The mind revealing itself to itself: the TOP 100 AMBIENT ALBUMS as voted by ILX

The votes have been counted, altogether there were around 30 ballots, and now it's time for the results...

https://www.ancient-code.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/greenland_anomaly_prv2_by_julian_faylona-db8rifx.jpg

Boo to 30 ballots. Was hoping there'd be more

Cue tired joke about how that was too swift, tempo-wise, and should instead be stretched out over several months.

99.(tie) Stars of the Lid: The Ballasted Orchestra
197 points, 3 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/GvqOGm1.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rFNL6HQ1mM

Big second on Stars of the Lid, although I think I like "The Ballasted Orchestra" better. It's like being in a scene from 2001. For 74 minutes. On heavy downers.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), 30. huhtikuuta 2003 20:39

I want to put in a plug for "Sun Drugs" off the underrated Stars of the Lid release The Ballasted Orchestra, as it totally nails the feeling of laying​ in a wide-open field under a cloudless sky listening to the rumble of distant jet aircraft.

― bernard snowy, 19. maaliskuuta 2017 18:28

Also I still feel like I've got a long way to go before I've internalised most of their stuff, but The Ballasted Orchestra is in to my top 3 with a bullet.

― ledge, 11. joulukuuta 2012 17:44

I have a feeling that if I went back and listened to their entire discography again their early material would win out but Tired Sounds was such a formative album for me that I couldn't bring myself to vote for anything else.

Hoped for more than 30 ballots too, but stoked for the ambientness nonetheless

Ballasted Orchestra is a fantastic album, but I too found it after Tired Sounds came into my life.

99. (tie) DeepChord presents Echospace: Liumin / Liumin Reduced (2010)
197 points, 3 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/Tktdri0.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGPZpr5H9Sk

Liumin Reduced

deepchord presents echospace - liumin, brock van wey - white clouds drift on and on (cd2 esp.)

― ILX Point Never (diamonddave85), 20. heinäkuuta 2011 2:24

after diving back into a bunch of minimal techno following the pfork IDM list, just discovered Deepchord Presents Echospace - Liumin. Great stuff here, dub/ambient techno, but there's a couple of tracks with deeply obscured disco samples that almost come out as vaporwaved house tracks. always finding more...

― Dominique, 27. tammikuuta 2017 22:16

Sorry, I forgot to add the release year to The Ballasted Orchestra, that one is from 1997.

Too low, partly through my own fault (I forgot to vote for it!).

xp

I felt conflicted about nominating that album, but the second disc is definitely ambient of the found sound/field recording kind, and the first disc shows how they made awesome dub techno out of those sounds.

I didn't vote because NOTAMBIENT. Amazing album all the same and, perversely, glad to see it.

I do share your reservations, genre-wise. I tried to be as much of a purist as possible in my own ballot (although I nommed 76:14, I ultimately refrained from voting for it upon hearing it again and realizing that it's nowhere near as unadulterated as I remembered).

Someone should run a study about how ambient music induces taxonomically negative feelings in listeners.

98. Hatchback: Zeus & Apollo (2011)
198 points, 3 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/pXxhJP3.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-VuU2ulc_8

picked it up today (zeus and apollo). production is super spacious. this is going to be one stoned out summer.

― so confused (blank), 28. kesäkuuta 2011 7:06

Stupidly, stupidly great. Stately and luminious and just perfectly arranged, perfectly paced... Thank you dudes SO MUCH for bringing this to my attention.

― Clarke B., 29. kesäkuuta 2011 1:51

and it makes perfect sense as a progression from his previous stuff; he puts more emphasis on his lush, perfectionist sound design and goes further out into cosmic popol vuh territory by mostly eschewing the krautrock/disco element.

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., 29. kesäkuuta 2011 6:20

Gave a no-laptop-or-other-distractions listen to Zeus and Apollo today...what a great ride that album is, so wide-ranging and immersive but at all these different levels - like, when I think of "immersive" music, I sort of assume a certain sort of depth - bass depth, but also mood - but this thing hits all these different + to my ear very subtle moods and sustains them, really fleshes them out. Tremendous tremendous record.

― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), 17. elokuuta 2011

this album is definitely still holding up for me, one of my favorites of the year too for sure. don't want to get too REAL TALK here but it was playing in the background during some fairly traumatic/life-altering discussions for me this year and i still love it. just the right amount of melancholy and escapism, i feel like with any other record in the world the negative associations would kill the music for me but this all just keeps sounding so comforting

― a lagoon par la mer (psychgawsple), 17. elokuuta 2011 6:16

hey i remember this record! good memories

HAd doubts if it qualified, as I associate it way more with balearic. But the two can overlap, and it's a gorgeous album. It's in my top three of my 50 records ballot that I listen to the most.

97. Hiroshi Yoshimura: Green (1986)
201 points, 3 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/RdorN7C.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-k9Xu5O7AY

alan i've been going through hiroshi yoshimura's discography since you recommended him, he's so wonderful

― (曇り) (clouds), 8. joulukuuta 2014 8:21

The first music you hear on Green were the sounds of a stream and bird song. Once the “synthetic” part cycles in, they played a part of an unlikely ensemble; unobtrusive, complementary of the larger, sonic vision. Brian Eno once spoke of “Another Green World“, but with Green this one somehow remains the most impressive. It must be. It’s our green world, presented in these refinements, that speak of a golden period in time when Hiroshi graced us with one astounding vision after another, culminating in this utterly sublime masterpiece. My suggestion: gather, digest, and refresh.

Diego Olivas, Fond/Sound

96. Ekkehard Ehlers: Plays (2002)
201 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/GyJWLBO.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ev68XXZo6w

Look, I've had a love affair with both of these tracks for months now, but while I was listening to them again today they both kinda looked at me funny, cock-eyed like, and suddenly I just *knew*.

Seriously, I couldn't feel more strongly about music right now.

― mark p (Mark P), 4. tammikuuta 2003 5:32

i didn't realise the strings on "..cassavetes" were from the beatles until tonight.

― jed_, 22. marraskuuta 2008 2:14

Are you serious!?

From where, specifically?

― Their time's limited, hard rocks, too (mehlt), 22. marraskuuta 2008 2:56

It's a loop of a section from the intro to "Goodnight", very obvious in fact, not processed or anything. I would love to know what he does with it, exactly. One of the really fascinating things about that track is that you can't tell for sure if it's changing at all through most of it.

― Mark, 22. marraskuuta 2008 3:12

Loving the whole 'Plays' compilation despite not recognising any of the references. Glorious.

― Ctrl+Alt+Del in Poughkeepsie (fionnland), 30. syyskuuta 2018 18:39

I, er, Spotified "Goodnight" and "...Cassavetes 2" back to back two days ago, killing time at my mother's house. She was out of the room for some ten minutes but was then all "Is it still going? Wait, did The White Album have a locked groove as well?"

― Nag! Nag! Nag!, 1. lokakuuta 2018 12:21

Another two great records that didn't make my ballot.

That Ehlers album is fantastic. The John Cassavetes track is all time.

cool, a bunch of stuff I don't know! I have heard the Ehlers and some SOTL but not that one

95. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: Tides (2014)
201 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/Ex3Term.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMKBKjmM5xE

btw, pulled up the kaitlyn aurelia smith on spotify
first thing i heard were birdsongs and wind chimes
immediately saved that shit

― brosario nawson (m bison), 17. tammikuuta 2015 6:22

kaitlyn aurelia smith: tides - you just woke up and you can float above the heap of thoughts on suspended waves of synthesis for a little while, calmly

― home organ, 18. joulukuuta 2015 7:13

Grounded in the work of these early electronic artists, the album feels like a natural extension of their meditative project. Its production is also predicated on practical use. It was produced originally as a soundtrack for Smith's mother's yoga classes. The slow modulation of the Buchla simulates breath on "Tides III," while sustained resonance on "Tides V" builds hypnotically. It is, in a word, relaxing.

Arielle Gordon, Resident Advisor

Does anyone know what happened between the original release of Tides and its reissue this year? I got it from Bandcamp in 2014 or 2015, and back then it had ten tracks, but at some point it disappeared from Bandcamp (thankfully I'd saved my copy on the hard drive), and then this January it was rereleased there with the final track ("Tides X") missing. What's up with that?

Looks like I need to hear that Ehlers record!

Anyway, as much I've enjoyed Smith's journey into synthpop/IDM freakiness, I wish she'd do another pure ambient album like this one day. Tides is the one record of hers to which I return the most; the RA review criticises it for being too new agey and too functional as yoga background music, but to me that's just a plus, and I don't even do yoga.

imago to thread if to thread he would.

A Life Without Fear is my favourite Ehlers but it can't reasonably be dubbed ambient.

and I don't even do yoga.

lol Tuomas. Never considered KAS for this poll, even though I do enjoy her music.

Everyone should hear that Ehlers record, you too Siegbran!

