Friday, May 31st, midnight GMT to post your nominations to this thread.

* Only albums or album-length recordings qualify. You can nominate a maxi-single or an EP, but it needs to be at least 30 minutes long.

* Any record that's released as self-contained album counts as one album. So, for example, if you nominate Max Richter's Sleep, that's still just one nomination, even though it has 8 CDs. On the other hand, multi-album compilations don't count as one. For example, Lorenzo Montanà's Trilogy/i] is not a single album, cos the three discs on it had previously been released as separate albums. You should nominate those indididual albums instead of the comp.

* Classical compositions qualify, but you need to specify which recording of the piece your nominating. Like this, for example: John Tavener - Towards Silence (Signum Classics 2010). Also, you’re nominating the entire album, so if it has one 10 minute ambient composition and 50 minutes of non-ambient pieces, you probably should consider whether it fits here. The same applies to other genres too, obviously: if an album has some ambient interludes, but most of it is banging techno, it doesn't really qualify.

* There are no strict genre restrictions, so you can nominate stuff that’s usually labelled as new age, space music, minimal techno, drone, jazz, contemporary classical, musique concrete, etc, if you feel it also counts as ambient music. I'm not gonna disqualify anything, as long as it's a record that's at least 30 minutes long.

* However, you should remember that the main characteristic of ambient music is that it's non-intrusive background music that doesn't call attention to it with abrasive or aggressive sonics, dancey beats, fast tempo and mood changes, catchy hooks, etc. So, for example, something like Aphex Twin's [i]Selected Ambient Works 85-92 wouldn't (despite its title) really qualify as ambient defined this way because of its fast techno rhythms. Nor would albums by Enya; even though they are definitely new age, and many new age records are definitely ambient, Enya's music is too pop and hook-oriented to be in that category. Again, I'm not gonna stop anyone from nominating anything just because I don't think is ambient, but hopefully you'll consider these things before nomming some IDM classics or something.

So those are specifics, now start nominating!

Might as well kick it off with a few:

2814 - Birth of a New Day
Akira Rabelais - Spellewauerynsherde
Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works, Vol. II
Black Swan - Aeterna
Brian Eno - Ambient 4: On Land
The Caretaker - Everywhere at the End of Time
Global Communication - 76:14
raison d’être - The Empty Hollow Unfolds
Robert Rich - Somnium
Robert Rich & Lustmord - Stalker
Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid
Tangerine Dream - Zeit
Tim Hecker - Harmony in Ultraviolet

(13/30)

Oh and

Celer - Engaged Touches
The Haxan Cloak - Excavation

(15/30)

some personal faves, more later:

David Jackman - Sol Mara
Organum - Vacant Lights
Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music For Airports
Aeolian String Ensemble - Lassithi/Elysium
Chihei Hatakeyama - Minima Moralia
Gas - Pop
Climax Golden Twins - Lovely
Harold Budd - Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror

8/30

David Hykes & the Harmonic Choir – Hearing Solar Winds
Satoshi Ashikawa - Still Way
Hiroshi Yoshimura ‎– Music For Nine Post Cards
Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid
Stars of the Lid - The Ballasted Orchestra
Gas - Königsforst
William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops
Brian Eno - Discreet Music
Harold Budd / Brian Eno - The Pearl
Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon

10/30

whoops, i've already managed to duplicate a nomination (SotL - tired sounds)

Gavin Bryars - The Sinking of The Titanic (Point 1995)
Constance Demby - Novus Magnificat
David Hykes & The Harmonic Choir - Hearing Solar Winds
Paul Horn - Inside the Great Pyramid
Ingram Marshall - Fog Tropes - Gradual Requiem
Popol Vuh - In The Gardens of Pharao

6/30

Whoops, missed David Hykes already nommed, so 5/30

Tony Conrad - Four Violins
Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972
Eliane Radigue - Trilogie de Mort
Eliane Radigue - Adnos I-III
Belong - October Language
Folke Rabe - What??
Eluvium, Talk Amongst the Trees
Laraaji, Ambient 3: Day of Radiance
Earth, 2
Charlemagne Palestine, Strumming for Bosendorfer Piano
Shamantis, U Smile (800% Slower)
Sunroof!, Bliss
Brian Eno - Apollo
Lichens - The Psychic Nature Of Being
Phil Niblock - Nothing to Look at Just a Record
La Monte Young - Dream House 78' 17"
La Monte Young - The Black Record
La Monte Young - The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath
Keith Fullerton Whitman - Playthroughs
Keith Fullerton Whitman - Lisbon

Here's my nominations:

Alio Die & Sylvi Alli ‎– Amidst the Circling Spires
Alquimia ‎– "Coatlicue" Goddess of the Earth
Baked Beans ‎– Baked Beans
Biosphere - Departed Glories
Constance Demby – Novus Magnificat: Through the Stargate
Debit - Animus
Éliane Radigue – Jetsun Mila
France Jobin ‎– Intrication
Iotronica – Of Moons and Stars
John Tavener - Towards Silence (Signum Classics 2010)
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – Tides
Khan & Walker ‎– Empire State Building
Lorenzo Montanà ‎– Phase IX
Lucia Hwong ‎– Secret Luminescence
Lucette Bourdin - Nordic Waves, Vol. 2: Spring
Mariolina Zitta ‎– Concert for Bats, Voices and Natural Sounds
Meg Bowles – The Shimmering Land
Minilogue - Blomma
Move D ‎– The Silent Orbiter
Music to Films ‎– Music to Films
Oliver Lieb – Inside Voices
Omni Vu Deity ‎– Uvunayatu
Organic Cloud – Organic Cloud
Shades of Orion – Shades of Orion 2
Solar Quest ‎– Orgship
Sheila Chandra – ABoneCroneDrone
Silence – Silence V
Suzanne Ciani ‎– Seven Waves
Vangelis – Soil Festivities
Zalys - Sublime

(30/30)

Hiroshi Yoshimura - Wave Notation 1: Music for Nine Post Cards
Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster & Panaiotis - Deep Listening
Ben Frost - By the Throat
Ben Frost - AURORA
Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto - Insen

Music for Nine Post Cards already nominated :)

lotta great stuff already

I think IDM classics are mostly ambient techno, so I'm rather against their inclusion too.

Would any of these qualify?
Eno + Laraaji - Ambient 3 (I see Whiney already nommed it)
Fennesz - Venice
Richard Skelton - Landings
Julia Kent - Asperities

My nominations:
Oren Ambarchi - Triste
Colleen - The Golden Morning Breaks
Eluvium - Copia
Kinski - Don't Climb On And Take The Holy Water
Labradford - E Luxo So
Labradford - fixed::context
A Winged Victory for the Sullen - Atomos

7/30

napalm death

^i did make a quick 10% time stretch of "you suffer", and it's the most ambient 20 second burst of pain you've ever heard

so were conflating ambient and drone again

anything without a pulse is ambient now

tony Conrad - fine purveyor of furniture music

Ok I’ll stop

Irresistible Force - Global Chillage
Irresistible Force - Dreamfish
Biospehere - Patashnik
Rather Interesting presents DOTS
Masters of Psychedelic Ambiance - "Mu"
Further - 5 Further Journeys
MLO - IO
FAX et al : The Ambient Cookbook vol. 1
Future Sound of London - Lifeforms

so were conflating ambient and drone again

i'm sure there's a whole thread on this, but there's not exactly a fine line

Harold Budd - Lovely Thunder
Yagya - Rigning
Steve Roach - Structures From Silence

if I used it to fall asleep to at any point in my life, it's ambient :)

These Hammock LPs

Hammock - Kenotic 
Hammock - Raising Your Voice...Trying to Stop an Echo 
Hammock - Oblivion Hymns

Grouper - A I A: Dream Loss
Chubby Wolf - Ornitheology
Tetsu Inoue - Ambiant Otaku
Hiroshi Yoshimura - Green
Eleh - Location Momentum
Kyle Bobby Dunn - Kyle Bobby Dunn and the Infinite Sadness
Marble Sky - Marble Sky
Catherine Christer Hennix - Central Palace Music
Christopher Heemann & Andrew Chalk - Mirror of the Sea
ASC - No Stars Without Darkness
Kid606 - Recollected Ambient Works, Vol. 1: Bored of Excitement
Alex Cobb - Chantepleure
Ian William Craig - A Turn of Breath
Marconi Union - Weightless
Loscil - Endless Falls
DJ Olive - Sleep

16/30

Hijokaidan ‎– Noise From Trading Cards

sorry, j/k, promise I’m done

if I used it to fall asleep to at any point in my life, it's ambient :)

well, in that case I should nom every classic era Moody Blues album

Christopher Heemann & Andrew Chalk - Mirror of the Sea

I love this one so much, thanks for nominating!

it's so good, gonna have to (try to) campaign for that one

Moss Harvest - Constructs Of Loss And Longing

17/30

There's definitely Ambient as a liise genre and Ambient as an even looser way of listening but hey

Anyway

Aloof Proof - Piano Text

(1/30)

Daniel Pemberton - Bedroom
Spacetime Continuum - Sea Biscuit
Axiom Ambient - Lost in the Translation
Miles Davis - In a Silent Way
David Sylvian/Holger Czukay - Flux and Mutability
Juno Reactor - Luciana

oh wait gotta correct the name tho lol

Christoph Heemann & Andrew Chalk - Mirror of the Sea

17/30

so were conflating ambient and drone again

― brimstead, Thursday, May 16, 2019 2:39 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://pics.me.me/Facebook-Are-you-a-noob-4fa2f3.png

I will die never knowing the difference between hard bop and post bop.

xp way to miss the point but whatever's easiest for you i guess

some actual noms
DJ Olive - Buoy
Heathered Pearls - Loyal
Robert Turman - Flux
Strategy - Noise Tape Self
Terekke - Improvisational Loops
Various - Pop Ambient 2002
Brian Eno - Reflection
Randall McClellan ‎– The Healing Music Of Rana Vol. II
Randall McClellan ‎– The Healing Music Of Rana Vol. III

(8/30)

oops 9/30

i'm just saying isn't the point of stuff like phil niblock for you to like listen to attentively so you can trip out and stuff?

sorry sorry i'm done really

The KLF - Chill Out
The Orb - Chill Out, World!
New Dreams Ltd. - Sleepline
Jean-Michel Jarre - Waiting for Cousteau

(not sure which Orb albums really count here, and quite frankly I'm not sure about the other two either)

Ben Frost - By the Throat

There are a lot of competing definitions of ambient, coming up with submissions that fall under none of them is quite an achievement.

If we're going broad, does Live From A Shark Cage count? Sowiesoso? No Pussyfooting?

Keith Fullerton Whitman - Lisbon
Petrels - Haeligewielle
JD Emmanuel - Wizards
Eyvind Kang - Live Low to the Earth, in the Iron Age
Biosphere - Substrata
Peter Wright - An Angel Fell Where the Kestrels Hover
Susumu Yokota - Sakura
Daevid Allen - Seven Drones
Sun Electric - 30.7.94
Roly Porter - Aftertime
Roy Montgomery - Scenes From the South Island
Birchville Cat Motel - Beautiful Speck Triumph
Robert Ashley - Private Parts

13/30

Well aware some of these are pushing it!

Pete Namlook & Tetsu Inoue - 2350 Broadway IV
Sleep Research Facility - Deep Frieze
Blamstrain - Disfold
Jeff Greinke - Cities in Fog
Nicholas Szczepanik - We Make Life Sad
Colleen - Everyone Alive Wants Answers
Loscil - Sea Island
1991 - No More Dreams

(8/30)

^playing it safe for now. wonder if I should be an asshole and nominate a bunch of deadmau5 albums in my next post

Huerco S. - Colonial Patterns
Prurient - Rainbow Mirror

(10/30)

Chinaski: Whiney already nominated KFW's Lisbon!

Eck - I'm blind!

Bang on A Can - Music for Airports
Mary Lattimore - The Withdrawing Room
Alva Noto - Xerrox Vol.1
High Aura'd - Sanguine Futures
The Dead Texan - The Dead Texan
1 Mile North - Minor Shadows
Motion Sickness of Time Travel- Motion Sickness of Time Travel
Koen Holtkamp - Gravity / Bees
Mountains - Sewn

(22/30)

i guess i'm going to nominate a catchall ambient-era OPN release, even though it's sort of a comp:

Oneohtrix Point Never - Rifts

Loscil - Plume
Stars Of The Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline
Kasper Bjørke Quartet ‎– The Fifty Eleven Project
CFCF ‎– Exercises
Tommy Awards - Sessions II
Wilson Tanner - 69
The Fires Of Ork ‎– The Fires Of Ork 2
Hatchback ‎– Zeus & Apollo
Various ‎– (The Microcosm) Visionary Music Of Continental Europe, 1970-1986

(9/30)

The CFCF record is 8 tracks but don't think it's over 30 minutes

(And are comps allowed? Saw Ambient Cookbook was nominated upthread so thought they might be)

brian eno - the shutov assembly
thomas köner - kaamos
thomas köner - daikan
tetsu inoue - world receiver
superficial depth - digital superimposing
tom heasley- where the earth meets the sky
tom heasley - on the sensations of tone
environments 2 tintinnabulation special low frequency version
jim o'rourke - sleep like it's winter
vangelis - invisible connections
oren ambarchi - suspension
tetsu inoue - yolo
lovesliescrushing - glissceule
evan parker / lawrence casserly - solar wind
14/30

Comps are allowed, yeah, as long as they're not box sets or other such sets that compile multiple albums.