I voted for the Deepchord album, and although I was aware there might be complaints that it wasn’t ambient enough it was a vote for the second “reduced” disc.

There were other ones I voted for that might also raise eyebrows but they’re ambient to me!

I... forgot to vote. This weekend was particularly busy.

I nominated Deepchord - Immersions, which is amazing too.

some of my choices were grandfathered in from a time in my life when A. I had not reified "ambient" and B. there was no Internet to argue about it on

frex Future Sound of London's Lifeforms, which is a superposition of definitely and definitely not ambient

Yeah this is from around the time that the term IDM did not exist yet and all this stuff (FSOL, Global Communications, Autechre, Aphex Twin, beats-era-Biosphere) was called ambient.

I think my first exposure to 'ambient' was around 92/93 and it was some swirly, beat-driven Namlook excursion into the heart of the sun/inner space so I guess I am being daftly proscriptive about what is/what isn't ambient on here, really. So it goes.

it's interesting how this lasted only briefly before the more complex/abrasive stuff was shoved under the IDM label, and the laidback beats stuff became "downtempo".

Time Recordings' Em:t series was big for me in this respect, they rejected the "dance music" label that electronic music had, but also weren't into abrasive or glitch stuff... often focused on an evocation of place, which is a foundational aspect of the best ambient works for me. Like you could call it the Ambient 4: On Land branch of the family.

I would argue that FAX records carried on with that inclusive early-nineties spirit of ambient right until Pete Namlook's death and the label's folding in 2012. Though sadly the audience for their releases gradually dwindled, even though they kept on releasing quality music throughout the years; some of the albums from FAX's final years are just as good as their '90s classics.

Plays was a new one for me from the nominations thread, really impressed on first listen and I'm sure it'll grow on me.

I love Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith but haven't heard that particular album.

94. Meg Bowles: The Shimmering Land (2013)
201 points, 3 votes, 1 first place vote.

https://www.megbowlesmusic.com/img/Shimmer1000px.jpeg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctOuviFsVf4&list=PL7CHOwWwIsi9pbsRPYwvgJYKdD68_1FQE

Meg Bowles is one of my favourite ambient artists, it's always nice when people discover her music. I've said it before here, but IMO she would be more acclaimed if her albums weren't self-published and labelled (by herself, admittedly) "new age". The sort of hippie elements a lot of new age artists have are completely missing from her music, mostly it's just pure cosmic synth drones. (Personally I love corny hippie new age too, but I do understand why those elements alienate people.) If her records were published by an established ambient label, they'd probably be considered classics of the genre.

― Tuomas, Saturday, February 2, 2019 12:49 PM

Liking the Meg Bowles album. I think 'new age' would have seemed like a pejorative up until a couple of years ago but that sound is unexpectedly coming into vogue it seems.

― mirostones, Saturday, February 2, 2019 2:31 PM

Shimmering Land is the arena where tone poems meld into a galactic National Geographic of the spaceways before coming back to meditate in Earthly deserts. Everything, however, has a very very slow underlying pulse, and the listener is set within strange lands in order to contemplate what lies on the other side of so-called civilization and progress, places where Nature reigns supreme in all her brooding mystery…and not all that impressed with human beings while inviting consciousness to shed its limits and bask in primal oneness.

David N. Pyles, FAME

(Sorry about the self-quote there, but ILX doesn't have too many posts about Meg Bowles.)

Hmm, looks like that Youtube link didn't work, here's another one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctOuviFsVf4

This was my number 1 vote. Ambient music serves many uses in my life, but probably the most important one is that it helps me relieve stress and calm down. And ever since that album came out 6 years ago, it's been my top choice when I'm feeling anxious or stressed and need some music to take off the edge. There's no gimmicks or "wow!" moments, just some beautiful, serene soundscapes. So I couldn't anything else but put it on the top of my list for what it's done for me.

Oops, sorry, there was a typo with The Shimmering Land, it got 202 points, not 201.

Interesting. I'll be sure to check it out.

xp

Tuomas I really appreciate doing a top 100 here instead of 77 or 50

I've never even heard of this, I'm intrigued.

Will check it out too. Also reminds me that I bought a Lucette Bourdin album on Bandcamp after your recommendation and then forgot to include it when I voted, despite really enjoying it :(

i woke up on Sunday morning and my first thought was: "I forgot to include one of my favorite albums on my ballot."

So, everyone, please please please spend time with David Behrman's On the Other Ocean.

Also, this Meg Bowles record is gorgeous, thank you Tuomas

93. 2814: 新しい日の誕生 (2015)
202 points, 4 votes.

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4099353330_10.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9L4q-0Pi4E

I’ll be satisfied when 2814 is a brand and I can buy a faded T-shirt with the cover of 新しい日の誕生 on it at target

― calstars, Saturday, March 3, 2018 12:17 AM

2814 isn’t vaporwave. More like ambient phaser slush

― calstars, Thursday, May 10, 2018 5:54 AM

新しい日の誕生 sets itself apart with a vivid, picturesque scope and wide ambient landscapes. The dominant theme here is drift. Sometimes the duo deal in drone—like on "テレパシー" where they luxuriate in a constant tone for over 10 minutes, savouring every miniscule tonal change and decay across the lengthy runtime. And decay is another prominent aspect that separates 新しい日の誕生 from the pack. Where vaporwave is often resolutely digital and clinical, the duo indulge in Basinski-like looping.

Andrew Ryce, Resident Advisor

Table is Table, don't worry, your favourite album might show up anyway. :)

Too low. :(

Might not be trve enough anyway.

Will check it out Table!

xp Aw yeah, 2814!

Btw Calstars, did you get to vote in this?

evocation of place, which is a foundational aspect of the best ambient works for me

Yes!

I'm very happy with the title of this thread. And the last-place album receiving three votes seems pretty decent to me.

Agree about landscape being a fundamental part of ambient - it informs a fair chunk of my ballot.

And, table, I voted for Behrman!

Oh god, thank you all for redeeming my absentmindedness. I really don't know how I missed the Behrman on my ballot. I think I was the one who nominated it, even!

92. Labradford: Fixed::Context (2010)
204 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/SfddtsX.jpg?2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEvSf8PDTwQ

Fixed:content is so... Stately and Elegant.

― nerve_pylon, Thursday, October 14, 2010 7:00 AM

It's slow, contemplative music. There are no pyrotechnics and leather-pants. Perhaps boring for some tastes, but in my book Labradford-- particularly on their last 3 albums-- is among the most interesting and affecting bands I've ever heard.

― Dog/Face/Chain (res), Thursday, October 23, 2008 11:14 PM

The last three are great and would serve perfectly as soundtracks for David Lynch movies.

― Melvin van Osterlow, Jr. (res), Sunday, January 17, 2010 6:19 AM

Labradford are a band I keep coming back to - something in the stately progress, that sense of metallic dust in abandoned rooms... I always listen to them on planes, for some reason.

― Sunn O))) Brother Where Art Thou? (Chinaski), Monday, January 16, 2017 2:46 PM

91. Richard Skelton: Landings (2009)
205 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/eujq05U.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b2JekoRxR8

Richard Skelton is one of my very favourite musicians of the last few years. Everything he's done that I have is amazing; particularly notable is the attention to the physical packaging etc (though even without that, the music is amazing).

― toby, Wednesday, January 13, 2010 8:59 PM

Want to echo the Richard Skelton love upthread - Landings is great. Maybe I just don't listen to enough of this sort of thing, but the strings on it sound fantastic, there's a really earthy resonance to them.

― We should have called Suzie and Bobby (NickB), Saturday, February 13, 2010 10:46 PM

Man... just discovered this today and it's jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Fantastic, meditative and ethereal music. Shoots straight to my heart.

― Y Kant Lou Reed (Le Bateau Ivre), Saturday, November 5, 2011 3:54 PM

cool, don't know that Skelton one at all

Huh, I nominated Landings and am pretty sure I forgot it from my ballot.

I love Labradford but fixed::context is one where I have to be in a very precise mood if I don't want to end up feeling enervated (which tends to happen to me when I listen to too much ambient, weirdly enough).

Voted for both of these. Both amazing.

89. (tie) Steve Roach: The Magnificent Void (1996)

https://i.imgur.com/BoKEsU7.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXa-8MUGMxw

& when I say that Roach can be 'wearying' I'm mainly talking about keeping up with the number of releases -- when he hits the real longwave stuff, you don't ever want that sound to stop. the classic own-this-one-if-you-own-any-of-his-discs breakthrough Roach is The Magnificent Void, I'd have been fine with that as a 10 disc set -- that's a dark record, closer to MB or Lustmord than anything happier.

― Milton Parker, Wednesday, May 23, 2007 2:05 AM

steve roach can't be new age because his music sounds like sitting in a black hole for 3 hours

― cutty, Wednesday, May 23, 2007 7:01 AM

then in 96 I was hanging out with Mr. Hate on his KFJC radio show and he segued out of a Zoviet-France track into something astoundingly deep, and my jaw dropped when he said it was Steve Roach -- that's Magnificent Void and it's a breakthrough record crossing over 70's/80's Hearts of Space & synth music with 80's ambient industrial, hugely influential and I keep coming back to it

― Milton Parker, Wednesday, May 23, 2007 11:09 AM

I've had a bit harder of a time digging into The Magnificent Void tho I definitely appreciate it for its...emptiness.

― Naive Teen Idol, Sunday, June 2, 2013 7:11 AM

Hadn't heard this album before, it sounds pretty cool, though that extremely mid-nineties cover is rather unfortunate.

Sorry, forgot to include the points for that album:

207 points, 4 votes.

that extremely mid-nineties cover is rather unfortunate.

lol agreed

Voted for fixed::content but had to leave off Skelton at the last minute. Stand by what I said about it in '11 though.

I don't know this Roach either.

89. (tie) Tod Dockstader: Aerial #1 (2005)
207 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/9EwvIGt.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vur9nYlyeTE

no quick edits or constant changes or traditional electronic sounds, disc 1 is a long drone piece (different sections crossfaded). source material was manipulated recordings of shortwave radio, reworked and layered many times over -- it's actively shifting & detailed work though, it's not a drooler...

definite reference points in edward artemyev, edward splet, 80's industrial ambient but this absolutely marks its own territory -- it's intuitive, he doesn't sound influenced by any of these things. it's very removed from anything he's done before but it's got his sense of long form pacing, it's like a symphony and just keeps drawing you in deeper.

― milton parker (Jon L), Saturday, April 23, 2005 3:04 AM

i find it extremely listenable, and i was myself reticent at first. it's a somewhat different creature than his old work. yes, more industrial-ambient than say, 8EP, but the craftsmanship of the man is evident throughout.

― Beta (abeta), Tuesday, May 24, 2005 11:09 PM

the subbass on "swell" sounds huge on headphones. if i didn't have neighbors, i'd be kicking this on a loud system

― nervous.gif (eman), Sunday, April 23, 2006 7:24 PM

nice, didn't vote for it but cool record

Yes! Did not expect this to place.

Thread is great so far Tuomas, thanks for the time and effort.

88. Oneohtrix Point Never: Replica (2011)
212 points, 3 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/vkZfNdo.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WejD5fPTBE

I'm really digging Replica. I don't really know his other work all that much, but the weird loops reminds me of old kompakt stuff like Dettinger. And the stuff with piano is achingly beautiful (especially the title track). Weirdly has the same vibe as the new Drake album (sorry).

― jaxon, Thursday, November 17, 2011 3:33 AM

yea it's getting harder to ignore the appeal of parts of replica, ESPECIALLY the first and last tracks. i think i'm still sorta reeling from the initial jarring reaction of dissonant loops mixed in with the granular synth chillage of his other stuff, but it's not that much of a departure really and he's doing it in a way that shows a real admiration for dudes like recchion and reich and all the best avant loopers.

― it's time for the purpculator (psychgawsple), Saturday, November 19, 2011 11:38 AM

i can't stop loving replica. his weird stretched out tape loop stuff was always the best (see "demoral"). kind of reminds me of some of terre thaemlitz' stuff, in terms of using samples to tease emotions out of the listener in a convoluted way. at the same time, it's very "natural" sounding.. in an "office space field recordings" kind of way.

― neutral sequence for flute (blank), Sunday, April 15, 2012 7:01 AM

Replica was one of those rare records that was conceptually interesting and somewhat difficult but was nonetheless capable of connecting on a strange emotional level. Kinda magic. Don't think he's quite recaptured that balance before or after with the same success.

― circa1916, Monday, November 16, 2015 2:25 AM

87. Keith Fullerton Whitman: Playthroughs (2002)
215 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/iQIPJKS.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkZzz5sdSf4

These sort of situations are best when it's a big surprise. You pop a record in expecting little & then can't believe your ears. It happened for me about two months ago when I heard the forthcoming Keith Whitman album Playthroughs. From the first listen, I just found myself saying "I can't believe how good this is."

― Mark (MarkR), Friday, October 11, 2002 5:43 PM

i have just really been into all this modern minimal electronic stuff (ekkehard ehlers, stephan mathieu etc) and kfw is in a similar vein. at times you can hear the rhythms of the guitar source and i just like all the overlapping tones and hazed sounds.

― marcg (marcg), Friday, January 10, 2003 10:30 PM

little known fact: if you listen to keith fullerton whitman's playthroughs at the same time as fennesz's field recordings or venice (with both at high volumes) you have extended orgasms.

― Felonious Drunk (Felcher), Tuesday, June 8, 2004 10:52 PM

In line with those posts you quoted, 2003-2004 is probably the last time I listened to this album. I remember liking it a lot.

Absurdly low for Playthroughs!

Think he suffered from vote splitting perhaps?

86. Loscil: Endless Falls (2010)
216 points, 3 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/W24Zi6B.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgUacQ5cx_w

Endless Falls and Plume are both great. Endless Falls in particular gets a Cascadian vibe unlike a lot of other electronic records made in that region.

― hilarious topless cookie chef (the table is the table), Sunday, April 20, 2014 6:53 AM

This new one, 'Endless Falls', is inspired by the hefty rainfall in Loscil's Vancouver hometown, and I think is really evocative, both musically and aesthetically (it has a great cover shot, apparently by his 4 year old daughter), of those long, slightly melancholy days when you're inside listening to and watching the rain blurring the world outside the window, immersing yourself in your house-bound self.

― krakow, Tuesday, March 9, 2010 1:30 PM

loscil - endless falls: mijn soort ambient! af en toe denk je dat robert fripp zo in kan vallen, en dat is een goed ding.

― bas, Friday, March 26, 2010 11:22 AM

FYI KFW has a new album out this year:Late Playthroughs.

xxpost re KFW

Sounds like I need to check this out. Maybe skip playing at same time as Fennesz's Field Recordings to start with.

kudos for digging up the Dutch quote. Great, consistent artist, great record. I chose Plume over this one but it's all good.

I've somehow managed to miss Loscil until this poll, despite enjoying lots of Kranky stuff and it clearly being right in my sweet spot. Listening to Plume lots at the moment.

84. (tie) Justin Bieber: U Smile (800% Slower) (2010)

https://i.imgur.com/y7gxC0d.png

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

I didn't even know it was nominated (was never going to have Bieber in my shortlist), but I had I clocked that I might have voted for it too. Avant-garde!

― emil.y, Tuesday, January 25, 2011 7:24 PM

looool this is probably the most appropriate potential use of 'dream pop' ever

― I've been dancing since 9 and I'm tired and hungry (acoleuthic), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 7:24 PM

Re-listening to this...it is crazy gorgeous.

― Davek (davek_00), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 7:25 PM

this particular slowed down track is mostly good because of the fact that it's justin bieber so people who usually dismiss him on principle could enjoy the irony that his song secretly sounds somewhat listenable and i guess credible (to them)

This was my theory at first but then I found myself listening to it over and over again. It has a strange oceanic beauty.

― Glenroe in 3D (seandalai), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 7:34 PM

Controversial? I completely missed hearing this in 2010 even though I remember it being discussed on ILX, so I'm listening to it now for the first time... It's not half-bad, but among the top 100 ambient recordings of all time, maybe not.

Sorry, the points for that should be:

217 points, 3 votes.

And I just realised it isn't a tie, since the other album with 217 points got more votes. So the actual placing is:

85. Justin Bieber: U Smile (800% Slower) (2010)

It's great to listen to and was a *thing* before the Great Slow Down All The Things era. It being an early-ish highlight of the "genre" will have something to do with it.

I didn't vote for it as I had already picked something else as a gimmicky (but genuine) vote.

Was there ever an 'I Kill Everything I Fuck (800% Slower)'?

On it.

V high on my ballot. Here's a video of me drumming to it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1qpR2DGb5k

84. Windy & Carl: Depths (1998)
217 points. 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/qFc6BOA.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru6mCSvITB8

ABSOLUTELY, yes. It's a whole 'nother thing to listen to ambient music loud and give it all your attention. Think Windy & Carl or Oval (though only the mid-period Oval could be considered ambient.) Play it on a nice stereo and crank it up and let the complex sound wash over you, I say.

― Mark, Wednesday, April 25, 2001 3:00 AM

Alot of Windy and Carl sounds like the sea.

― jel, Wednesday, August 1, 2001 3:00 AM

I went through a phase of writing my dissertation listening exclusively to "Depths" by Windy & Carl. Mutually exclusively even, in that I couldn't do the work without the record, and I found it impossible to listen to the record when not working. Weird.