OK I'm going to break the seal:

Autechre - Garbage
Fennesz - Venice
Richard Skelton - Landings
Julia Kent - Asperities

11/30

A Broken Consort- The Shape Leaves
Brian McBride- When the Detail Lost Its Freedom
David Behrman- On the Other Ocean
Henry Flynt- You Are My Everlovin/Celestial Power
Kammarheit- The Starwheel
Loscil- Endless Falls
New Risen Throne- Shadows Over Humanity
Robert Turman & Aaron Dilloway- Blizzard
Seven Fields of Aphelion- Periphery
Sunn 0))) & Ulver- Terrestrials

(10/30)

Harmonia & Eno – Harmonia & Eno ’76
Kevin Drumm – Imperial Distortion
Environments 6: Dawn And Dusk In The Okefenokee Swamp

Was wondering when someone was going to nominate "And Their Refinement of the Decline," groovypanda. Glad someone nominated it— it's my favorite of theirs.

Also, you nominated Plume, so I had to go with Endless Falls, which is my second favorite of his records.

Shit, I forgot!

Windy & Carl- Depths

makes 11/30 for me

FM3 - The Buddha Machine

http://www.fm3buddhamachine.com/v2/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/buddha-1-full-set.jpg

xposts - that's 3 Loscil nominations so far! I had a hard time choosing between Submers and Sea Island

table i nom'd endless falls so you have an extra spot

Huerco S. - Colonial Patterns
Prurient - Rainbow Mirror

(10/30)

― lispectah deck (unregistered), Thursday, May 16, 2019 4:13 PM (one hour ago)

I think I'll actually retract Rainbow Mirror. it has too many dissonant moments even though a decent chunk of its runtime is ambient. anyways...

Secede - Tryshasla
Justin Walter - Unseen Forces
Jon Hassell - Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street
Jon Hassell - Listening to Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)
Carbon Based Lifeforms - Twentythree
Biosphere - Dropsonde

(15/30)

Steve Roden - Forms of Paper
Oren Ambarchi - In the Pendulum's Embrace
Ingram Marshall - Three Penitential Visions-Hidden Voices
Biosphere - N-Plants
Biosphere - Shenzhou

(6/30)

xpost to eric thought i'd caught all the Loscil, thanks for pointing that out.

Jan Jelinek - Tierbeobachtungen
Cornelius Cardew - The Great Learning (Deutsche Grammophon, 1971)
Ekkehard Ehlers - Ekkehard Ehlers Plays
Manuel Göttsching - E2-E4

(4/30)

so excited for this poll!!!!!

Pulse Emitter - Planetary Scale Synth Hypnosis
Pulse Emitter - Xenharmonic Passages
Christopher Willits - Horizon
Leandro Fresco & Rafael Anton Irisarri - La Equidistancia
Sarah Davachi - Qualities of Bodies Permanent
Jeremy Bible - Music for Black Holes

(6/30)

Hash Jar Tempo - Under Glass
Vapour Theories - Decant
500mg - Vertical Approach

14/30

Vektroid - Polytravellers

10/30

that huerco s album is like my album of the decade but figured it had to much flickering and dirty shrapnel to be ambient

1. Aphex Twin: Selected Ambient Works vol. 2
2. Arp: The Soft Wave
3. William Basinski: Disintegration Loops
4. Ken Camden: Lethargy & Repercussions
5. Ian William Craig: A Turn of Breath
6. Greg Davis: Mutually Arising
7. Kyle Bobby Dunn: …and the Infinite Sadness
8. Kyle Bobby Dunn: Bring the Head of…
9. Brian Eno: Apollo
10. Fennesz: Endless Summer
11. Flying Saucer Attack: s/t
12. Manuel Gottsching: E2-E4
13. Growing: Sky Runs into the Sea
14. Growing: s/t
15. Porya Hatami: Shallow
16. Tim Hecker: Ravedeath, 1972
17. Daniel Lanois: Goodbye to Language
18. Brian McBride: When the Detail’s Lost its Freedom
19. Mountains: Choral
20. Mountains: Centralia
21. Jonas Munk: Absorb/Fabric/Cascade
22. Andrew Pekler: Cue
23. Hans-Joachim Roedelius: Selbsportrait II
24. Richard Skelton: Landings
25. Stars of the Lid: The Tired Sounds of…
26. Stars of the Lid: …and Their Refinement of the Decline
27. Keith Fullerton Whitman: Playthroughs
28. Keith Fullerton Whitman: Lisbon
29. Windy & Carl: Depths
30. Windy & Carl: We Will Always Be

Pavilion of Dreams is probably my favorite album ever and I kinda want to nominate it, but it could never be background music in my household. You gotta crank Harold Budd imo

xp a whole bunch of those were already nominated

Ohh this is shaping up nicely! Stoked for this, will send in my noms this weekend.

I have no idea how I’m going to sort out the top 10 or so. A lot of these albums, already mentioned, are among my all-time faves. Also very excited to wade through some of the lesser known stuff. Tuomas’ nomnoms for the <2 min poll were really great, and I’m pumped to check out his ambient selections

First 15:

Alio Die - Aura Seminalis
Alio Die - Horas Tibi Serenas
Blamstrain - Disfold
Clive Wright - Taqsim to Antlia
Manual - Bajamar
Manual with Jess Kahr - The North Shore
O Yuki Conjugate - Equator
Raison d'Être - Enthralled by the Wind of Loneliness
Raison d'Être - In Sadness, Silence, and Solitude
Raison d'Être - Prospectus I
Robert Haigh - Creatures of the Deep
Ulrich Schnauss - Goodbye
Woob - 1194
Yagya - Rigning
Yagya - Stars and Dust

(make that first 13, Rigning and Disfold already nominated!)

nice!

10 more personal favorites, even the beats on the Muslimgauze here are chilled out

Muslimgauze - Veiled Sisters
Jonathan Coleclough - Cake
Nocturnal Emissions - Spiritflesh
Datacide - Flowerhead
The Orb - Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld
Nurse With Wound - Soliloquy For Lilith
Nurse With Wound - Salt Marie Celeste
Zoviet France - Shouting At The Ground
Coil - Megalithomania
Vladislav Delay - Multila

18/30

it could never be background music in my household. You gotta crank Harold Budd imo

budd himself does not like being categorized as ambient

god i love multila. so we are allowing kick drums??

cuz in that case i nom:

154 - Strike

how tf is like unambient fennesz, tim hecker etc nommed but not one zoviet france until sleeve's post?????

zoviet france - assault & mirage

(12/30)

god i'm such a dick. i'm sorry folks, really this time

should be noted that the second disc of budd's 2005 album Avalon Sutra is a 69 minute remix of As Long As I Can Hold My Breath which is ambient as fuuuuuuuck

if you don't fall asleep to that song and dream about death, you're not even alive

so excited for this poll!!!!!

On the one hand, I think brimstead is right to raise questions about what 'ambient' means with regards to a lot of these albums. On the other hand, a lot of music I really love is being included so it's going to be a great list, whatever we call it.

Jonny Nash - Eden
Novisad - Novisad
H. Takahashi - Body trip
H. Takahashi - Low power
X.Y.R. - Reflections
Bakground - Saved Data Trilogy
Novisad - Seleya
Microstoria - SND
Rob Theakston - I Am Waiting For You To Stop Being Mad At Me
Dolphins Into The Future - Canto Arquipélago
Craig Kupka ‎– Crystals - New Music For Relaxation 2

(23/30)

Robert Fripp and Brian Eno - Evening Star

1/30

Steve Hillage - Rainbow Dome Musick

2/30

Garlo - Vent de Guitares

3/30

Brian Eno - Neroli
Local News - A Simple Dream Pass
Milieu - A Warm Wooden Hollow

(26/30)

thank you tuomas for running this thing!

Sarah Louise - Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars
Head Phone Over Tone - Solar Sails

5/30

Michael Stearns “Planetary Unfolding”
David Casper “Crystal Waves”
David Behrman “On The Other Ocean”

Michael Stearns - Encounter
Marsen Jules - Beautyfear
The Seattle Harmonic Voices - Harmonic Voice

9/30

sweet noms brimstead, haven't heard a bunch of those, glad that u love Zoviet France as much as I do

Not yet mentioned:

Various Artists - Music for Films Vol. 3
Sunn O))) - The Grimmrobe Demos
Steven Stapleton & David Tibet - The Sadness of Things
Robert Rich - Trances/Drones
Main - Firmament IV
Laurie Anderson - The Ugly One with the Jewels
Laraaji - Essence/Universe
Jon Hassell & Brian Eno - Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics
Jon Hassell - Fascinoma
Harold Budd - The White Arcades
Harold Budd - The Room
Harold Budd - Perhaps
Deep Listening Band - The Ready Made Boomerang
David Lynch & Marek Zebrowski - Polish Night Music
David Hykes & the Harmonic Choir - Harmonic Meetings
Alvin Curran - Songs and Views of the Magnetic Garden

Maybe not:

David Lynch & Alan Splet - Eraserhead soundtrack
- If you could cut out the scary bits and keep the industrial hiss and distant Fats Waller

Laurie Anderson - United States Live
- Too many non-ambient pieces across the four discs to qualify as a whole, but 23 out of the 78 tracks are on my sleepytime/ambient playlist. That voice talking is probably the closest I get to an ASMR trigger.

strumming music by Charlemagne Palestine.. ambient? really?

joda clément - i hope you like the universe
+minus - a rainy koran verse [UK live]
c schulz & hajsch s/t

3/30

Hideous Lump, are you nominating those albums under "not yet mentioned"?

ach, wanted to nom mohnomishe & eostre but figured they were too industrial

whatevs, i nom
15: _zoviet*france_ mohnomishe
16: _zoviet*france_ eostre
17: levantis: romantic psychology vol.1
18: philip jeck: stoke
19: anthony manning: islets in pink polypropylene
20: arve henriksen: chiaroscuro
21: christina kubisch: mono fluido
22: deep listening band & the long string instrument - suspended music
23: organum: submission

24: jim o'rourke: long nights

is Lanterna's first self-titled album ambient?

Karma Moffett - Golden Bowls of Compassion
NASA Voyager Space Sounds - Symphonies of the Planets
Douglas Quin - Antarctica
Andrew Skeoch & Sarah Koschak - Spirit of the Outback
John T Bullitt - Night of a Thousand Songs
Tod Dockstader - Aerial 1
Alain Kremski - Music for an Unknown Temple
Roland Kayn - Tektra
Thomas Köner - Permafrost
Steve Roach - Immersion One
Else Marie Pade - Et Glasperlespil (for Faust Suite, 1962)
Stuart Dempster - Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel
Asmus Tietchens - Eisgang
Joe Jones - Solar Music
Peter Warren & Matt Samolis - Bowed Metal Music
David Tudor - Rainforest
Roy Montgomery - Temple IV
Roger Winfield - Voices of the Wind
Environments 7 - Intonation
Rostov Chimes
Ragnar Grippe - Sand
Brian Eno - Neroli (disc 2 - New Space Music)
Francois Bayle - Erosphere
Vangelis - Tegos Tapes
The Iatmul Of Papua Niugini - Music of Oceania
Paul Schutze - Apart (disc 2 - Sleep)
Stephen Kent - Family Tree (disc 2 - Deep Space)
Don Slepian - Sea of Bliss
Geoffrey Chandler - Starscapes
Luc Ferrari - Éphémère II

michael t. bullock + andrew lafkas - ceremonies to breathe upon
john tilbury / keith rowe / kjell bjørgeengen - sissel
oren ambarchi / john tilbury - the just reproach
jürg frey - l’âme est sans retenue I
haptic - abeyance

8/30

Brian Eno - Neroli (disc 2 - New Space Music)
Paul Schutze - Apart (disc 2 - Sleep)
Stephen Kent - Family Tree (disc 2 - Deep Space)

If these are multi-disc albums, you can't just nominate one disc, you have to nom the entire album.

Kraftwerk - Autobahn

1/30

I noticed one of my nominations (Novus Magnificat) had already been nommed by Dan Worsley, so I have one more nomination to use:

Meg Bowles - Blue Cosmos

(30/30)

>If these are multi-disc albums

just consider those as shout-outs to how good their second halves are then

Brian Eno - Music For Films
Steve Reich - Music For 18 Musicians
Global Communication- Pentamerous Metamorphosis
Tangerine Dream - Phaedra
Max Richter - Sleep
Iasos - Inter-Dimensional Music
Daniel Lanois - Purple Vista
System 7 - Point 3: Water

(17/30)

24: loren chasse - the air in the sand
25: takehisa kosugi - catch wave

Might as well nominate Scum at this point.

Eluvium - Lambent Material
Julianna Barwick - Nepenthe
Autechre - NTS Session 4
Global Communication - Remotion: The Global Communication Remix Album

4/30

Scum is a stretch obv but I’ll hold off nominating Darkspace or Lustre.

What about Filosofem? Or dungeon synth in general?

Hoedh - Hymnvs
Inade - Aldebaran
Lustmord - The Place Where The Black Stars Hang

3/30

Various - I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age Music in America
Henry Wolff & Nancy Hennings - Tibetan Bells IV: Bells of Sh'ang Sh'ung

7/30

Yes I'm nominating those.

Labradford - Mi Media Naranja
Hallock Hill - The Union
Laurie Spiegel - The Expanding Universe
The Wind-Up Bird - Whips
Loren Mazzacane Connors - As Roses Bow
Xela - The Dead Sea
Alan Lamb - Night Passage
Windy & Carl - Antarctica
Piano Magic - Son de Mar

(30/30)

strumming music by Charlemagne Palestine.. ambient? really?

Heh, I’m feeling that way about a truckload of these

Growing: s/t

PGWP, you nominated this, but neither Discogs nor Wikipedia has any info on Growing having released a self-titled album... Which album did you mean?

Marsen Jules - Lazy Sunday Funerals
Marsen Jules - Yara
Biosphere - Cirque
Monolake - gobi. the desert
Steve Roach - Dreamtime Return
Donato Dozzy - Plays Bee Mask

6/30

Perhaps the scandal leading up to this poll will allow us to define ambient music once and for all. Musicologists, take note.