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Tuesday, September 28, 2004 11:32 AM

The Bieber thing isn't an album and shouldn't have been allowed

you're not an album

you don't know what format I am

83. Henry Flynt: You Are My Everlovin / Celestial Power (1986)

https://i.imgur.com/0PevLn3.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttltmnbJ1po

Nah, that dbl CD of 'You're My Everlastin' is the one to go for first.
It really is like hillbilly Tony Conrad. Is it just me, is one CD of this stuff - holy minimalist fiddling - abt all you truly need?

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Friday, April 25, 2003 11:43 PM

"you are my everlovin/celestial power" is beautiful, really dancing on that edge between western folk music and indian drones.

― your null fame (yournullfame), Saturday, April 26, 2003 2:09 AM

listened to you are my everlovin' for the first time in ages, i had forgotten/underestimated the sheer surging POWer of flynt's playing, so estatic and inspired and abandoned - really one of the greatest things

― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, October 7, 2008 1:11 AM

19648 = my favourite year!!

the distinction between theatre and social change maybe isn't one *flynt* wd have made: like the sits, he had moved by the mid-60s into a phase where the only valid art wz stuff that actually "created situations" (ie active interventions in history blah blah, the assumption being that these alone changed things) (following marx's theses on feuerbach, only reading "art" where it says "philosophy" blah blah)*

(i think flynt wz a leninist at that time, whereas technically the sits repudiated lenin...)

by throwing music open to the whole of possible noise — inc.in particular sounds not made or intended by the composers/performers, ie trucks driving past the building, rain on the roof — cage had declared that the entire world was the stage => the logical inference, that every single member of the audience is a contributing artist/composer/performer (and that the "audience" includes everyone in the entire world)

what links everyone mentioned so far is that, insofar as they realised this wz the logical conclusion of cage's work (if you took this aspect of it seriously), they found SOME way to resist its political implications (cage himself waved around a kind of vacuous pseudo-maoism) => flynt's (in part) wz to reach for the language of expression of his admired political forebears, a formal self-enchainment which effectively transformed his every action back into (the pre-cage idea of) theatre, in that it turned all reportage of it into reviews of performances

i don't think anyone in the entire "orthodox" happenings/creating situations/political theatre/agitprop/performance art/conceptual art arena really escaped this dilemma, tho a nice angle on its is (kaprow-student) richard meltzer's argt that yoko's trip to london to pick her up a beatle was a fluxus-prank (and therefore that EVERYTHING that followed — including May 1968 etc — was part of the piece, punk and the tumultuous 70s as rain on yoko's performance-space roof)

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, April 26, 2003 12:55

The Bieber thing isn't an album and shouldn't have been allowed

In the nomination thread, I specifically said that non-album pieces were fine too, as long as they are at least 30 minutes... This was mostly so that EPs/maxi singles could be nominated too, but the poll was never "albums only". Even the Buddha Machine was allowed in the end!

wow, this sounds really interesting!

how many flynt votez?

Ah, I miss my days of watching grown men hit colanders with spoons.

This Flynt is awesome. Forgot to vote for it.

Sorry, the Henry Flynt album's points are:

218 points, 4 votes.

81. (tie] Woob: Woob 1194 (1994)
219 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/gH3Tuqe.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S3owK3pN64

Woob 1194 - tongue-in-cheek tribal ambient, can you believe it?

― Wintermute (Wintermute), Monday, March 31, 2003 1:49 PM

I SLEEP TO THIS ALBUM 3/7 NIGHTS A WEEK

― cutty (mcutt), Wednesday, September 15, 2004 3:35 AM

I'm in a rush, so perhaps I will write more later ... but the album more or less covers the entire spectrum of ambient music : ambient dub, to tranquil floaty ambient, to cold, scary, rumbling ambient. One minute you're grooving along to some gentle percussion and suddenly, a couple of minutes later, the temperature in the room has dropped several degrees and you're in a bewildering, clammy haze. All these shifts aren't sudden cuts, they take place fluidly.

Pardon the brutal cliche, but with all the stylistic shifts, this album takes you on a journey like no other I've heard.

― Barry Bruner (Barry Bruner), Wednesday, September 15, 2004 2:15 PM

Great to see the love for Windy & Carl.

xp WOOB WOOB

it's the sound of the ambient police

I've never really warmed up to 1194... I guess most of what Barry Bruner said in the quote is true, but to me the things he mentions sound more like early-nineties ambient clichés than something awesome when you actually hear them on the album.

My #2 pick! Does not bode well for the rest of my top ten.

Also it's funny, if you wanna sleep to this album, you gotta watch out for the scream at the end of Strange Air that comes after about twenty very quiet minutes.

I once fell half asleep to Vladislav Delay's Anima, and was scared shitless by the creepy-voiced monologue at the end of the album, which is otherwise completely electronic. For a second, I thought someone had broken into my apartment.

Just listening to Henry Flint now, so good!

The last entry for today coming up, and it'll be the most new age thing in the poll so far...

Yanni time!

Lol

81. (tie) Syntonic Research Inc.: Environments 2 - Tintinnabulation (Special Low Frequency Version) (1987)
219 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/qR1M805.jpg

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

ha! Irv Teibel has now been retroactively credited as the author. His name never appears anywhere in the packaging, but Syntonic Research Inc. was essentially a one man operation. I've had some conversations with the guy who's recently inherited the library / organization; they're looking for a good label to handle a complete box reissue. For a series that sold in the millions and that was so ridiculously influential, it is a little silly how under the radar they all fly now

I have the CD issue of 'Tintinabulation'; they mastered it at the 16.666 rpm speed, lasts an hour, good move. 'Intonation' also sounds good slow. I have a set of the vinyl but I don't have some of the later cassettes, man do I want to hear 'Alpine Blizzard', what in hell does that even sound like

― Milton Parker, Tuesday, August 25, 2015 11:43 PM

In the absence of peer review, there’s always the theater of public opinion. As the series took off, Environments came packaged with customer feedback surveys, inquiring into everything from demographics and occupation to the make of one’s stereo system and speaker placement in their house. People responded at length, often appending typewritten commentary to the forms, digressing into their lives, their worries, their ailments and their solace—a patchwork of anxious, disconnected souls strung together with form stationery.

A blind man in Chicago wrote to say he played Teibel’s “Alpine Blizzard” at Christmastime. A lonely housewife in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, would retreat into Environments when her son and husband abandoned her for TV. A migraine sufferer says his doctor introduced him to Environments to miraculous effect, though he, like Teibel’s schnauzer Max, found the alligators of the Okefenokee Swamp unnerving. A Dairy Queen employee in Laurel, Delaware liked getting stoned and listening to “Dusk at New Hope” but wished the crickets weren’t so loud, while ABC News anchor Hugh Downs worried the recordings were making him too sane, “rendering me unfit for my profession.” One fan professedly into “alternate life styles” suggests that Teibel receive a Nobel Prize.
Cara Giaimo: "The Man Who Recorded, Tamed, and Then Sold Nature Sounds to America"

I love the long, detailed descriptions in the sleeve notes of that album on how to listen to it and what sort of beneficial uses and effects it can have. Especially this bit:

https://i.imgur.com/RdS5cbj.jpg

Whoops, sorry, the second quote in the entry was credited, it's from this article by Mike Powell:

https://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/natural-selection

The link below the quote leads to another article about Irv Teibel, they're both well worth reading.

several of my votes made it today, nice! although i now feel very guilty about not voting for Tired Sounds of SotL, i'm very glad that my Ballasted Orchestra vote helped boost it into the top 100. it's a beautiful album, but probably the most static/droney of their catalog, and not one i'd recommend to SotL newcomers. still - it has knocked me out cold at night more times than i can remember.

i am very enthusiastic about one of the two sides of Environments 2, enough to throw it some points even though i rarely flip it over.

Which side?

Thanks for linking to that Atlas Obscura article, Tuomas, that was a great read.

Hmm, I think you're talking about a different version of "Environments 2"... The original is an LP from 1970 that has two different tracks on each sides, "Tintinnabulation" being one of them. But for this 1987 release that track was slowed down 100 %, so it only has one 60 minute track with the bells.

(xpost)

I’ll have to check when I get home! I remembered one side having about 25 minute of bells softly clanging in the wind. But I also have a terrible memory, so

but probably the most static/droney of their catalog, and not one i'd recommend to SotL newcomers

What if you like drone? I've dipped my toes into SOTL waters before (Refinement, Tired Sounds) and was kind of underwhelmed.

Was there ever an 'I Kill Everything I Fuck (800% Slower)'?

― pomenitul, Monday, June 24, 2019 11:28 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

On it.

― Uptown VONC (Le Bateau Ivre)

*applause*

Several of my votes made it today, Henry Flynt and Skelton being the most important to me, personally. Both of those records are just ungodly good, and I've been returning to them for years.

Hmm, I think you're talking about a different version of "Environments 2"... The original is an LP from 1970 that has two different tracks on each sides, "Tintinnabulation" being one of them. But for this 1987 release that track was slowed down 100 %, so it only has one 60 minute track with the bells.

oops, you're exactly right! yeah, i was thinking this one:

https://www.discogs.com/No-Artist-Environments-New-Concepts-in-Stereo-Sound-Disc-2/release/176729

oh well. now i really want to hear the 1987 version!

80. David Behrman: On the Other Ocean (1978)
223 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/W6QKU7F.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3nG9BbzH3I

I listen to my tape of the radio station's copy of On the Other Ocean all the time in my car, very soothing.

― Trip Maker, 23. heinäkuuta 2011 4:26

on the other ocean is a favorite of mine, a very warm lovely record

― brimstead, 10. maaliskuuta 2014 20:01

I used to switch between eno's "discreet music" and David Behrman - "on another ocean"

― neutral sequence for flute (blank), 13. huhtikuuta 2012 21:43

wow, perfect sound forever rules, just when I think i've finally covered their archives I find another top interview...

http://www.furious.com/perfect/behrman.html

"Even though 'minimalist' composers/musicians such as Terry Riley, LaMonte Young and Steve Reich are pretty well-known outside of their own musical style, David Behrman has not been as heralded. This is CRIMINALLY WRONG."

― (Jon L), 6. huhtikuuta 2004 23:11

oh well. now i really want to hear the 1987 version!

You can hear it in the Youtube link I posted. :)

79. Biosphere: Cirque (2000)
224 points, 4 votes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbWOM4GEO9A

https://i.imgur.com/sXIDxPE.jpg

Cirque is really lovely, almost as great as Substrata. It's more sample heavy (in a klf Chill Out sort of way), and *sigh* there are few a beats here and there. Definitely a stand-out artists among the deluge of ambient out there... His records have a spontaneity to them.. A spontaneity of which I can't quite locate the source.

― gaseous (gaseous), 15. huhtikuuta 2006 8:47

Although bearing similarities to Biosphere's early 90's output, the absorbing Cirque (2000) suggests further changes and it revels in new sounds, low-fi environmental samples and beats with oddly muted edges. Tracks range from totally abstract looping exercises like "When I Leave" and "Moistened & Dried" to atmospheric drum'n'bass with the frantic beats muted and softened to tickle you ears rather than move your feet. Cirque is based on the infamous and fatal Alaskan wilderness trek of American amateur explorer Chris McLandless and the sense of loneliness and isolation is palpable at times. The album does end on a positive note with pulsing reverse chord effects that create a lovely enveloping warmth, perhaps an acknowledgement that even the most patient listener doesn't want to be left out in the cold for too long.

Mike Watson, Ambient Music Guide

Cirque is one of my favourite Biosphere records, but I couldn't bring myself to vote for it in this poll, it feels way too groove and beat oriented to fit here.

I absolutely love Cirque, i just limited my ballot to one album per artist.

Likewise.

77. (tie) Vladislav Delay: Multila (2000)
230 points, 5 votes.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B35LE3_9UM8

just had oral surgery today whilst listening to Vladislav Delay -- not a bad combination; I highly recommend getting your teeth pulled next time you listen to Multila.

― Lee, 23. maaliskuuta 2002 3:00

Vladislav Delay - Multila. One of my all time favourite albums and a real maverick in terms of albums to fall asleep to. More than once Its taken me like a week to listen to it in full becuase I kept falling asleep during it.

― Thomas Mehlt (Tokyo Ghost Stories), 8. kesäkuuta 2006 17:15

Multila is desert island disc

― brimstead, 7. joulukuuta 2018 0:14

Didn't vote for it because I put no thought into my pathetic ballot but 'tis a great album indeed.

77. (tie) Ian William Craig: A Turn of Breath (2014)
230 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/9mEXJHO.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpk8gwCJo7E

kinda one of the best things i've heard in the 21st century.

― scott seward, 23. marraskuuta 2015 8:30

This just came up on my "Spotify discover" playlist and it's probably the first time I've actually "discovered" anything via that playlist.

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), 24. joulukuuta 2015 5:42

Ik ben gek op verval, zoals bij sinds jaren verlaten bioscopen, fabrieken, pretparken… Die liefde treft ook muziek; of wat daar dan van over is… Ian William Craig heeft een klassiek geschoolde stem en een voorliefde voor drones en tape manipulatie. Het gevolg is een dwaaltocht over een kathedralenkerkhof (of het graf van William Basinsksi, dat kan ook). Gebroken glas-in-lood, engelen met uitgeregende ogen, de geur van beschimmelde duivenpoep. Het is niet onder woorden te brengen hoe diep dat me raakt.

― Sebastian (Royal Mermaid Mover), 17. syyskuuta 2014 21:58

this thread put me on Turn of Breath and for that I am forever in its debt, I keep finding new ways to enjoy this record

― grinding like a jolly elf (jamescobo), 3. tammikuuta 2016 6:52

de geur van beschimmelde duivenpoep

Fantastic record.

76. Spacemen 3: Dreamweapon (1990)
231 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/zGUlPsU.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_qA0nelfNc

there is nothing lazy about this music.

A point that's often lost when talking about them. As easy as it is to dismiss them as hazy druggie fucks, the intensity to the sound is tremendous. "Dreamweapon" doesn't put me to sleep at all - it's too intense and I get caught up in it. The only other art that's induced a similar reaction is going to La Monte Young's Dream House or watching Sistiaga's experimental films.

― Elvis Telecom, 19. huhtikuuta 2013 9:04

also everybody who likes drone (as opposed to or beyond space rock) should have a copy of the "dreamweapon" reissue if only for the "ecstasy symphony"

― vahid (vahid), 3. lokakuuta 2003 23:34

Be asleep and awake at the same time with "Dreamweapon"

― p.j. (Henry), 6. lokakuuta 2003 23:28

Although I should say that "Dreamweapon" is not a variation, but it's own thing entirely. Get it later- it's fantastic, but you've got to be in the mood for *The Drone*....

― jsoulja (jsoulja), 2. elokuuta 2005 0:11

yessss Dreamweapoin and Multila are all time faves

don't know the Behrman at all, loving this poll

The Behrman I discovered in one of my experimental composition classes when I was at Uni— I went to a school with a music conservatory and was a music comp minor.

It has remained one of my favorite records ever made since then, and I'm still totally flabbergasted that I forgot to put it on my ballot, even tho I'm pretty sure I nominated it! Might be a case of something being so much a part of you that you forget that it's even there.

I need to spend more time with Dreamweapon, I always wanted it but every time I came across it back in the day it explicably cost like $30

inexplicably that is, or maybe I was right the first time

get this version IMO:

https://www.discogs.com/Spacemen-3-Dreamweapon/release/542452

is that the best mastered version and/or the one to buy if you wanna make sure the guys get some of the money?

75. Charlemagne Palestine: Strumming Music (1974)
233 points, 3 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/9EC40OZ.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGN21a5T9oY

Strumming Music was an instant <3<3<3 for all time for me.

― ledge, Friday, June 6, 2008 3:57 PM

''Strumming Music (Shandar) LP - extremely difficult to find on LP, there's a CD version floating around, but that's tough to find too.''

but i have. and fantastic 50+ min piece it is as well. my room was filled with lovely sound. don't know abt 'really badly engineered tho', but i do have athreshold for bad recordings but it sounds good to me.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Sunday, March 16, 2003 10:33 PM

Saw him play a few years ago at the Purcell Rooms - he performed a variation on 'Strumming Music' and snapped a couple of strings on his Bosendorfer piano, which is some kind of feat. He brought all his teddy bears w/ him and when one of the strings snapped I thought a bear had fallen into the piano! After playing for abt an hour he drank a big glass of cognac. CP still had incredible stamina and concentration - when the music gathered pace it sometimes sounded as if there were loads of backing tapes playing (there weren't, of course) - the appreciative audience settled into a kind of collective trance - just amazing.

― Andrew L, Saturday, August 10, 2002 3:00 AM

strumming music by Charlemagne Palestine.. ambient? really?

― braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n), Friday, May 17, 2019 7:43 AM

xp

other than the Superior Viaduct 2LP reissue I think that's the most legit of them all! Space Age is the label run by the ex-manager that they don't see money from, right?

also that SFTRI CD has a couple of bonus tracks

74. Raymond Scott: Soothing Sounds for Baby Volume 1 - 1 to 6 Months (1964)
234 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/HRcQOku.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k66nGplNRmQ

I'd put them up there with Terry Riley's "In C" and Steve Reich's "Come Out" as pioneering early minimalist works. I think their high-pitched blips might get a tad annoying if played too loud, but as spritely background music (which is what I guess they're supposed to be), they're great.