I love ambient music, and I love some music included here that is absolutely not ambient music, but I just can't bring myself to argue about it, so i'm just not going to participate in this as long as stuff like this (which I love, btw) is included: https://soundcloud.com/origin-peoples/tommy-awards-side-a-op001

There's nothing about this that is ambient. Also, if Steve Reich is included, then you have to include Bach and Beethoven too. It's either Classical or Modern Classical, but it's not ambient. Anyway, as I said, there is no satisfactory resolution to this argument, and since shit this isn't ambient will be included, I see no point in following or participating. Why not just call it 'Music You Can Chill Out To' or 'Would be decent with a spliff and a comfy sofa'.

Just rename it it "the ambient/new age/drone/space/bio/furniture/vibes" poll and call it a day

^^^

I'd also like to cull some entries, lest it become the arty electronica poll. Will take a stab this weekend.

You guys are so embarrassed by nerds arguing about genre boundaries that you don't think it's worthwhile to try singling out the best ambient albums?

I was OK with looking at this as a poll of non-beat-oriented drone-like music with an electronic component and accepting all of it but Steve Reich did raise my hackles a little: although there is definitely a connection between minimalism and ambient, Reich was going for something that would inspire "closely detailed listening", arguably the opposite of "non-intrusive background music". Music for 18 is also very rhythmic and entirely acoustic, if that matters. Still, there IS a connection so.

There's a connection, but I don't feel at all bad about drawing a line that excludes all Reich. Trust me, he wouldn't want to be in this poll anyway.

Giusto Pio-Motore Immobile
Andrew Chalk-Baroque Screens
Andrew Chal-The Cable House
Vikki Jackman-Whispering Pages
Jan Jelinek/Masayoshi Fujita-Bird Lake Objects
Michael Brook-Hybrid
Arp-Inversions
Inoyama Land-Danzindan Pojidon
Dean McPhee-Four Stones
Gas-Zauberberg
Ian Middleton-Well of Sorrows
Jonathan Fitoussi-Imaginary Lines
Robert Turman-Beyond Painting

13/30, with apologies for genre boundaries/definitions etc.

The Seven Fields of Aphelion - Keep the Ocean Inside

4/30

There's a connection, but I don't feel at all bad about drawing a line that excludes all Reich. Trust me, he wouldn't want to be in this poll anyway.

THE POLL THAT STEVE REICH DOESN'T WANT YOU TO VOTE IN.

NUMBER FIVE WILL SHOCK YOU!

PGWP, you nominated this, but neither Discogs nor Wikipedia has any info on Growing having released a self-titled album... Which album did you mean?

― Tuomas, Friday, May 17, 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sorry, it's The Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light. For some reason Spotify lists it as s/t though I knew that was incorrect!

Ok, thanks!

Steve Reich - Music For 18 Musicians

Groovypanda, you nominated this, but there are several different recordings of this composition. Which one do you want to nominate?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X14B7JHAooNtfPbNilJ1xPshNaKBbL6q-8E1xUdM7xU

Here's a link to the nominations so far, lemme know if something's missing. (I've corrected some of the artist and album names, so your nomination might be elsewhere alphabetically.)

As for the debate on what's ambient, I have no way of making that judgement, so I'm not gonna disqualify anything... And the nomination process in polls like this is always a bit messy, but I do agree that this is not a poll for just any kind of minimal music, or music to smoke weed to, or experimental/artsy electronic music in general. So hopefully when it comes the time to vote you do stop to consider that ambient is narrower than those definitions, even if it's not easily defined by conventional genre boundaries.

SunnO))) - Flight of the Behemoth

I mean, I loathe to use Pitchfork as a measuring stick, but their list, which includes a KFW intro and blurb by a bunch ppl who are over the age of 35 (Beta/Sherburne/Richardson/Masters/Reynolds) has a very open attitude towards what is considered "ambient"

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9948-the-50-best-ambient-albums-of-all-time/

fantastic work tuomas

personally prefer a wide definition myself

I mean, everyone can vote for THE ARTIST CLEARLY INTENDED THIS MODULAR SYNTH RECORD AS MUSIQUE D'AMEUBLEMENT PER THE DICTATES OF SATIE but that's not as fun imo

Also, I'm probably very close to my full noms but here's some big dogs that we've overlooked in case someone else wants to nominate them

Mort Garson - Plantasia
Philip Corner - Satie Slowly
Raymond Scott - Soothing Sounds for Babies Vol. 1
Raymond Scott - Soothing Sounds for Babies Vol. 2

Colleen - Les Ondes Silencieuses

15/30

Fripp and Eno - No Pussyfooting
Sakamoto and Alva Noto - Vrioon

Vangelis, "L'Apocalypse des animaux"

Steve Roach - The Magnificent Void
Steve Roach - Quiet Music

Robert Rich - Calling Down the Sky
Robert Rich - Humidity

The Necks - Mosquito
Johan Johansson - Fordlandia

Looks like I get five more

Raymond Scott - Soothing Sounds for Babies Vol. 1
Bohren and Der Club of Gore - Black Earth

that pitchfork list is kinda dumb, we talked about it at the time. like tim hecker, fennesz, pretty laptop noise... lol

Sorry

After 5-6 weeks of listing to Bacharach songs this will be a nice tonic.

but that's not as fun imo

Part of the fun for me here is trying to figure out why some records feel ambient to me and some don't. Replica? Returnal? Persian Surgery Dervishes? Some of my favorite records, but they scratch a different itch.

But say Rifts isn't my definition of ambient either but fine, it's definitely part of the same fantasy musical universe as Structures From Silence.

So it is written, so shall it be done.

Eno Moebius Rodelius - After the Heat

Oöphoi – Static Soundscapes: Three Lights At the End of the World
Antrilon – Mind Erase
MWVM – Rotations
Lull – Like A Slow River
Hazard – Wood
Deep Magic / Pine Smoke Lodge – Split

15/30

Les Halles – Transient

16/30

^^^ good one

I think ambient-ness for me has something to do with difficulty of perceiving movement, lack of drama, also just a general diffusiveness and um.... driftiness... a sense of distance/absence/“not there”-ness, indirect, sonic blankets

Fennesz/Tim hecker include plenty of actual bursts of noise. and bald faced emotion. I like em both

Steve Reich/tony Conrad/Niblock stuff is so intense and lysergic it just doesn’t float or sit enough

I also hate sentimental gooey “ambient” that sounds like it could soundtrack a serious moment in a stupid movie/tv show. The ambient equiv of like Explosions In the Sky.

Ok end rant, only posi non-annoying brimstead from now on promise

Norman Westberg – 13
Mark Wastell – Come Crimson Rays

18/30

Irresistible Force - Dreamfish

This should be: Dreamfish - Dreamfish, and is Mixmaster Morris + Pete Namlook

I also hate sentimental gooey “ambient” that sounds like it could soundtrack a serious moment in a stupid movie/tv show.

pleasantly surprised to see no bvdub yet

beard papa at 9:06 18 May 19

Irresistible Force - Dreamfish

This should be: Dreamfish - Dreamfish, and is Mixmaster Morris + Pete Namlook

I've updated the nomination list, the link above still works, but here it is again:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X14B7JHAooNtfPbNilJ1xPshNaKBbL6q-8E1xUdM7xU

Alain Presencer - The Singing Bowls of Tibet

1/30

I haven’t missed a playlist for the nominations, have I?

gas - narkopop

9/30

ta for correcting the dreamfish mistake folks.

I haven’t missed a playlist for the nominations, have I?

If you start listening now you should get about halfway through by the time voting closes.

Tuomas at 9:34 17 May 19

Steve Reich - Music For 18 Musicians

Groovypanda, you nominated this, but there are several different recordings of this composition. Which one do you want to nominate?

Not sure. The original 1978 release I guess. Not bothered if it's left out if people don't think it's ambient as I possibly wouldn't vote for it anyway.

If you start listening now you should get about halfway through by the time voting closes.

I plan on sampling as many singles as possible.

I haven’t missed a playlist for the nominations, have I?

E2-E4 (Radio Edit) xp

Sunn O))) - Monoliths & Dimensions
Spacemen 3 - Dreamweapon: An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music
Gigi Masin - Wind
Gigi Masin - Talk to the Sea
Earth - Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method
Grouper - Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill
Grouper - Ruins
Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica
The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
Ulver - Messe I.X–VI.X
Tim Hecker - Virgins
Ryuichi Sakamoto - async
Stephan Mathieu - A Static Place
The Seven Fields of Aphelion - Periphery

14/30^

good call on Dreamweapon!

Deathprod - Morals and Dogma

btw whiney sunroof! is cancelled now dontcha know

Slowdive - Pygmalion
Jute Gyte - Penetralia

16/30

ooh yes Deathprod

Stars of the Lid - Gravitational Pull vs The Desire For an Aquatic Life
Terre Thaemlitz - Soil
Wolfgang Voigt - Rückverzauberung 10 / Nationalpark

9/30

Shuttle358 - Chessa
Vladislav Delay - Anima
Rod Modell - Incense and Blacklight
Vladislav Delay - Anima
Future Sound of London - Lifeforms
Aidan Baker - The Sea Swells a Bit

Desiderii Marginis - That Which Is Tragic and Timeless
Desiderii Marginis - Hypnosis
Forrest Fang - Gongland
Forrest Fang - The Sleepwalker's Ocean
Harold Budd/Clive Wright - A Song for Lost Blossoms
Harold Budd/Clive Wright - Little Windows
Lucid Dreams/Celia Green - 0096
Lustmord - Dark Matter
v/a (Projekt Records) - The Promises of Silence

22/30

I love “Body sonic” off of incense and black light, really great mellow refractory dubby ambient techno. Rest of the album is nice too.

Great title too

I started listening to these plus a playlist of the Pitchfork thing. Ended up with the beginnings of a nominations list:

https://open.spotify.com/user/empeecee/playlist/4fPPFJHHNihMjlO9GVEs6F?si=hVKygUYXRJSuCafBZrfzlQ

Far from complete and still a bit of a mess. I'll resume tidying it up later. Certainly feel free to fiddle with it.

Are we, uh, definitely limited to 30? Only, all this lovely ambient techno is making me think the first Rhythm and Sound album really needs to be involved. And Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records. And the 'Plays' collection by Ekkehard Ehlers.

colleen - the golden morning breaks
virginia astley - from gardens where we feel secure
william basinski - melancholia
emeralds - what happened
emeralds - allegory of allergies
robert aa lowe / rose lazaar - eclipses
helios - eingya
grouper - the man who died in his boat

Hmm, I'm still not gonna disqualify anything, but just because some people have nominated dub techno shouldn't be an excuse to nom more dub techno. Most dub techno isn't ambient. If by the first Rhythm & Sound album you mean the one with Tikiman, it's a great record, but IMO it's not ambient by any measure. There are exceptions of course, for example I would say something like Liumin by DeepChord is both dub techno and ambient, but in general I would give a good consideration before nominating anything with a steady 4/4 kick beat.

And yeah, I know have Empire State Building on my list which also has a 4/4 beat throughout, so I'm not trying to say all techno or IDM or whatever doesn't fit here, I'm just hoping people understand that that not all "home listening electronic music" is ambient.

(xpost)

It's just a matter of time before someone noms Boards of Canada.

I think ambient-ness for me has something to do with difficulty of perceiving movement, lack of drama, also just a general diffusiveness and um.... driftiness... a sense of distance/absence/“not there”-ness, indirect, sonic blankets

Fennesz/Tim hecker include plenty of actual bursts of noise. and bald faced emotion. I like em both

Steve Reich/tony Conrad/Niblock stuff is so intense and lysergic it just doesn’t float or sit enough

I also hate sentimental gooey “ambient” that sounds like it could soundtrack a serious moment in a stupid movie/tv show. The ambient equiv of like Explosions In the Sky.

This mostly sounds right to me.

Last time I tried one of CBC Music's 'ambient' stations, it was p much all chill/loungey beats.

xp

just waiting for the moment that it'll cause maximum annoyance

Grouper isn't ambient either

Tim Hecker is very clearly a maker of ambient music as far as I'm concerned, despite the bursts of static and his more compositionally-oriented approach. Stars of the Lid also make use of climaxes and no one's disputing their inclusion in this poll. I'm on the fence when it comes to Fennesz, however, although his latest LP scans as ambient to these ears. And there's no question that Reich shouldn't even be considered. Or why not also nominate Morton Feldman, while we're at it? Or pieces from Ligeti's cloud period? Or Chopin's Nocturnes? etc.

I also hate sentimental gooey “ambient” that sounds like it could soundtrack a serious moment in a stupid movie/tv show. The ambient equiv of like Explosions In the Sky.

― brimstead, Saturday, May 18, 2019 12:57 AM (eleven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Like Stars of the Lid?

The moment the ambient nominations thread turned violent

(Now is the time to nominate boards of Canada, btw)

Now, now. Their albums pre-Tired Sounds are less obviously guilty of such charges. (I like them all.)

2xp

Yeah, no, the minimalist composers seemed more 'wrong' to me than Tim Hecker/Fennesz; it was more that I liked brimstead's explanation of how ambient music works when it comes to drawing lines.

xps

Black Sea does sound like ambient music to me.

Definitely. I suppose Endless Summer is the one I'm most reluctant to call ambient.

H. Takahashi - Low Power
DeepChord - Immersions
Haruomi Hosono - Watering A Flower
M. Geddes Gengras - Hawaiki Tapes
Suso Saiz - Rainworks

Thing about Stars of the Lid soundtracking a movie... if it's an imax documentary about the mysteries of universe vs. if it's in a scene in a drama about a seemingly "happy" family- well you're going to get entirely different emotional results with the same exact piece of music.

Fennesz - Black Sea
6/30

(Agree that Endless Summer is more debatable. Feldman actually seems more 'ambient' to me than the minimalists, not that I'd nominate him.)