― dleone (dleone), Tuesday, April 15, 2003 4:42 PM

they're very primitive pieces, but immersive and timeless. and often not very relaxing at all, bizarre minimal squawking NOISE. he was arguably the first person to build himself a sequencer, in this case a huge wall-sized bank of relays turning signal generators on and off. so there he is in the late 50's early 60's letting those 8th notes run into tape echo, going 'wow, these things really start to sound great when you let them run for more than about 5-10 minutes, but how in the world am I going to _market_ this stuff?'

― milton, Tuesday, April 15, 2003 8:53 PM

Yeah, the electronic stuff is so way beyond it's years, we have still not cought up. The mad scientist aspect of Scott is the real meat of him, I believe. He kept stiving for more, for sounds that did not exist, for music that could not be made. The Manhattan Research and Baby Sounds CD's are a must. The think I like best is how he used those crazy contraptions. Everytime I search out an ondioline recording or theremin or glass harmonica, etc...the music is usually really dumb or goofy or just not worth of the sounds that are making it. I think Scott not only pulled amazing sounds from the either, i think he used them for good, not evil. He made records and music WORTHY of existing beyond the vehicles for those instruments. I wish Bruce Haack did the same. Or Enoch Light or even Esquivel. I find myself paining through those recordings to just hear the parts rather than the whole. Not so with Scott.

― Mark, Sunday, April 21, 2002 3:00 AM

I tried out the first volume of 'Soothing Sounds' on my sister's four month-old twin babies and it actually worked! It didn't make 'em cry, scream, shit themselves or throw up, there was the odd distracted smile, a few gurgles and the occasional tapping of feet and hands. And then they went to sleep!

― Andrew L, Wednesday, May 30, 2001 3:00 AM

Shout out to the two other ppl that voted for Charlemagne, keep ducking and dodging the Ambient Police

72. (tie) Deathprod Morals and Dogma (2004)
236 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/K9T433e.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFLs_MxhC5U

Morals and Dogma is devastating.

― Barnaby, Hardly, Saturday, July 18, 2009 3:13 PM

When Sten uses an instrument or a found sound, he obscures the source, refusing to take advantage of any associations it brings. Although there are acoustic instruments on the album, he blurs the edges or manipulates the attack, keeping control of every detail of the timbre. For just one example, he uses a sound on "Dead People's Things" that resembles the suction tool you'd use to clean an aquarium. You can try to pick apart the sound of pebbles gurgling against the plastic, or the drone of streaming water, but the outlines blur before you can make out what it really is; and in the end, it may be something as basic as a stretched-out violin sample.

Chris Dahlen, Pitchfork

Barnaby otm, didn't expect it to place.

Strumming Music is another one I really need to check out, looks like the Sub Rosa 3CD version is pretty cheap

never even heard of Deathprod!

Ohh you should check it out, you won't be disappointed.

72. (tie) Terekke: Improvisational Loops (2018)
236 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/yRsSoav.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp7LX0w4FXs

omg the Terekke album is so beautiful. very ambient, mostly just soft muted drifty synth pads but it's really excellent.

― brimstead, Tuesday, April 17, 2018 4:57 AM

As is the case with any successful ambient track, “Nuwav2” establishes it’s commanding synth melody from its first moments and allows the shimmering reverberations to ebb and flow like snow through the wind. It’s the type of melody that mimics the feeling of burrowing in a gratuitously sized coat while walking in a roaring blizzard. The chords feel like a house track without the percussion played under a vast ocean, with shimmering chords bouncing off rays of light piercing through the water. At the tail end of the track, flurries of notes begin to accent the proceedings with a vague retrowave flair. These moments also add mild echoes of minimal techno and microhouse, which Gardner explores more directly on tracks like “arrpfaded” and “l8r h8r.” Throughout, he works off everything introduced in “Nuwav2” with shorter bursts, further building on the narrative of steady ripples. What Gardner birthed with the 20-minute epic is distilled down to concentrated portions to allow the album to gracefully fade into a fond, constantly resurfacing memory.

Scott Murphy, Soundtracks for the Blind

That one is probably the most recent album in the top 100.

is that the most recent release to place so far? I did check that out as per brimstead's recommendation

XP!!!

71. (no artist): Symphonies of the Planets 1 - NASA Voyager Recordings (1992)
242 points, 4 votes, 1 first place vote.

https://i.imgur.com/fdcoA4j.jpg

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

This collection of Voyager's electromagnetic recordings of the planets is still one of my fave drone/ambient albums.

― Elvis Telecom, Saturday, February 13, 2010 2:20 AM

http://www.neuroacoustic.com/nasa.html#NASA_more-info

These sounds are recordings of the interaction of the Solar wind and the Ionosphere of each of the outer planets. The resonance of these ions is exactly within the range of human hearing (20-20,000 Hz) - called by NASA "Ion Acoustic Waves". This means that nothing had to be done artificially to the sounds to hear them – They were the REAL "Music of the Spheres". Although there is no air in space, there is vibration. Space does not have the medium of air to carry the vibration to your ear, but the vibration is present. With the specialized recording equipment aboard Voyager, it became possible to record these amazing sounds for the first time and then hear them here on Earth.

Imagine his amazement and that of all of us when we heard these NASA Space Sound recordings that sounded like dolphins, whales, ocean, crickets, choirs, Tibetan bowls and monks chanting! Something in the core of the subconscious awakens and pays close attention to and in the presence of these sounds. These are some of the most powerful tools for healing, inner awakening and self change that Dr. Thompson has researched and produced. His Primordial Sounds™ are found on his Audio Programs, giving even more power to his musical sounds and other techniques used.

These were originally released on a label called 'Brain/Mind Research' with equally New Agey liner notes and marketed as theraputic tools, one CD for each planet. I found those remaindered in the early 90's and have listened to these a lot.

The skeptic is thinking the data's been clearly been processed by someone who grew up on Space Music in the same way that the guys who colorize the Hubble shots were influenced by 70's / 80's Space Art (i.e. I can hear digital reverb applied to certain components of the drone, so my guess is it's been layered somewhat). But this is so much more abstract than most space music I have no problem accepting that he's working with captured data & part of me can imagine that this could be an accurate representation of the way soundless vibrations move & develop in a vacuum.

― Milton Parker, Friday, January 16, 2009 10:46 PM

played this voyager stuff for the tenth graders and they totally tripped out on it ...

― moonship journey to baja, Saturday, January 17, 2009 8:20 AM

Yay the Terreke album!! Really great stuff

Had not heard "Symphonies of the Planets" before this poll, but it sounds pretty awesome, and way moore affecting than I expected.

Multila is an immortal classic

<3 u Milton

70. Popol Vuh: In den Gärten Pharaos (1971)
247 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/N1bMJIj.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vhht487PwQ

In den Gärten des Pharaos (1971)
Better than "Affenstunde". The title track has more of Fricke's wayward Moog noodling (Moogling anyone?) but with more (ahem) musical elements added. Finishes with a long section played on a Fender Rhodes that is actually quite jazzy (in an ECM sorta way). The other track, "Vuh", is the first evidence to date of Popol Vuh as THE ultimate Goth band - a looooooooooong drone piece on a mighty swelling church organ overlaid with cacophonous percussion and mewling moogs. Good stuff! 7/10

― Dadaismus, Thursday, March 20, 2003 3:54 PM

ahh, man, i'm floatin in the pharao's garten.

― LOUT of ICHOR (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Sunday, October 26, 2008 10:48 AM

I've only had PV on mp3 or CD and these records definitely sound great. I'm also enjoying the ritual of flipping them over and realizing the genius of the sequencing (which really is not the same on CD/mp3). Surprise hit (cymbal crash) has been Einsjager & Siebenjager, but Pharaos sounds way way way more amazing than I remember it (I don't listen to that one as much). They're all obvs great albums.

― sweat pea (La Lechera), Friday, October 18, 2013 9:55 PM

My favorite Popol Vuh is "In Den Garten Pharaos", which is transcendental without being overly new age and also a bit noisy and challenging on side B (reminds me a bit of Vibracathedral Orchestra!)

― Rombald, Wednesday, December 14, 2005 1:47 AM

Seconded!

Never heard of this before. xp

I voted for Vuh but really need to re-listen to that one, I'm less familiar with it than most of their other albums

Oohh controversy?

Cut this from my ballot last minute, fantastic album obv. "transcendental without being overly new age" nails it for me.

Never heard Popol Vuh before, can't imagine calling this ambient myself, but this is a laissez-faire poll and all.

Next: more proper new age coming up!

Deathprod, hooray! Rarely has staring into a black hole of despair been so enjoyable.

69. Constance Demby: Novus Magnificat - Through the Stargate (1986)
250 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/VQw6Tfb.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GzIxlPS1r0

I like Thru the Stargate best, hoky title and everything. It's like a caffeinated Hosianna Mantra.

― simon diamond, Friday, July 22, 2005 11:07 PM

The space-sequencer-Bach that opens side two of Novus Magnificat: Through The Stargate is burned into my mind forever from hearing it in a Berkeley crystal shop in the late eighties; I only found out it was her when I started working through the Hearts of Space catalog again five years ago or so and it was hilarious and wonderful to find it again.

― Milton Parker, Thursday, July 3, 2014 4:15 AM

I was in what weould best be described as a dour mood this morning and decied to listen to this CD for the first time in my car. I live in a city that has the 5th worst traffic in America. Gridlock and its spirit crushing frustration are a way of life here and it shows in the populace. I often try to listen to ambient or classical music to calm my demeanor when driving. While some of the production is dated, specifically some of the swirling arppegiator effects, this is a piece of music that is truly worth the praise. I was aware of the album when it first appeared in the 80's as I began my exploration of electronic/space music but for some reason never purchased it. I'm glad now that I happened to come across it the other day in a CD store and picked it up on a whim. It's a cliche but this music, I think, was ahead of its time. Denby's classical training shows, but beyond that, this music is composed to stir an emotional/spiritual response in the listener. I can say that it succeeded with me this morning. As I neared the office I saw two large flocks of geese flying over the highway just as I was thinking to myself that this music inspires the urge to fly. It was a neat experience. Thank you Constance for composing an inspired piece of music. Even if you could help give one person some solace for a day wouldn't it be worth it? Certainly this is the contribution she has made to others who have discovered this music. I look forward to exploring some of the other works by this artist but for right now I can't wait for the ride home!

Anonymous, Amazon customer review

I remember someone mentioning Constance Demby on ILX 10 or so years ago, and I got interested, as I was just discovering new age music was much more than corny crystal and hippie mood stuff. I soon became a big fan, so thanks for whoever it was who recommended her! I do think that after the '80s her music gets more schmaltzy and closer to the new age stereotype I had in my head, but the seventies and eighties albums are still awe-inspiring, especially Novus Magnificat and Sacred Space Music.

So it's been nice to see how the recent hipster interest in new age has made a whole new crowd discover Demby, she deserves that.

her track on the "I Am The Center" comp is fantastic as well

I don't have that comp, but I think the track is from her first album, Skies Above Skies? That's a dope record too.

I became aware of Demby through that same comp. it’s a standout even among many other excellent tracks on it

I like this Demby record a lot, but it's full-on maximalist neoclassical-on-synths in my ears though.

Agreed with you, Siegbran.

they used to play Demby at my old place of work sometimes. it was glorious.

68. Robert Rich & B. Lustmord: Stalker (1995)
253 points, 4 votes, 1 first place vote.

https://i.imgur.com/7dv2lPd.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo6mQiyjqC8

The Rich/Lustmord 'Stalker' album is dark and creepy and great

― FCussen (Burger), Thursday, July 10, 2003 5:54

I'm a sucker for Stalker as well. But she and Lustmord are getting at very different states in their music. Demby's all through-composed symphonic religious light, Lustmord is mostly dark textural isolationist industrial drone.

― Milton Parker, Thursday, July 3, 2014 4:15 AM

'stalker' was the first i heard and it's one of those, 'oh shit this is perfect' albums for me

― The Prices are .......... VERY AFFORDABLE!!! (omar little), Wednesday, March 18, 2009 9:38 PM

66. (tie) Stuart Dempster: Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel (1995)
264 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/P7PRYuQ.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tvMp4XDICU

& one last recommendation if you like 'Deep Listening': seek out Stuart Dempster's 'Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel', where he returns to the water cistern with 9 other trombone students following his lead, mirroring his notes. From the 'Deep Listening' record you can pretty much imagine what this one sounds like.

― (Jon L), Sunday, June 27, 2004 3:43 AM

wow thanks for reminding me about stuart dempster. i really dig 'underground overlays', and i agree that calling him 'new age' is a stretch.

i saw him talk with ramon sender, morton subotnick, and don buchla (inventor of the buchla box- he even brought it along!), among others, when the book about the san francisco tape music center came out a few months back. i guess dempster played trumpet tones in the broadway tunnel as a part of sender, ken dewey, and anthony martin's "city scale" piece/installation in 1963. i guess the piece required audience members to be shuttled around town to experience things like said tunnel, a woman in a storefront window singing debussy, a 'book returning' ceremony at city lights, light projections on to the side of a wells fargo, and a lot more as depicted in the super abstract score in the book

― all-seeing eye of horus (psychgawsple), Friday, January 9, 2009 9:26 AM

stuart dempster is great for the deep cistern listening

― terry lennox. (gareth), Friday, February 24, 2006 4:41 PM

five star ambient record, ten trombones recorded in two million-gallon underground water reservoir with 45 seconds of natural reverb.

― milton parker (Jon L), Friday, April 15, 2005 9:17 AM

great that Demby and Lustmord ended up next to each other in the poll

TS: Constance Demby vs. Lustmord

66. (tie) Earth: Earth 2 - Special Low Frequency Version (1993)
264 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/hsKhlFz.jpg?1

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

It's 2. I mean Hex sounds great on first listen and I sure the other post-hiatus stuff is worthwhile, but 2 is just an incredible listen.

― He was only 21 years old when he 16 (Alex in SF), Friday, July 17, 2009 11:24 PM

I remember hearing Earth 2 when it came out and but I decided against buying it because it didn't sit well with the short-attention span I had at the time.

Just picked up a used copy on a whim and damn, it's pretty awesome. "Like Gold and Faceted" has got to be their ultimate song, I can't imagine that they surpassed this half-hour-long epic drone. Should I bother with any of their other records?

― Joseph Pot (STINKOR™), Monday, August 16, 2004 4:59 AM

i ended up voting for Earth 2 -- even though some of the later stuff is more pleasant to listen to, Earth 2 is so monumental and amazing ... Dunno, it'd be like voting against the Grand Canyon or something.

― tylerw, Wednesday, July 29, 2009 2:13 AM

"Earth 2" comes next. And it's even better (if only 'cuz it's longer). Totally fucking gorgeous, smeary, ecstatic drug drone. Absolutely natural and essential. Like if you gave a pineal gland a guitar, this is the record that gland would make. If, you know, it had hands or something... Yeah, sure, you could accurately describe it as the grunge version of some miserable new-age "cosmic tones" bullshit, but it transcends any labels you stick on it. The sound of the universe breathing. My favorite record of '93, and a top-ten contender ever since.

― fuckfuckingfuckedfucker (fuckfuckingfuckedfucker), Thursday, June 29, 2006 3:25 PM

great that Demby and Lustmord ended up next to each other in the poll

TS: Constance Demby vs. Lustmord

― Milton Parker, Tuesday, June 25, 2019 10:20 PM

Yes, and I got to quote the same post by you from that thread with both albums. :)

Stalker way, way, way too low.

I listened to 10 minutes of "Earth 2" while searching for the image and quotes, and, er, is the whole album just 73 minutes of heavy metal guitar riffing? Can't say this is my thing at all.

Pretty much, yeah. I enjoy drone metal but I don't really get Earth.

Anyway, that was the last entry for today, I'll continue the countdown tomorrow.

thank you Tuomas!

some of the better later records also recorded in the Port Townsend Deep Listening cistern

https://www.discogs.com/Doublends-Vert-Cistern/master/359070
https://www.amazon.com/Harmonic-Voice-Seattle-Voices/dp/B001PZ46EA
https://www.discogs.com/Open-Graves-Somewhere-Beyond-or-Behind/release/13072661

https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/cistern-chapel/

^^ cool this article also mentions the Tank in Colorado, want to visit that place sometime

Thanks for posting that article, it was interesting read... That cistern sounds like an awesome place.

hopefully another album recorded in that cistern is gonna appear later...

65. Gigi Masin: Talk to the Sea (2014)
264 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/RFWun9a.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAHjMWEb9y8

listened to most of these while driving around tuscany last week, confirming that nu-balearic is the greatest driving music.

gigi masin's vocal stuff scratches a wonderful david sylvian itch

― max, 2. kesäkuuta 2014 0:15

I'm tight with the Juno Plus list of best reissues. Also agreeing with their comment re Gigi Masin's Talk To The Sea

wasn’t just the best reissue project of the year – it was better than most albums of new music released in 2014

― doug watson, 3. joulukuuta 2014 18:17

Huh, I skimmed this Gigi Masin album earlier in the year, but I'm only just now discovering there are some vocals. Makes it better imo.

― Johnny Fever, 27. tammikuuta 2015 20:51

talk to the sea is a retrospective compilation and mr. masin has been working since the 80s (including a collab with charles hayward [this heat] which my bf pointed out as a huge charles hayward fan). as someone who listens to a lot of ambient-ish music i thought this was pretty special and a cut above, with more varied instrumentation including like the best-sounding digital synthesis ever and great cale-esque vox on some tracks. the vibes are kind of perfect for 2014 era balearic. i'm sort of over stars of the lid and certain guitar treatments, personally.