Oh sorry 5/30 for my list above

Agreed about Feldman, especially, say, The Viola in My Life.

xp

The moment the ambient nominations thread turned violent

Bill Laswell & Terre Thaemlitz — Web
(misattributed on spotify to Laswell & Tetsuo Inoue, but it's Thaemlitz)

1/30

The Rhythm and Sound first album call was based on a track from the Incense and Black Light record which sounded awfully like R&S - particularly the vast spaces of the first album (the compilation of the first EPs). I'm very much of the opinion it's not ambient either but if we're going down that route I'd hate to see it miss out!
Anyway, still happy to go with consensus.

Oh sorry 5/30 for my list above

"Low Power" had already been nominated, so you're at 4/30.

colleen - the golden morning breaks
virginia astley - from gardens where we feel secure
william basinski - melancholia
emeralds - what happened
emeralds - allegory of allergies
robert aa lowe / rose lazaar - eclipses
helios - eingya
grouper - the man who died in his boat

― meaulnes, Sunday, May 19, 2019 2:58

The Colleen album has already been nominated, so you've used 7/30 of your noms.

The Rhythm and Sound first album call was based on a track from the Incense and Black Light record which sounded awfully like R&S - particularly the vast spaces of the first album (the compilation of the first EPs).

Yeah, for better or worse DeepChord has made a career on imitating Ernestus and Oswald as well as Wolfgang Voigt... That's not necessarily a criticism though, some of the material he's released sounds incredible, no matter how deritative it is.

And sorry if I sounded needlessly critical above, I really do love that first Rhythm & Sound comp, it's what got me into dub techno to begin with back in 1998... But half of that album is dude singing reggae over dub beats, and like you said, that's not really ambient.

Gentlemen, you can't fight here, this is the chill-out room!

Tempted to write a screenplay just so I can get this line in.

Yeah I don’t like stars of the lid

Natural Snow Buildings, ambient or not?

is jeff mills ambient?

"Low Power" had already been nominated, so you're at 4/30.

― Tuomas, Sunday, May 19, 2019 12:20 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Funny, I probably forgot to check this one because among my picks I was convinced it was the least likely to have already been nominated!

Jonny Nash & Suzanne Kraft - Passive Aggressive

There! 5/30

Oh wait...

Kara-Lis Coverdale - A480
Kara-Lis Coverdale - Grafts
Kate NV - для FOR

8/30

The more I’m trawling my library for nominations, the harder it gets to draw a clear line between ambient and minimalist/classical (Arvo Part? Terry Riley? La Monte Young?), IDM (BoC, Autechre, FSOL), metal (Filosofem, Sunn((O)), Lustre, Boris, Darkspace), minimal/dub techno (Deepchord, Jeff Mills), 90s ambient house/trance (The Orb, Sequencial, Solar Quest), downtempo/psybient (Shpongle, Entheogenic)...even though I’m more of the ‘big tent’ school I end up chucking out all the borderline cases since there’s so much worthy stuff to nominate that is unambiguously ambient.

I'm more inclined to follow this poll than participate because I've got quite a catholic approach to what ambient is and I want to see what the headz are into but:

Pete Namlook - Air-You

(1/30)

I suppose it’s a comp so delete if necessary but:
David Bowie - All Saints

i'm still early on in david toop's Ocean of Sound, but i'm really enjoying it. some words from him and also from biosphere and the orb:

“much of the music i discuss could be characterized as drifting or simply existing in stasis rather than developing in any dramatic fashion. structure emerges slowly, minimally or apparently not at all, encouraging states of reverie and receptivity in the listener that suggest (on the good side of boredom) a very positive rootlessness.”

“ambient music os more a way of listening, an umbrella term for attitude, rather than a single-identifiable style.”

“before Geir [Jennsen, Biosphere] goes on stage to press the first button, he wants to lay one more ambient cliché to rest: ‘i hate it if people use my music as a background. when i was listening to jon hassell and brian eno, i was inspired to know more about the himalayas or astronomy, egypt and archaeology. i want people to get inspired to read astronomy or get another view of the universe. to be curious.”

Alex Patterson of the Orb: “…i spent four or five hours playing really early dub reggae. you don’t have to dance to it, you just nod your head to it. it’s still ambient to me. some of the effects on those records - a four track, in a huge in Orange Street, Kingston, and they’d make sounds like that. it puts us to shame when you think of how much we’ve got to play with.”

also, on a completely unrelated note, this amazing passage:

“in the early 1930s, a man named geoffrey christian witnessed a demonstration of an instrument used on the upper purari river, papua new guinea, during full-moon dances. for the ten to sixteen days of this ceremony, the men ate very little but drank huge amounts of water through long bamboo pipes. five or six of them would then sit in a circle and balance large, polished hardwood disks on their toes or knees. ‘each man lifts his diaphragm’, wrote christian, ‘and the edge of the disk is thrust deeply into the pit of the stomach; all then depress their diaphragms on to the upper surface of the circumference of the disk and open their mouths. an old man then takes a stone-headed hammer and gently hits the centre of the disk. the sound appears to reverberate from the distended lungs, and issues forth from the mouths of the seated men; the effect is a deep booming sound, similar to the sound of the big skin-headed drums of other parts.’

ambient music is more a way of listening, an umbrella term for attitude, rather than a single-identifiable style.

this is essentially how i think about and use the A-word too

I feel bad for starting the dub techno debate - especially when I nominated the Rod Modell album by mistake! I meant to nominate Rod Modell and Michael Mantra’s Sonic Continuum. I got the album titles switched. I’m glad if my error turned some onto that great album, though. I’m fine with striking that one and replacing it with Sonic Continuum.

another passage that would argue for the expansive definition:

'various forms of this music have been called, with varying levels of appropriateness, ambient, environmental, deep listening, ambient techno, ambient dub, electronica, electronic listening music, isolationist, post-industrial ambient, space music, beautiful music, sound art, sound design, electronic music without beats, brainwave music, picture music, ambient jungle, steady state music, holy minimalism, Fourth World, New Age, chill out, or the useless one to cap them all, new music. but no genre category adds up to much more than media shorthand or a marketing ploy. open music might be a more useful catch-all name for what i am talking about, except for the fact that a proportion of this music, sometimes a high proportion, is vacuum sealed, zipped up in a droning Om-zone of discarnate reverie resistant to intervention and crackling quietly at the back of the freezer.'

isn’t that book great?

I end up chucking out all the borderline cases since there’s so much worthy stuff to nominate that is unambiguously ambient.

Here’s a recent goodreads review I wrote for ocean of sound:

I first read Ocean Of Sound in high school, and found it to be a dizzying and overwhelmingly intoxicating read. As the years went by and my sense of aesthetics developed, I would revisit passages and find myself becoming more and more in tune with its vision of music. Nowadays it's practically my bible. On my fourth or fifth front-to-back read now, I find myself emphatically thinking "Yes! Hell yes!" to the ideas of the musicians that Toop interviews/describes (as well as the ideas of Toop himself).

This is a magical and inspiring work about various strands of non-programmatic 20th century music; music that drifts, music that explores, music that allows things to happen. It's sad that most "ambient" music these days is cheap programmed melodramatic soundtrack fodder.

Yeah this book was written 20 years ago but the vast ocean (heh) of ideas and thoughtfood here will inspire any artist who is truly interested in transcendence.

sorry

Spotify playlist is mostly up to date, and hilariously long. I'll paste things I can't find on Spotify here, in case anyone knows better/has the benefit of local licencing/wants to do something else with them:

https://pastebin.com/kinHYBWn

anybody know how to open that spotify link in app instead of in the browser?

if you search for Nag! Nag! Nag!'s username (empeecee), you should be able to find it in his public playlists

and yeah, huge props to NNN for putting all that together

Does the app like this better?
spotify:user:empeecee:playlist:4fPPFJHHNihMjlO9GVEs6F

nice! that did work, thanks! I did try searching by username before but didn't have any luck.

Alio Die & Mathias Grassow - Expanding Horizon
ASC - Nothing Is Certain
Atrium Carceri - Ptahil
bvdub - Return To Tonglu
Carbon Based Lifeforms - World Of Sleepers
Circular - Divergent
Deutsch Nepal - Tolerance (How the Servant Utilized His Masters)
Entheogenic - Spontaneous Illumination
Herbst9 - Buried Under Time And Sand
Ildjarn-Nidhogg - Hardangervidda
Ishq - Orchid
Klaus Wiese, Ted de Jong & Mathias Grassow - el-Hadra: The Mystik Dance
Kreng - Grimoire
Natural Snow Buildings - The Dance Of The Moon And The Sun
Northaunt - Barren Land
Oöphoi & Tau Ceti - Celestial Geometries
Organum - Birds' Wings Were Glued To Their Bodies And Their Feet Froze To The Ground
Oval - 94 Diskont
Rapoon - The Fires Of The Borderlands
Schiller - Atemlos
Shinjuku Thief - The Witch Haven
Suspended Memories - Forgotten Gods
Svartsinn - Elegies For The End
Troum & All Sides - Shutûn
When - Svartedauen (The Black Death)
V/A - ...And Even Wolves Hid Their Teeth And Tongue Wherever Shelter Was Given
V/A - Ambient 4: Isolationism
30/30

Much as I like the 'big tent' definition and I appreciate that 'open music' can be created in many many forms, indeed music that drifts and feels organic & all that but I can't really bring myself to vote for Lee Scratch Perry or Kruder & Dorfmeister or Autechre or Penderecki or endlessly droning black metal records, in a poll like this even though you can credibly argue they're all ambient in one way or another.

Arthur Russell - World of Echo

(2/30)

Fabio Orsi - Winterreise
Ezekiel Honig - Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band
Pan American - White Bird Release
Former Selves - Selige Sehnsucht
Jack Jutson - Mother Official
Sarah Davachi - August Harp
Sarah Davachi - Baron Court
ASC - Fervent Dream
Secret Pyramid - Movements of Night
Wil Bolton - Quarry Park

10/30

ASC is going to suffer massively from vote splitting is he?

I thought abt nominating that Organum record Siegbran, thanks. I think it qualifies here, some of their stuff is just too noisy but that one's massive and droney.

Yes that’s a corker.

I’m now revisiting the When record, that might be a bit too noisy to warrant inclusion, these collage-type records certainly set a mood but ‘ambient’ doesn’t really fit the bill.

oooh, I forgot about Shinjuku Thief, nice

Natural Snow Buildings - The Dance Of The Moon And The Sun

Is this included in Daughters of Darkness?

Daughter Of Darkness is a completely different album no?

I was thinking the box set, which on review of the rules would not qualify.

The Dance of the Moon and the Sun is glorious.

Agreed about Feldman, especially, say, The Viola in My Life.

Can't believe I forgot to mention Rothko Chapel. I would actually be ok with that nom.

Area C: Touch Pieces
Barry Cleveland: Mythos
Christian Høy Knudsen: Hav
Forest Management: Delicate
Klaus Weise: Qumra II
Kowalski Room: Modern Urban Starlight
Lightwave: Musique Provisoire
Michel Redolfi: Desert Tracks
Murmer: What Are The Roots That Clutch
Robert Henke: Layering Buddha
Stijn Hüwels: Tomodachi
Subterrene: Bathetic Resonance
Tatsuya Nakatani: Gong
The Young Gods: Music for Artificial Clouds
Thumpmonks: Noir Selections
Tor Lundvall: Empty City
Warmth: Essay
Zimoun: Drums

Area C: Touch Pieces

Ledriver, this appears to be a 20 minute extra disc that came with the album "Charmed Birds Against Sorcery", not an album in its own right. Do you wish to nominate the whole 2 disc album?

Kara-Lis Coverdale - Grafts

Evan, this is an EP and it lasts only 22 minutes, so it doesn't meet the poll criteria. So you still have 23 nominations left.

I didn't even know it was an extra disc. I don't have the original. I withdraw that and will submit more if I think of some.

Oh darn! 30 min or more, right. Got it.

The nomination list should be up to date now, lemme know if anything is missing.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X14B7JHAooNtfPbNilJ1xPshNaKBbL6q-8E1xUdM7xU

Now I have my work cut out for me to find and listen to every one of these 500 albums and come to a fair and unbiased judgement of its relative rank.

Boards of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children
Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase
Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest
Brian Eno - Another Green World
Arthur Russell - Instrumentals
Jon Keliehor - The Beginning Of Time
Pendant - Make Me Know You Sweet
Various Artists - Mono No Aware
Various Artists - bbliss
Happy Meals - Full Ashram Devotional Ceremony (Volumes IV - VI)
Cucina Povera - Hilja
Cucina Povera - Zoom
Iona Fortune - Tao Of I
Penelope Trappes - Penelope One
Colleen - Captain Of None
Colleen - A Flame My Love, A Frequency
XYR - El Dorado
Huerco S - Untitled
Pontiac Streator and Ulla Strauss - Chat

23/30

Boards Of Canada ambient or IDM/Downtempo? I was also listening to that Hammock Kenotic record and while it's great, that's mostly a straight up shoegaze/postrock record with lots of uptempo beats.

BoC have too many boring beats to be ambient.

"Boring" and "ambient" in the same sentence?! I never! *clutches pearls*

However I do agree that BOC don't really strike me as ambient.

However however I am tickled that we've basically got Colleen's whole discography now (only missing her Mort Aux Vaches).

Love Colleen but there’s not a single record of her that I’d consider ambient. Perhaps only Colleen et les Boîtes à Musique?

List of nominations looks great. Extremely stoked.

warpairobotsippingdaiquirionpoolfloatie.jpeg

Do we have a campaigning thread?

I'm sad that David Sylvian's Gone to Earth sides 3/4 can't go in because of sides 1/2.

I hate to my nominations so Brian Eno-centric because, duh, but we have to make sure this one is on there:

Brian Eno - Lux

very underrated album in his catalog imo

^^ was just listening to that the other day, quite nice

sadly i'm sure Another Green World will absolutely destroy it in voting, since AGW was nominated. i (of course) adore AGW but it would be difficult to classify as "ambient" under even the most generous interpretation, yadayadayada

Yeah, great album thought it is, can't see how that one fits. Almost half the tracks have vocals on them.

Yeah, It's all songs!

Détrée - Architectura Celestis

8/30

I will be voting for a fair amount of Eno, but not AGW

‘discreet music’ the only truly ambient piece for me

I kinda feel that beatless should be part of the criteria of ambient.

ambient music isn’t the same as chillout music or whatever

If AGW is ambient I'm out.

The voters are revolting.

*the undulating sounds of pickets waving gently in the air, slowly mixing in with the crackles of torches*

hard to see how E2-E4, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill or Scenes from the South Island can be OK if AGW is out... fantastic records all, but ambient?

Just because it’s soft doesn’t mean it’s smooth

what is dead may never drone

I just want to say it’s ok to not know/understand things and it’s also ok to not understand something when you previously thought you did

at least we have some dope nomination lists

otm x 2

Taylor Deupree - Stil
Taylor Deupree -Northern
Main - Hz
Main - Firmament
Main - Dry Stone Feed
Ryuichi Sakamoto -Esperanto

6/30

Anjou - Anjou

Apologies for that needlessly combative AGW post!

I was listening to I Trawl the Megahertz yesterday and thought I should very probably have nominated that. What a beautiful (ambient) record.

I nominated Dragging a Dead Deer... if general consensus is to remove I’m more than happy to see that go. I love it but I also want this to stay true to theme. Same with Monoliths and Dimensions, I think a good deal of it is ambient but certainly not all of it.

I also back that AGW shouldn’t be on.

Also, Periphery by The Seven Fields of Aphelion is on the doc twice.

Two more:

Hecq - Night Falls
Miguel Ángel Tolosa - Ephimeral

17/30

OK fine can I withdraw my BoC and AGW nominations?

Arthur Russell's instrumentals probably shouldn't be on there either tbh tbf

Here are a few ambient vapor classics (2015 or prior) that should be up for consideration:

식료품groceries - 슈퍼마켓Yes! We're Open
Mindspring Memories - @_@
猫 シ Corp. - Palm Mall
仮想夢プラザ - 仮想夢プラザ (Telepath - virtual dream plaza)

Ok, as per your requests, I've removed Dragging a Dead Deer, Monoliths & Dimensions, Another Green World, and the Boards of Canada albums from the nominations. The nom list should now be up to date. Gman59 and Paolo, I'm sure you can count how many noms you still have left after these changes.

You can pull When - The Black Death too, my mistake.

Pontiac Streator and Ulla Strauss - Chat

Paolo, this appears to be an EP that's less than 30 minutes long, so it doesn't meet the poll criteria. You get one extra nomination.

You can pull When - The Black Death too, my mistake.

Okay, done.

I was listening to one of my own nominations, Debit - Animus, and I realised it's too intense to really count as ambient. So I'm gonna replace it with:

Natasha Barrett - Trade Winds

I remember browsing at record stores in the ambient section in the late nineties and even then you'd immediately be like "half of this isn't even ambient" and eventually the Internet allowed us to argue about which half

haha so true

good edits/retractions, everyone!

Looking forward to having a choice of 5 albums to vote for

And all of them are Eno.

Hopefully somebody can go thru the list with a fine-toothed comb and take out anything that might have beats, vocals, melodic progressions, do it properly.

Let's just restrict the poll to side one of Discreet Music and have done with it.

Pfft it's gonna take me years just to skim the multitude of nominations I'm unfamiliar with

Ok, so we’ll delay the poll for years while sleeve completes this important work

Let's do the poll as most ambient to least ambient

influenced by my reading of david toop this week, but is there a consensus 'extremely ambient gamelan' recording?

the one with the white dude playing gamalan on piano

BoC have too many boring beats to be ambient.

― Ned Caligari (Tom D.)

latter-era Sonic Youth has too many boring beats but you don't hear people complaining about the dull-as-dirt drumming on Murray St. fucking whingers

trip hop

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hHW1oY26kxQ

kevin drumm - second
ann annie - wander into
philip jeck - vinyl coda IV
dedalus•antoine beuger•jürg frey s/t

13/30

I dig how the ambient police operate

would you prefer that the beats call attention to themselves, so as to spoil 'the vibe' ?

Spoliling the vibe is exactly what they do!

I don’t see how Gas - Pop doesn’t win this poll.

Pop isn't even the highest rated Gas album in here, is it? I thought the consensus is that Königsforst is the best. (And I agree.)

Pop is also the least ambient Gas afaict

man i'd forgotten how beat-heavy 76:14 is

Fennesz/Sakamoto - Cendre

7/30

>'extremely ambient gamelan' recording?

the best recordings usually heat up by the end, more trance than ambient, but this is a good one that stays low-key. entire blog recommended, nothing random gets posted here.

https://music-republic-world-traditional.blogspot.com/2018/10/indonesia-indonesie-gamelan-kjahi-kaduk.html

There's 6 days left of nominating, and since it doesn't look like the list is overwhelmingly long, I'm gonna give everyone 10 extra noms. So you can nominate up to 40 records. Have fun!

that Antrilon album I nominated is a deep cut btw. I only heard it because it got sent to my college radio station. I love it though, very sci-fi sounding. first track reminds me of Otto Luening

Spoliling the vibe is exactly what they do!

Narkopop is an ambient Gas album

thanking you milton!

Here's my 10 extra nominations:

Alio Die & Mariolina Zitta - La sala dei cristalli
Deborah Martin - Eye of the Wizard
DeepChord presents Echospace - Liumin / Liumin Reduced
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Ecophony Rinne
Hildur Guðnadóttir - Saman
Lucette Bourdin - Radiant Stars
Lucia Hwong - Goddess Vol. 2: Celestial Realms
Move D / Namlook - XII: Space & Time
Tetsu Inoue / Jonah Sharp - Instant Replay
Ulla Straus - Big Room

(40/40)

Cool thanks, gonna submit more by Tuesday

I need to spend some more time with Tetsu Inoue

Alto Stratus – Region 5

19/40

Jean-Jacques Perrey - Prelude to Sleep (1957) (busy by modern definitions but begs inclusion due to prescient intent)
Gamelan Kjahi Kaduk, Manis Rengga – Gamelan Music from Java (1963)
Eberhard Schoener - Meditation (1973)
Klaus Wiese - Touch of Silence
Roland Kayn - Ultra Redundancy TR Megaphonie
Roger S. Payne - Songs of the Humpback Whale
Gordon Hempton - Dawn Chorus
Erik Satie (Alan Marks, piano) - Vexations
Daniel Lanois / Rocco Deluca - Goodbye to Language
Harry Bertoia - Sonambient F/W 1031 - Ocean Mysteries / Softly Played

Hey instead of arguing about BOC, what about Luck Ferrari? Ambient, sure, but music??

So many FPs on this thread

xxp good call re: Vexations.

>'extremely ambient gamelan' recording?

the best recordings usually heat up by the end, more trance than ambient, but this is a good one that stays low-key. entire blog recommended, nothing random gets posted here.

https://music-republic-world-traditional.blogspot.com/2018/10/indonesia-indonesie-gamelan-kjahi-kaduk.html

― Milton Parker, Saturday, May 25, 2019 5:40 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

god DAMN this is excellent. thanking you again.

en - already gone
14/40

Circle - Miljard
Aix Em Klemm - Aix Em Klemm
Philip Jeck - An Ark for the Listener
Rothko - No Chart No Anchor No Rudder No Sails
Oren Ambarchi - Grapes from the Estate
Taylor Deupree - Northern

(36/40)

sorry, but I'd like to retract my nomination of Huerco S.'s Colonial Patterns. I was at 15 earlier, so one retraction and six additions brings my tally up to 20:

Tholen - Sternklang
Stuart Dempster ‎– Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel
Piano Magic ‎– A Trick Of The Sea
Sleep Research Facility - Nostromo
Legiac - The Voynich Manuscript
Lull - Cold Summer

(20/40)

If you're going to have DJ Olive's Sleep and Buoy you ought to have:

DJ Olive - Triage

Steve Roach - A Deeper Silence
Steve Roach - Darkest Before Dark

Kent Sparling - Evening Air, Freeway Birds, No Wind Birds
Bruno Sanfilippo & Mathias Grassow - Ambessence Piano & Drones

I think this might be my new favourite ILM thread.

Morton Feldman - Piano And String Quartet (Kronos Quartet With Aki Takahashi ‎– Nonesuch, 1993)

6/40

^^^ great one, one of my favorite pieces of music

should be noted that the second disc of budd's 2005 album Avalon Sutra is a 69 minute remix of As Long As I Can Hold My Breath which is ambient as fuuuuuuuck

― these are not all of the possible side effects (Karl Malone), Friday, May 17, 2019 2:41 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Has nobody nominated this? Because the whole album is gorgeous and no matter what Budd thinks it totally fits the sleepytime criteria. So:

Harold Budd - Avalon Sutra

7/40

Lucette Bourdin - Radiant Stars

Never heard of this but a quick listen confirms it's worth more the $1 you can get it for on Bandcamp currently.

Thom Brennan - Mist

8/40

Lucette Bourdin - Radiant Stars

Never heard of this but a quick listen confirms it's worth more the $1 you can get it for on Bandcamp currently.

Ned bringing the goods! Hadn’t heard that DJ Olive rec

Chuck Johnson - Balsams
Deaf Center - Pale Ravine

38/40

This Thom Brennan album is fabulous. Cheers for the recommendation.

Taylor Deupree - Northern

Chinaski, this was already on the list, so you're at 35/40 nominations.

sorry, but I'd like to retract my nomination of Huerco S.'s Colonial Patterns.

Sure, I've retracted it.

The nomination list in the Google Docs sheet should be up to date. Here's the list so far as text, in case you can't open the sheet:

154 Strike
1991 No More Dreams
2814 新しい日の誕生
+Minus A Rainy Koran Verse (UK Live)
1 Mile North Minor Shadows
2350 Broadway 2350 Broadway 4
500mg Vertical Approach
Aeolian String Ensemble, The Lassithi/Elysium
Aidan Baker The Sea Swells a Bit...
Air [Pete Namlook] Air
Aix Em Klemm Aix Em Klemm
Akira Rabelais Spellewauerynsherde
Alain Kremski Music for an Unknown Temple
Alain Presencer The Singing Bowls of Tibet
Alan Lamb Original Masters - Night Passage
Alex Cobb Chantepleure
Alio Die Aura seminalis
Alio Die Horas tibi serenas
Alio Die & Mariolina Zitta La sala dei cristalli
Alio Die & Sylvi Alli Amidst the Circling Spires
Aloof Proof Expo Two: Piano Text
Alquimia "Coatlicue" Goddess of the Earth
Alva Noto Xerrox Vol.1
Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto Insen
Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto Vrioon
Alvin Curran Songs and Views of the Magnetic Garden
Ambiant Otaku Ambiant Otaku
Andrew Chalk Baroque Steps
Andrew Chalk The Cable House
Andrew Chalk & Christoph Heemann Mirror of the Sea
Andrew Pekler Cue
Andrew Skeoch & Sarah Koschak Spirit of the Outback
Ann Annie Wander Into
Anthony Manning Islets in Pink Polypropylene
Antrilon Mind Erase
Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Volume II
Arp The Soft Wave
Arp Inversions
Arthur Russell World of Echo
Arve Henriksen Chiaroscuro
ASC No Stars without Darkness
ASC Nothing Is Certain
ASC Fervent Dream
Asmus Tietchens Eisgang
Atrium Carceri Ptahil
Autechre Garbage
Autechre NTS Session 4
Baked Beans Baked Beans
Bakground Saved Data Trilogy
Bang on a Can Music for Airports (Brian Eno)
Barry Cleveland Mythos
Belong October Language
Ben Frost By the Throat
Ben Frost Aurora
Bill Laswell Axiom Ambient: Lost in the Translation
Bill Laswell & Terre Thaemlitz Web
Biosphere Departed Glories
Biosphere Substrata
Biosphere Dropsonde
Biosphere N-Plants
Biosphere Shenzhou
Biosphere Cirque
Birchville Cat Motel Beautiful Speck Triumph
Black Swan Aeterna
Blamstrain Disfold
Brian Eno Ambient 4: On Land
Brian Eno Ambient 1: Music for Airports
Brian Eno Discreet Music
Brian Eno Thursday Afternoon
Brian Eno The Shutov Assembly
Brian Eno Neroli (Thinking Music Part IV)
Brian Eno Music for Films
Brian Eno Lux
Brian Eno / Peter Chilvers Reflection
Brian Eno with Daniel Lanois & Roger Eno Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks
Brian McBride When the Detail Lost Its Freedom
Broken Consort, A The Shape Leaves
Bruno Sanfilippo & Mathias Grassow Ambessence Piano & Drones
Bvdub Return to Tonglu
C-Schulz & Hajsch C-Schulz & Hajsch
Carbon Based Lifeforms Twentythree
Carbon Based Lifeforms World of Sleepers
Caretaker, The Everywhere at the End of Time
Caretaker, The An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
Celer Engaged Touches
CFCF Exercises
Chapterhouse / Global Communication Blood Music: Pentamerous Metamorphosis
Charlemagne Palestine Strumming Music
Chihei Hatakeyama Minima Moralia
Christian Høy Knudsen Hav
Christina Kubisch Mono Flouid
Christopher Willits Horizon
Chubby Wolf Ornitheology
Chuck Johnson Balsams
Circle Miljard
Circular Divergent
Climax Golden Twins Lovely
Clive Wright Taqsim to Antlia
Coil Megalithomania!
Colleen The Golden Morning Breaks
Colleen Everyone Alive Wants Answers
Colleen Les ondes silencieuses
Colleen Captain of None
Colleen A Flame My Love, a Frequency
Constance Demby Novus Magnificat: Through the Stargate
Cornelius Cardew / The Scratch Orchestra The Great Learning [Deutsche Grammophon 1971]
Craig Kupka Crystals: New Music for Relaxation 2
Cucina Povera Hilja
Cucina Povera Zoom
Daevid Allen / Ja-Am Seven Drones
Daniel Lanois Omni Series 2: Purple Vista
Daniel Lanois / Rocco Deluca Goodbye to Language
Daniel Lanois / Rocco Deluca Goodbye to Language
Daniel Pemberton Bedroom
Datacide Flowerhead
David Behrman On the Other Ocean
David Behrman On the other Ocean
David Bowie All Saints
David Casper with Scott Cossu, Jami Sieber & T'ao Chu-Shen Crystal Waves
David Hykes & The Harmonic Choir Hearing Solar Winds
David Hykes & The Harmonic Choir Harmonic Meetings
David Jackman Sol mara
David Sylvian / Holger Czukay Flux + Mutability
David Tudor Rainforest
Dead Texan, The The Dead Texan
Deaf Center Pale Ravine
Dean McPhee Four Stones
Deathprod Morals and Dogma
Deborah Martin Eye of the Wizard
Dedalus • Antoine Beuger • Jürg Frey Dedalus • Antoine Beuger • Jürg Frey
Deep Listening Band The Ready Made Boomerang
Deep Listening Band & The Long String Instrument Suspended Music
Deep Magic / Pine Smoke Lodge Split
DeepChord Immersions
DeepChord presents Echospace Liumin / Liumin Reduced
Deontic Miracle, The Central Palace Music (From 100 Model Subjects for Hegikan Roku)
Desiderii Marginis That Which Is Tragic and Timeless
Desiderii Marginis Hypnosis
Détrée Architectura Celestis
Deutsch Nepal Tolerance
DJ Olive Sleep
DJ Olive Buoy
DJ Olive Triage
Dolphins into the Future Canto arquipélago
Don Slepian Sea of Bliss
Donato Dozzy Plays Bee Mask
Dots Dots
Douglas Quin Antarctica
Dreamfish Dreamfish
Earth Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version
Earth Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method
Eberhard Schoener Meditation
Ekkehard Ehlers Plays
Eleh Location Momentum
Éliane Radigue Trilogie de la mort
Éliane Radigue Adnos I–III
Éliane Radigue Jetsun Mila
Else Marie Pade Et glasperlespil
Eluvium Talk Amongst the Trees
Eluvium Copia
Eluvium Lambent Material
Emeralds What Happened
Emeralds Allegory of Allergies
En Already Gone
Entheogenic Spontaneous Illumination
Erik Satie Vexations [London Records 1990]
Evan Parker / Lawrence Casserley Solar Wind
Eyvind Kang Live Low to the Earth, in the Iron Age
Ezekiel Honig Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band
Fabio Orsi Winterreise
Fennesz Venice
Fennesz Endless Summer
Fennesz Black Sea
Fennesz / Sakamoto Cendre
Fires of Ork, The The Fires of Ork 2
Flying Saucer Attack Flying Saucer Attack
Folke Rabe What??
Forest Management Delicate
Former Selves Selige Sehnsucht
Forrest Fang Gongland
Forrest Fang The Sleepwalker's Ocean
France Jobin Intrication
François Bayle Erosphère
Fripp & Eno Evening Star
Fripp & Eno (No Pussyfooting)
Further 5 Further Journeys
Future Sound Of London, The Lifeforms
Garlo Vent de guitares
Gas Pop
Gas Königsforst
Gas Zauberberg
Gas Narkopop
Gavin Bryars The Sinking of The Titanic [Point Music 1994, originally released in 1975]
Geinoh Yamashirogumi 輪廻交響楽 Ecophony Rinne
Geoffrey Chandler Starscapes
Gigi Masin Wind
Gigi Masin Talk to the Sea
Giusto Pio Motore immobile
Global Communication 76:14
Global Communication Remotion: The Global Communication Remix Album
Gordon Hempton Dawn Chorus
Greg Davis Mutually Arising
Grouper A I A: Dream Loss
Grouper Ruins
Grouper The Man Who Died in His Boat
Growing The Sky's Run into the Sea
Growing The Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light
H. Takahashi Body Trip
H. Takahashi Low Power
Hallock Hill The Union
Hammock Kenotic
Hammock Raising Your Voice... Trying to Stop an Echo
Hammock Oblivion Hymns
Happy Meals Full Ashram Devotional Ceremony (Volumes IV - VI)
Haptic Abeyance
Harmonia & Eno '76 Tracks and Traces
Harold Budd Lovely Thunder
Harold Budd The White Arcades
Harold Budd The Room
Harold Budd Perhaps
Harold Budd Avalon Sutra
Harold Budd / Brian Eno Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror
Harold Budd / Brian Eno with Daniel Lanois The Pearl
Harold Budd & Clive Wright A Song for Lost Blossoms
Harold Budd & Clive Wright Little Windows
Haruomi Hosono 花に水 (Watering a Flower)
Hash Jar Tempo Under Glass
Hatchback Zeus & Apollo
Haxan Cloak, The Excavation
Hazard Wood
Head Phone Over Tone Solar Sails
Heathered Pearls Loyal
Hecq Night Falls
Helios Eingya
Henry Flynt You Are My Everlovin / Celestial Power
Henry Wolff & Nancy Hennings The Bells of Sh'ang Sh'ung: A Soundpoem)
Herbst9 Buried Under Time and Sand
High Aura'd Sanguine Futures
Hildur Guðnadóttir Saman
Hiroshi Yoshimura Music for Nine Post Cards
Hiroshi Yoshimura Green
Hoedh Hymnvs
Huerco S. Untitled
Humpback Whale Songs of the Humpback Whale
Ian Middleton Well of Sorrows
Ian William Craig A Turn of Breath
Iasos Inter-Dimensional Music
Iatmul Music of Oceania: The Iatmul of Papua Niugini
Ildjarn-Nidhogg Hardangervidda
Inade Aldebaran
Ingram Marshall Fog Tropes / Gradual Requiem
Ingram Marshall Three Penitential Visions / Hidden Voices
Inoyama Land Danzindan-Pojidon
Iona Fortune Tao of I
Iotronica Of Moons and Stars
Irresistible Force, The Global Chillage
Ishq Orchid
J. Greinke Cities In Fog
J.D. Emmanuel Wizards
Jack Jutson Mother Official
Jan Jelinek Tierbeobachtungen
Jean-Jacques Perrey Prélude au sommeil
Jean-Michel Jarre Waiting for Cousteau
Jeremy Bible Music for Black Holes
Jim O'Rourke Sleep Like It's Winter
Jim O'Rourke Long Night
Joda Clément I Hope You Like the Universe
Joe Jones Solar Music
Jóhann Jóhannsson Fordlandia
John T Bullitt Night of a Thousand Songs
John Tavener Towards Silence [Signum Classics 2010]
John Tilbury / Keith Rowe / Kjell Bjørgeengen Sissel
John Tilbury & Oren Ambarchi The Just Reproach
Jon Hassell Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street
Jon Hassell Listening to Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)
Jon Hassell Fascinoma
Jon Hassell / Brian Eno Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics
Jon Keliehor The Beginning of Time
Jonas Munk Absorb / Fabric / Cascade
Jonathan Coleclough Cake
Jonathan Fitoussi Imaginary Lines
Jonny Nash Eden
Julia Kent Asperities
Julianna Barwick Nepenthe
Juno Reactor Luciana
Jürg Frey L'âme est sans retenue I
Justin Bieber U Smile (800% Slower)
Justin Walter Unseen Forces
Jute Gyte Penetralia
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith Tides
Kammarheit The Starwheel
Kara-Lis Coverdale A480
Karma Moffett Golden Bowls of Compassion
Kasper Bjørke Quartet The Fifty Eleven Project
Kate NV Для = For
Keith Fullerton Whitman Playthroughs
Keith Fullerton Whitman Lisbon
Ken Camden Lethargy & Repercussions
Kent Sparling Evening Air, Freeway Birds, No Wind Birds
Kevin Drumm Imperial Distortion
Kevin Drumm Second
Khan & Walker Empire State Building
Kid606 Recollected Ambient Works Vol. 1: Bored of Excitement
Kinski Don't Climb on and Take the Holy Water
Kjahi Kaduk Manis, Manis Rengga Gamelan Music from Java
Klaus Wiese Qumra II
Klaus Wiese Touch of Silence: Tibetan Singing Bowls
Klaus Wiese, Ted de Jong & Mathias Grassow El-Hadra: The Mystik Dance
KLF, The Chill Out
Koen Holtkamp Gravity / Bees
Kowalski Room Modern Urban Starlight
Kraftwerk Autobahn
Kreng Grimoire
Kyle Bobby Dunn Kyle Bobby Dunn & The Infinite Sadness
Kyle Bobby Dunn Bring Me the Head of Kyle Bobby Dunn
La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela Untitled ("The Black Record")
La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath
La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela / The Theatre of Eternal Music Dream House 78'17"
Labradford E luxo so
Labradford Fixed::Context
Labradford Mi media naranja
Laraaji Ambient 3: Day of Radiance
Laraaji Essence / Universe
Laurie Anderson The Ugly One with the Jewels and Other Stories
Laurie Spiegel The Expanding Universe
Leandro Fresco & Rafael Anton Irisarri La equidistancia
Legiac The Voynich Manuscript
Les Halles Transient
Levantis Romantic Psychology 1
Lichens The Psychic Nature of Being
Lightwave Musique Provisoire
Local News A Simple Dream Pass
Loren Chasse The Air in the Sand
Loren Connors As Roses Bow (Collected Airs 1992–2002)
Lorenzo Montanà Phase IX
Loscil Endless Falls
Loscil Sea Island
Loscil Plume
Loscil Endless Falls
Lovesliescrushing Glissceule
Luc Ferrari Éphémère I & II
Lucette Bourdin Nordic Waves, Vol. 2: Spring
Lucette Bourdin Radiant Stars
Lucia Hwong Secret Luminescence
Lucia Hwong Goddess Vol. 2: Celestial Realms
Lucid Dreams Lucid Dreams 0096
Lull Like a Slow River
Lull Cold Summer
Lustmord The Place Where the Black Stars Hang
Lustmord Dark Matter
M. Geddes Gengras Hawaiki Tapes
Main Firmament IV
Main Hz
Main Firmament
Main Dry Stone Feed
Manual Bajamar
Manual with Jess Kahr The North Shore
Manuel Göttsching E2–E4
Marble Sky Marble Sky
Marconi Union Weightless (Ambient Transmissions Vol. 2)
Marek Zebrowski & David Lynch Polish Night Music
Mariolina Zitta Concert for Bats, Voices and Natural Sounds
Mark Wastell Come Crimson Rays
Marsen Jules Beautyfear
Marsen Jules Lazy Sunday Funerals
Marsen Jules Yara
Mary Lattimore The Withdrawing Room
Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek Bird, Lake, Objects
Masters of Psychedelic Ambiance Mu
Mathias Grassow & Alio Die Expanding Horizon
Max Richter Sleep
Meg Bowles Blue Cosmos
Meg Bowles The Shimmering Land
Michael Brook with Brian Eno & Daniel Lanois Hybrid
Michael Stearns Planetary Unfolding
Michael Stearns Encounter (A Journey in the Key of Space)
Michael T. Bullock & Andrew Lafkas Ceremonies To Breathe Upon
Michel Redolfi Desert Tracks
Microstoria Snd
Miguel Angel Tolosa Ephimeral
Miles Davis In a Silent Way
Milieu A Warm Wooden Hollow
MindSpring Memories @_@
Minilogue Blomma
MLO Io
Monolake Gobi. The Desert EP
Morton Feldman Piano and String Quartet [Nonesuch 1993]
Moss Harvest Constructs of Loss and Longing
Motion Sickness of Time Travel Motion Sickness of Time Travel
Mountains Sewn
Mountains Choral
Mountains Centralia
Move D The Silent Orbiter
Move D / Namlook XII: Space & Time
Murmer What Are the Roots That Clutch
Music to Films Music to Films
Muslimgauze Veiled Sisters
MWVM Rotations
n/a Symphonies of the Planets 1: NASA Voyager Recordings
n/a Rostov Chimes
Natasha Barrett Trade Winds
Natural Snow Buildings The Dance of the Moon and the Sun
Necks, The Mosquito / See Through
New Dreams Ltd. Sleepline
New Risen Throne / Cruel Harvest Shadows Over Humanity
Nicholas Szczepanik We Make Life Sad
Nocturnal Emissions Spiritflesh
Norman Westberg 13
Northaunt Barren Land
Novisad Novisad
Novisad Seleya
Nurse with Wound Soliloquy for Lilith
Nurse with Wound Salt Marie Celeste
O Yuki Conjugate Equator
Oliver Lieb Inside Voices
Omni Vu Deity Uvunayatu
Oneohtrix Point Never Rifts
Oneohtrix Point Never Replica
Oöphoi Static Soundscapes: Three Lights At the End of the World
Oöphoi / Tau Ceti Celestial Geometries
Orb, The Chill Out, World!
Orb, The The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
Oren Ambarchi Triste
Oren Ambarchi Suspension
Oren Ambarchi In the Pendulum's Embrace
Oren Ambarchi Grapes from the Estate
Organic Cloud Organic Cloud
Organum Vacant Lights
Organum Submission
Organum Birds' Wings Were Glued to Their Bodies and Their Feet Froze to the Ground
Oval 94diskont.
Pan•American White Bird Release
Paul Horn Inside the Great Pyramid
Paul Schütze Apart
Pauline Oliveros / Stuart Dempster / Panaiotis Deep Listening
Pendant Make Me Know You Sweet
Penelope Trappes Penelope One
Peter Warren & Matt Samolis Bowed Metal Music
Peter Wright An Angel Fell Where the Kestrels Hover
Petrels Haeligewielle
Phil Niblock Nothin to Look at Just a Record
Philip Jeck Stoke
Philip Jeck Vinyl Coda IV
Philip Jeck An Ark for the Listener
Piano Magic Son de Mar (Music from the Film by Bigas Luna)
Piano Magic A Trick of the Sea
Popol Vuh In den Gärten Pharaos
Porya Hatami Shallow
Pulse Emitter Planetary Scale Synth Hypnosis
Pulse Emitter Xenharmonic Passages
Ragnar Grippe Sand
Raison d'être The Empty Hollow Unfolds
Raison d'être Enthralled by the Wind of Loneliness
Raison d'être In Sadness, Silence, and Solitude
Raison d'être Prospectus I
Randall McClellan The Healing Music of Rana Vol. II
Randall McClellan The Healing Music of Rana Vol. III
Rapoon The Fires of the Borderlands
Raymond Scott Soothing Sounds for Baby Volume 1: 1 to 6 Months
Richard Skelton Landings
Rob Theakston I Am Waiting for You to Stop Being Mad at Me
Robert A.A. Lowe & Rose Lazar Eclipses
Robert Ashley Private Parts
Robert Henke Layering Buddha
Robert Rich Somnium
Robert Rich Trances / Drones
Robert Rich Calling Down the Sky
Robert Rich Humidity
Robert Rich & Lustmord Stalker
Robert Turman Flux
Robert Turman Beyond Painting
Robert Turman & Aaron Dilloway Blizzard
Rod Modell / Michael Mantra Sonic Continuum
Roedelius Selbstportrait - Vol. II
Roger Winfield's Aeolian Harps Voices of the Wind
Roland Kayn Tektra
Roland Kayn Multiplex Sound-Art: Ultra / Redundancy TR / Megaphonie
Roly Porter Aftertime
Rothko No Chart No Anchor No Rudder No Sails
Roy Montgomery Scenes from the South Island
Roy Montgomery Temple IV
Ryuichi Sakamoto Async
Ryuichi Sakamoto Esperanto
Sarah Davachi Qualities of Bodies Permanent
Sarah Davachi August Harp
Sarah Davachi Barons Court
Sarah Louise Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars
Satoshi Ashikawa Still Way
Schiller Atemlos
Seattle Harmonic Voices, The Harmonic Voice
Secede Tryshasla
Secret Pyramid Movements of Night
Seven Fields of Aphelion, The Keep the Ocean Inside
Seven Fields of Aphelion, The Periphery
Shades of Orion Shades of Orion 2
Sheila Chandra ABoneCroneDrone
Shinjuku Thief The Witch Haven
Shuttle358 Chessa
Silence Silence V
Sleep Research Facility Nostromo
SleepResearchFacility Deep Frieze
Slowdive Pygmalion
Solar Quest Orgship
Spacemen 3 Dreamweapon
Spacetime Continuum Sea Biscuit
Stars of the Lid The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid
Stars of the Lid The Ballasted Orchestra
Stars of the Lid Stars of the Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline
Stars of the Lid Gravitational Pull Vs. The Desire For an Aquatic Life
Stephan Mathieu A Static Place
Stephen Kent Family Tree
Steve Hillage Rainbow Dome Musick
Steve Roach Structures from Silence
Steve Roach Immersion : One
Steve Roach Dreamtime Return
Steve Roach The Magnificent Void
Steve Roach Quiet Music: The Original 3-Hour Collection
Steve Roach A Deeper Silence
Steve Roach Darkest Before Dawn
Steve Roden Forms of Paper
Steven Stapleton & David Tibet The Sadness of Things
Stijn Hüwels Tomodachi
Strategy Noise Tape Self
Stuart Dempster Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel
Stuart Dempster Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel
Subterrene Bathetic Resonance
Sun Electric 30.7.94 Live
Sunn O))) 3: Flight of the Behemoth
Sunn O))) The GrimmRobe Demos
Sunn O))) & Ulver Terrestrials
Sunroof! Bliss
Superficial Depth Digital Superimposing
Suso Sáiz Rainworks
Suspended Memories Forgotten Gods
Susumu Yokota Sakura
Suzanne Ciani Seven Waves
Svartsinn Elegies for the End
Syntonic Research Inc. Environments 2: Tintinnabulation (Special Low Frequency Version)
Syntonic Research Inc. Environments 6: Dawn and Dusk in the Okefenokee Swamp
Syntonic Research Inc. Environments 7: Induced Meditation – A New Easy Method of Relieving Tension
System 7 Point 3: Water Album
Takehisa Kosugi Catch-Wave
Tangerine Dream Zeit
Tangerine Dream Phaedra
Tatsuya Nakatani ‎Nakatani Gong Orchestra
Taylor Deupree Stil.
Taylor Deupree Northern
Terekke Improvisational Loops
Terre Thaemlitz Soil
Tetsu Inoue World Receiver
Tetsu Inoue Yolo
Tetsu Inoue / Jonah Sharp Instant Replay
Tholen Sternklang
Thom Brennan Mist
Thomas Köner Permafrost
Thomas Köner Kaamos
Thomas Köner Daikan
Thumpmonks Noir Selections
Tim Hecker Harmony in Ultraviolet
Tim Hecker Ravedeath, 1972
Tim Hecker Virgins
Tod Dockstader Aerial #1
Tom Heasley Where the Earth Meets the Sky
Tom Heasley On the Sensations of Tone
Tommy Awards Sessions II
Tony Conrad Four Violins (1964)
Tor Lundvall Empty City
Troum & All Sides Shutûn
Ulla Straus Big Room
Ulrich Schnauss Goodbye
Ulver with Tromsø Chamber Orchestra Messe I.X-VI.X
Vangelis Soil Festivities
Vangelis Invisible Connections
Vangelis L'apocalypse des animaux
Vangelis & Dr. Stergios Tegos Microneurosurgery with Video Tapes
Vapour Theories Decant
Various Artists The Ambient Cookbook
Various Artists Pop Ambient 2002
Various Artists (The Microcosm) Visionary Music Of Continental Europe, 1970–1986
Various Artists Music For Films III
Various Artists I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age Music in America, 1950–1990
Various Artists The Promises of Silence
Various Artists ...And Even Wolves Hid Their Teeth and Tongue Wherever Shelter Was Given
Various Artists Ambient 4: Isolationism
Various Artists Mono No Aware
Various Artists Bblisss
Vektroid Polytravellers
Vikki Jackman Whispering Pages
Virginia Astley ‎From Gardens Where We Feel Secure
Vladislav Delay Multila
Vladislav Delay Anima
Warmth Essay
Wil Bolton Quarry Bank
William Basinski The Disintegration Loops
William Basinski Melancholia
Wilson Tanner 69
Wind-Up Bird, The Whips
Windy & Carl Depths
Windy & Carl We Will Always Be
Windy & Carl Antarctica (The Bliss Out, Vol. 2)
Winged Victory for the Sullen, A Atomos
Wolfgang Voigt Rückverzauberung 10 / Nationalpark
Woob Woob 1194
X.Y.R. Reflections
X.Y.R. El Dorado
Xela The Dead Sea
Yagya Rigning
Yagya Stars and Dust
Young Gods, The Music for Artificial Clouds
Zalys Sublime
Zimoun Drums
Zoviet France Shouting at the Ground
Zoviet France Assault and Mirage
Zoviet France Mohnomishe
Zoviet France Eostre
식료품groceries 슈퍼마켓Yes! We're Open
仮想夢プラザ 仮想夢プラザ
猫 シ Corp. Palm Mall

A couple more duplicates?

Daniel Lanois / Rocco Deluca Goodbye to Language
David Behrman On the Other Ocean Dedalus • Antoine Beuger • Jürg Frey

Well, three. My line-break disappeared. Whoops.

Thanks, I've removed the duplicates from the sheet. The last one isn't a duplicate, as the album is self-titled.

Also, does anyone know if you can make Google put the albums that have the same artist on column A in alphabetical order in column B? All those Brian Eno albums etc seem to be in completely random order, I've no idea how the sheet decides the order in column B if you alphabetise based on column A?

XP: Argh, sorry. I'm going to blame the app for displaying it as two identical lines. Explains my lack of a presumed line-break too. *blushes*

I see some epic votesplitting on the horizon.

Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement - Ambient Black Magic

1/40

I've no idea how the sheet decides the order in column B if you alphabetise based on column A?

you can do it by selecting both columns, then Data > Sort Range. From there, you add multiple conditions for sorting (First sort Column A, then sort Column B)

Coil - Time Machines

Steve Brand – Awakensong
36 – Dream Tempest
Ricardo Donoso – Assimilating the Shadow

22/40

Sacred Tapestry - Shader

should probably retract C-Schulz & Hajsch s/t cuz it's not ambient. cool fucking album, though

i'd like to retract my nomination for C-Schulz & Hajsch (sorry)

Aes Dana - Leylines
Asura - 360
Maeror Tri - The Beauty Of Sadness
Solar Fields - Leaving Home
Vasilisk - Acqua
V/A - Chill Out Or Die!
V/A - Fahrenheit Project Part Two
V/A - Oxycanta
V/A - Saturn Gnosis

38/40

Experimental Audio Research – Beyond The Pale
Seefeel – Quique
Daren Seymour & Mark Van Hoen ‎– Aurobindo: Involution

great list, lovely to see lots of colleen in there.

PowerPCMe - Kmart 1989-1992

5/40

do we have strong feeling about late period Earth being on the list. seems ambient to me so I nom'd Hex. if they get a pass I'd like to nominate some more by them

Many thanks upthread for turning me on to Lucette Bourdin.

Another nom:

Fennesz & Polwechsel- Wrapped Islands

also, had no idea that Seven Fields of Aphelion had more than one record! going to have to find the one besides Periphery.

brimstead, curious: is the SotL dislike because the music is too obvious/cinematic? i guess it is the equivalent of ambient 'comfort food' to me, but remain slightly shocked whenever people write that they don't like them.

That Jonathan Fitoussi is great, as is his new collaboration with JB Dunkel from Air called Mirages. It’s not ambient, but it’s a great album.

Need to nominate some Vidna Obmana... but which one?

brimstead, curious: is the SotL dislike because the music is too obvious/cinematic? i guess it is the equivalent of ambient 'comfort food' to me, but remain slightly shocked whenever people write that they don't like them.

Tim Hecker is very clearly a maker of ambient music as far as I'm concerned, despite the bursts of static and his more compositionally-oriented approach.

i'm coming around to this approach. i don't even really listen to actual noise music. radio amor and mirages are both awesome albums either way.

I really love Tim Hecker's Virgins

Dedekind Cut - Tahoe

the ambient album I've loved most in the last couple of years

this is an amazing list

should probably retract C-Schulz & Hajsch s/t cuz it's not ambient. cool fucking album, though

i'd like to retract my nomination for C-Schulz & Hajsch (sorry)

No prob, I deleted it from the list.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X14B7JHAooNtfPbNilJ1xPshNaKBbL6q-8E1xUdM7xU

The nomination list is up to date again. Remember, you only have tomorrow and Friday left to nominate!

And today of course. :)

what I’ve heard just has this Americana sunsets and wheat fields feel to it that I’m really not into. not the right emotional vibe

― brimstead, Tuesday, May 28, 2019 7:06 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

interesting! i can see that to a certain degree, but i think that i also fell in love with them while in cities— late night subway trips in wintry NYC, early morning bus rides in San Francisco. i also used to unplug the "official" store ipod when i worked in retail to play SotL, and so often associate them with long days staring out a window at rich people passing me by lol.

i think that their pastoral qualities, so to speak, are infinitely more tied to "the west" for me, as opposed to cornfields.

Chuck Johnson - Balsams

9/30

Whoops redacted I made a typo when I tried keyword search. Already there.

I mean retract/withdraw* I'm not doing so well right now with typing and thinking

Cliff Martinez - Solaris OST

If we're happy with E2-E4 can I can some clarification on SAW1

*get

nothing is forbidden

that’s interesting table, love hearing how people can experience these things differently. I did do the “skip around” thing on tired sounds last night and found it to be more somewhat more sonically diverse than I remembered.

Francisco Lopez - La Selva

19/40

There is no case to be made for E2-E4 to be considered Ambient.

I'm considering edge-case albums like Sleeps with the Fishes by Michael Brook/Pieter Nooten or Lanterna's s/t debut, both of which have vocals and a few songs with guitar lines/drums but are def. ambient.

Steve Roden - Crop Circles

20/40

Please remove:

Schiller - Atemlos
(way too many beats and vocals)

and add:

Troum - Eald-ge-stréon

38/40

SPK - Zamia Lehmanni: Songs of Byzantine Flowers
Voice Of Eye - Transmigration

thank you, Tuomas, for deleting my nom.

do people really believe that Endless Summer (Fennesz) is ambient?

I do not, personally, although it's closer than any of his other ones except maybe Live In Japan

surprised nobody's nominated Xerrox Vol. 2 by Alva Noto

Alva Noto - Xerrox vol. 2
Jakob Ullmann ‎– Fremde Zeit - Addendum
Dirk Serries + Rutger Zuydervelt ‎– Buoyant
Phil Durrant/Thomas Lehn/Radu Malfatti - dach
Graham Lambkin / Jason Lescalleet ‎- Air Supply (fuck it, there are welcome surprises in here)
Stephan Mathieu & Janek Schaefer - Hidden Name (if you like Philip Jeck, you might love this album)
Bruno Duplant / Taku Sugimoto / Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble ‎– Chamber And Field Works (2015-2017)
Ryoko Akama | Bruno Duplant | Dominic Lash ‎– Next To Nothing
Rafael Toral - Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance
Michael Pisaro / Taku Sugimoto - 2 seconds​/​b minor​/​wave
Antoine Beuger / Michael Pisaro ‎– This Place / Is Love
Eva-Maria Houben ‎– Air - Works For Flutes And Organ
Cristián Alvear* - Jürg Frey ‎– Guitarist, Alone
Marcus Schmickler, John Tilbury ‎– Timekeepers
Stephan Mathieu - Wurmloch Variationen
Radu Malfatti ‎– Düsseldorf Vielfaches
Radu Malfatti / Klaus Filip - imaoto
Haptic ‎– Ten Years Under The Earth
Michael Pisaro ‎– Fields Have Ears
Taku Sugimoto ‎– Quartet / Octet
Stephen Cornford ‎– Empty Reels
Cem Güney ‎– Five Compositions
Stephan Mathieu - Radioland
Joseph Clayton Mills - Sifr
Rafael Toral - Wave Field
Stephan Mathieu ‎- On Tape
Klaus Lang ‎– SAIS.

1

I do not, personally, although it's closer than any of his other ones except maybe Live In Japan

― Ambient Police (sleeve)

fuck, i forgot to include Indeed by O'Rourke / Ambarchi ... so serene, even if it starts off a bit rocky. too late

Is this ambient?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvG-jqGsWSk

Peter Andersson - Music for Film and Exhibition II
Michael Brook and Pieter Nooten - Sleeps with the Fishes
Jeff Greinke - Cities in Fog 2
Lanterna - Lanterna
Lustmord - Heresy
Lustmord - The Word as Power
Robert Rich & Lisa Moskow - Yearning
Dirk Serries - The Origin Reversal
Stratosphere - Dreamscape
Stratosphere - Aftermath
Vidna Obmana - The River of Appearance
Vidna Obmana - Passage in Beauty
v/a - A Brief History of Ambient, Vol. 1
v/a - Ambient 2: Imaginary Landscapes
v/a - Ambient 3: The Music of Changes

37/40 - hanging on to three in case I remember any others!

christophe charles - undirected 1986 - 1996
christophe charles - undirected /dok
christophe charles - undirected 1992 - 2002
_zoviet*france_ - loh land
_zoviet*france_ - just an illusion
keith jarrett - hymns / spheres
isolde - all things fall to marching men
andrew chalk - the river that flows into the sands
nijiumu - era of sad wings
arve henriksen - sakuteiki
anna lockwood - glass world of anna lockwood

i think i have one left, so
dreams (james ferraro) - dreams

ooh yes loh land is excellent.

so is Just An Illusion! so many good ZF records, gonna get tough when I make my ballot

Then nom list should be up to date again. Remember, tomorrow is the last day to nominate!

both Venice and Black Sea (maybe Agora, too) are less overtly bristling / burgeoning with energy.. they feel far more dynamic, subtle, and varied, throughout their respective durations

In light of this: Tuomas, can you remove Fennesz - Venice?

I’m gonna just go ahead and nominate Mort Garson’s Plantasia and Philip Corner’s Satie Slowly just to keep the xls thorough

Also, I’ll nom Fennesz Venice

Philip Corner’s Satie Slowly

haven't heard this but i would really like to, if the title is accurate.

recently i was whining on a satie thread about how no one follows the instructions on the Trois Gymnopédies to play it as slowly as possible. the slower the better imo

recently i was whining
no pun intended

thanks for keeping track of the noms, Tuomas!

Also, I’ll nom Fennesz Venice

I don't wanna start a fight here, so if someone retracts their nomination, it can't be renominated by someone else, sorry.

Dennis Young - Quest

9/30

I don't wanna start a fight here, so if someone retracts their nomination, it can't be renominated by someone else, sorry.

have you run one of these polls before? the arguing over the nominations is one of the most excruciating and tedious things imaginable. the correct answer to however the pollrunner wants to handle nominations is "ok, thanks. and thanks for spending an insane amount of your free time on this internet poll for my enjoyment"

That’s dumb as shit and ALSO thanks for spending an insane amount of your free time on this internet poll for my enjoyment

Whiney, as you well know, ambient is notoriusly hard to define. IMO it's much better that the "what is ambient?" discussion is happening here, and that it's reflected on the nominations, than if some controversial album makes it to the top 50 and people start arguing then. If multiple people have expressed doubt whether Fennesz belongs to the poll, and the person who nominated the album retracts it, I think you should respect that and not renominate it immediately afterwards. To me that feels like petty contrarianism.

Anyway, today is the last day to nominate!

i'd like to retract all everyone's nominations except my own please

Les Joyaux de la Princesse & Regard Extrême - Die Weiße Rose

40/40

recently i was whining on a satie thread about how no one follows the instructions on the Trois Gymnopédies to play it as slowly as possible. the slower the better imo

― i will never make a typo ever again (Karl Malone)

My nominations:

Strategy - The Infinity File ‎
Elodie - Vieux Silence
Toumani Diabaté - The Mandé Variations
Machinefabriek - Marijn
The Necks - Aether
Hisato Higuchi - Dialogue

good call on "Aether."

The Fun Years - God Was Like, No
John Luther Adams - Become Ocean

I think I'm done. Thanks to Tuomas for making sense of all this!

No prob. I'm going to sleep now, and I'm not gonna sort the final nominations until I get up, so you can still nom stuff until around 8am GMT tomorrow.

good call on the fun years.. i wanted to cite 'baby, it's cold inside', but it sort of crescendos / plateaus in a celebratory way. there's a stretch midway through the album where it becomes this all-encompassing, shuddering tremolo--it sounds fantastic on the stereo. their music feels like a rough blend of philip jeck-styled sound art and something like CODY-era Mogwai

*not a "rough" blend, but rather a very successful one

why is fennesz not ambient?

Sorry for the last minute noms, I'm on China time and it crept up on me.

Various - Pop Ambient 2006
Various - Excursions In Ambience - The Third Dimension
Kazumasa Hashimoto - Yupi
Biosphere & The Higher Intelligence Agency - Birmingham Frequencies
Dan HabarNam - From The Known

I really think Talk Talk's chill LP's should be allowed.

I had no idea there were so many ambient fans still on ILM. I had no idea there were so many folks still on ILM at all, I thought it was all pretty much just five-ten recalcitrant stragglers. Is ILM actually more active than ever, and if so does that explain why dad rock dominates the site now?

Veering sharply into another realm of me being a nuisance, I really don't get some of the ambient hipsterism on display here. If you're truly averse to calming music, why focus on ambient at all?

I'll show myself out...

...And another thing:

Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement - Ambient Black Magic

I really hope folks have given this a listen. Best ambient I've heard from the past ~decade.

i don't know about best i've heard in the past decade, but it is pretty good.

xpost

I don't listen to that much new ambient to be fair. Checking out your list, I definitely like the Loscil but it is slightly treacly. RSE have a distinctive sound which as a hot take I'd rate higher.

The only other artist I recognize from yours is Sunn O)) but I'm not much of a drone fan if it's harder than SoTL (I do quite like their more droney cuts). Which other one would you rate as the greatest of the decade?

Speaking of last minute, how about this Anthony Rother?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EOAqGAuWZk&t=3337s

I'm familiar with the last song which just popped up on my random but I haven't had a chance to check out the full release yet. Hi ho hi ho it's off to work I go...

Link is borked?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EOAqGAuWZk

why is fennesz not ambient?

I kind of feel that the intersection of drone and ambient is a pretty large overlap, and the sustained washes of Venice become texturally unobtrusive through its saturation, like minimalism through maximalism.

But as to why I denominated it, it's looking like I misread Lowell's post (I must have elided the "less"), haha oops.

Tuomas: please reinstate Fennesz - Venice.

thanks for the extension!

Thom Brennan – Mountains
Seconds in Formaldehyde – Suchness 3
Star Turbine – The Sleeping Land
Andrew Pekler – Tristes Tropiques

26/40

sustained washes? are you thinking of another album?

https://www.discogs.com/style/harsh+noise+wall

https://harshnoisewally.tumblr.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UerLIFo4d6k

One more nom

Broken Hearted Dragonflies: Insect Electronica From Southeast Asia

Also don’t forget

FM3 - The Buddha Machine

The Buddha Machine is not a record, so it's not eligible, sorry. If you want, you can nominate some of FM3's actual albums. Also, someone has already nominated Robert Henke's Layering Buddha, which is an album made by sampling the Buddha Machine, so you can always vote for that.

It doesn't look like I have the time to go through the nominations today, so I'm gonna give you 24 hours more time. The nomination process ends this time tomorrow.

Boris - Flood
Julia Kent - Temporal
Julia Kent - Character

Speaking of last minute, how about this Anthony Rother?

I have that album (62 Minutes on Mars), and while it's not among my favourite FAX releases, it's indubitably ambient. So feel free to nominate it, if you wanna.

many xposts to Viborg, I really think that Richard Skelton's work (Landings in particular, as well as his work as A Broken Consort) is probably my highest-rated of the past decade after SotL. it's definitely more influence by Arvo Part and a sort of academic minimalism, but it has an emotional depth in its slight variations that make it really worth for me.

Here's one from Landings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NTvcfkPq4Y

and here is how his latest is described:

Music for the retreating ice-sheets of Iceland, produced whilst on a 'Frontiers in Retreat' residency in Seyðisfjörður in 2016.

www.frontiersinretreat.org/artists/richard_skelton

Front Variations is composed from sine waves subjected to increasing amounts of feedback in order to simulate the so-called 'ice-albedo' feedback mechanism.

This is the process whereby the action of melting glaciers reduces the global surface area of ice, thereby reducing the amount of solar radiation that glaciers reflect, which in turn increases global temperatures and causes further glacial melting.

Ring modulation and distortion were also used to further deteriorate the sound signal.

Front Variations is also available as part of Quoin 4 - the annual publication for friends and patrons of Corbel Stone Press. Quoin 4 features data collected by the World Glacier Monitoring Service and aerial photography of arctic glaciers from the US Naval Oceanographic Office.

https://aeolian.bandcamp.com/album/front-variations-one-two

Kyle Bobby Dunn - From Here To Eternity

just came out, and it's really good

The Buddha Machine is not a record, so it's not eligible, sorry.

― Tuomas, Saturday, June 1, 2019 2:59 AM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is an absolute horseshit decision, you can listen to it on spotify*

https://open.spotify.com/album/7COTnWvHjhkq10ph3q4xH4?si=koVhRwTiQLmeodVPb4NbMg

*also thanks for spending an insane amount of your free time on this internet poll for my enjoyment

Can I sneak in:

M. Geddes Gengras - Ishi
Omicron - Acrocosm
V/A - Plug In + Turn On Vol. 2
Skyramps - Days of Thunder (is this ambient?)

lol whiney

It has an entry on Discogs too, idk what else you need

https://www.discogs.com/FM3-Buddha-Machine/master/517873

According to that Discogs tracklist it’s too short!

Bonus time! I'll submit my final three:

Löwenritter - Prelude: Ten Seconds Before Sunrise
Vangelis - Fais Que Ton Rêve Soit Plus Long Que La Nuit
Cernunnos Woods - Awaken the Empire of Dark Wood

Cernunnos Woods, now there’s a name I haven’t heard in over twenty years.

Great call on Kasumasa Hashimoto, I must revisit his stuff, I love that little boutique label he was on, Noble Records, they have some lovely music, much better than Childisc.

dark forest ambient! it has some spoken word bits, but then so does the Harold Budd/Clive Wright stuff

Dang it *Kazumasa

was considering Midori Takada's "Through the Looking Glass" but it seemed a bit too dynamic.

Kazumasa Hashimoto can be a bit twee but I find it delicate and poignant at its best. I don't want to discriminate but it seems like the urge to sweeten the mood is a common strain in much of the Japanese electronic music I've heard. There's a Japanese artist called Pass Into Silence who's made releases on Kompakt, the songs are some of the most exquisite ambient creations ever (I'm not so familiar with LPs). But it definitely has a lullaby quality about it.

MaresNest, what else do you especially like on Noble Records?

Saw1

I find that Japanese musicians have a hard time making garden variety flat-line ambient or drone, they like to add more movement in there than is common sometimes adding more unusual chords and so on...

For noble records, I would recommend maybe Cinq, Midori Hirano, World's End Girlfriend, oh and Yasushi Yoshida especially.

I have an urge to embitter the mood, but still keep it sweet, like a foodie dark chocolate bar.

Spotify playlist not *quite* three weeks long. Its growth really slooowwwwed in the last few days, with all the retractions and generous helpings of not-on-Spotify stuff.

After consideration, I'm gonna allow the Buddha Machine in the poll. It's true that the individual loops only amount to 3 minutes of playing time, but on obviously the way it works means the music goes on as long as you want. And it certainly meets both the functional and aesthetic definition of ambient music perfectly.

The nominations are now closed, thanks to everyone for nomming such cool stuff! I'll finish the album sheet and probably will start the voting thread later today.

Thats too bad I forgot to nominate my refrigerator, it makes a very pleasant hum.

Eh I find your fridge to be a bit cold and empty with just a few stale old reheated ideas. Never enough to chew on and yet I keep coming back to it thinking there’ll be something new.

Fair enough, I retract the fridge.

Lots of found fridge sounds among the current noms tbf.

ILX AMBIENT ALBUMS POLL: the voting thread. Voting ends on Sunday, June 23rd.

Woooooo!

I haven't got a chuffing CLUE about how to rank my choices. Might have to go unweighted for the first time ever.

Weighting feels very counter to the ambient spirit ;-)

XP - Rothko at the top plz :)

Can I at least hear the fridge to judge for myself before it's denommed to the abyss?

of course, it's playing right now, you just have to listen for it ... very carefully