― languagelessness (mattresslessness), 27. tammikuuta 2015 20:57

64. David Sylvian / Holger Czukay: Flux + Mutability (1989)
265 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/4rS3fB3.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_E-lg2M5gQ

the second one, 'flux and mutability', made more sense on vinyl, two seperate pieces, one a mellow saunter, the other a sound wall made of sylvian's fripp-cribbed "I am sad now" guitar tones, is good.

― (Jon L), 23. toukokuuta 2004 0:33

Flux + Mutability is my favorite of the Sylvian ambient albums, if only for the second track. I don't think it would sound out of place on Eno's Apollo, and imo it bests a lot of the material on that album.

― I like tv random anything (corey), 30. heinäkuuta 2010 7:45

Today, Grönland Records are proud to announce the reissue of one of ambient music's hidden gems, by two unique musicians whose paths originally crossed in the early-eighties while working on Sylvian’s debut solo album, 'Brilliant Trees'. In 1986, David Sylvian - of British Art-Pop band Japan - and Holger Czukay - founding member and bassist in legendary German Kosmiche band Can - were ostensibly reconvening for Sylvian to record a vocal for Czukay's forthcoming album 'Rome Remains Rome’. But on arriving at Czukay's studio - a former cinema in Köln - Sylvian began playing freeform, improvising on readily available instruments located in the studio itself. No sooner had Sylvian, on whatever instrument he’d been applying himself, start to structurally define/refine the performance than Czukay would stop the recording he’d surreptitiously been making. Czukay had attempted to capture the process of creation without a musician's inclination for refinement. This process, drawn out over two nights, gave birth to the duo's first, full-fledged, collaboration, 'Plight and Premonition'.

Having been out of print for some time, the parallels between the original release 30 years ago and now are quite stark; at the time of recording the Cold War was lifting - but still very real - after a bitter winter. The names "Plight & Premonition" and "Flux & Mutability" themselves hint at an instability. In Sylvian's words, the sessions seemed to touch on something: “A form of music that seemed to have been created while we were absent by instruments abandoned to the earth and the woods, sounded by the coarse winter elements.”

(text by the man, Sylvian, himself, via fb)

― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), 25. huhtikuuta 2018 21:27

gigi masin can do no wrong. nice one-two there

63. Boris: Flood (2000)
267 points, 4 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/z8Szs1k.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZDstZ1-EAI

It's a shame you guys didn't get Boris doing a 40 min of Flood like we got in Glasgow last year. That was mindblowing.

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, July 2, 2008 2:54 AM

Flood is monumental...a lot to digest (hence the Boringus tag) but the patience is definitely rewarded.

― demons a. real (Drugs A. Money), Thursday, August 12, 2010 5:13

In spite of all the hype, Boris seems like the real obvious answer here - esp on the dreamy, epic stuff like Flood.

― Bob Standard, Saturday, September 8, 2007 1:36 AM

Yes, from what I have read they were an Earth tribute band but quickly evolved into sth... uh... original.

Oh yeah? I always figured their name was a ref. to the Melvins track.

Feedbacker is indeed awesome. Have you heard Flood? Similar strcture but with less harshness.

― original bgm, Friday, February 11, 2005 4:53 PM

Probably the only album to place both in this poll and the ILX all-time metal albums poll?

Love Flux + Mutability, I didn't know they'd re-released it on CD with Plight and Premonition added! That is a must-buy.

62. Loscil: Plume (2006)
268 points, 3 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/3NqG7Xl.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxIlV2iOCyc

i only have Plume and i love it, i have no idea why i haven't gotten hold of more. it reminds me of other acts but he nails the sound just right.

― footballer of the future (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, October 16, 2013 1:50

Plume was my entry point and always my favorite. Listened to some Loscil this morning and read a few old Pitchfork reviews. I guess Plume isn't generally thought of as a high point, but whatever.

― beard papa, Wednesday, June 12, 2019 8:07 PM

Adding variation to loscil's loop-based work is the inclusion of real-time instruments alongside layers of computer generated pulse. By adding vibes, Ebow guitar and Rhodes piano to his pieces, loscil augments his mechanically intricate rhythmic cycles with an interesting spontaneity. Interleaving patterns comprised of odd clicks and bumps each spin at different ratios synchronized to a master clock. The virtual wheels and gears of loscil's motif engine crank out a heady-gentle machine music.

[/url=https://www.starsend.org/Plume.html]Chuck van Syl, Star's End[/url]

Another perhaps controversial album coming up next...

man I just don't get Loscil, I guess I need to try again

bottom-of-the-barrel generic Kranky act to my ears

yeah I'm kinda mad too

Can't quite recall what Loscil sounds like, although it certainly wasn't unpleasant…

some bvdub comin' up next I guess

Huh! Didn't think Boris would make it, but I'm pretty out of the ILM loop nowadays.

so far pretty much all the results are a long way from anything I would call ambient, but hey, lots of new stuff to check out

61. Oval: 94diskont. (1995)
273 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/n8A1WTG.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn8mxzDYdbE

Autechre were heroes to most
But they never meant shit to me you see

OVAL LUV 4-EVAH!!

(mothafuck Autechre and John Wayne)

― Keiko, Tuesday, May 21, 2002 3:00 AM

'Diskont' is still my fave - was there anything that sounded like Oval before Oval?

I think they're one of the greatest 'groups' of the last 20 years.

― Andrew L, Wednesday, May 22, 2002 3:00 AM

'94 diskont' and 'Systemisch' are the two I've played most. Beautiful shifting melodies adrift amidst all that digital debris.

― stevo, Wednesday, May 22, 2002 3:00 AM

voted for 94diskont cos i've listened to that and 'systemisch' a lot lately and they're both great, they're ever so vaguely related in my mind to the later mozart piano concertos in their formal invention and ~usually~ good natured but unsaccharine temperament

― nakhchivan, Friday, May 7, 2010 10:11 PM

i like the "is this really ambient tho" stuff placing in the lower reaches of the poll. Puts a finer point on it as we get to the top, I'm assuming

the Sylvian/Czukay album is great

lol Boris?

60. Alio Die: Aura seminalis (2008)
280 points, 4 votes, 1 first place vote.

https://i.imgur.com/fUgCzHJ.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBBVt0opjtE

i had never heard of Alio Die and am totally smitten with Aura Seminalis, whoever nominated it I kiss you.

― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Friday, June 14, 2019 11:19 PM

I played F. Hazel's rec, Alio Die's 'Aura Seminalis' tonight. Blissful. So good. (reminded me of Polish neo-classical/ambient dude Jacaszek, check him out).

― Uptown VONC (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, June 18, 2019 12:44 AM

The ancient melodies and styles of early music, it turns out, lend themselves particularly well to ambient, and Alio Die clearly knows exactly what to do with them, combining ambient electronic textures with field recordings and early music samples in beautifully textured looped pieces. The effect on the listener is very interesting. I’ve got a lot of early music in my collection, and as I noted in my previous post, one of the pleasures of this kind of music is being transported back in one’s imagination several hundred years to a very different, more natural world. Since a lot of early music is liturgical, that means visions of monastic courtyards and gardens, which is about as tranquil a vision as one can have. Combined and looped with ethereal ambient sound art, that effect is only enhanced to a hypnotically soporific level. And there are hardly any ambient musicians who can spirit me off to my spacy happy place like Alio Die does on these recordings.

Make Your Own Taste

That was not the Alio Die album I voted for, but it's still gorgeous, and I'm glad he made it to the top 100. Dude has put out something like a hundred albums, and every one of them that I've heard has been at least good if not great.

all I have is a 7" EP on the Drone label, excited to check these out and I had no idea there was so much

i gave diskont94 a bunch of points. i wouldn't call most of the oval i've heard "ambient", but to me diskont is very very ambient. the track could be 10x as long and it would have a similar effect

59. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Async (2017)
280 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/AZvC2L3.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xhmVueRtLs

Got the new one, and currently on a second listen.

In short, it's fab. Yes, it's ambient/glitch (which may disappoint a few upthread) but with a much less austere tonal palette than the collaboration records (where he was basically adding piano ornaments to other people's dronescapes, not that there's anything wrong with that). It's low key but colourful - lurrrrvely Prophet 5 chords on Zure, for example. And the odd melodic flourish that'll make you well up a bit in places too.

Will see how it plays out over subsequent listens, but I'm loving it so far. What with the Revenant soundtrack being his best OST in years, his post-illness return to work on such stellar form is an inspiring thing to behold.

― bamboohouses, Monday, April 3, 2017 8:24 PM

i really like the combination of introspective, lyrical piano pieces with sound art tracks on async.

― Alex in Spree-Athen (alex in mainhattan), Monday, May 8, 2017 1:15 PM

while aysnc just breezed by like a cool autumn day on the first few listens, I've recently returned to it and found it to be a stunner. I thought his previous solo album Out of Noise was kind of boring but I really like the "14 flavors of ambient" thing going on here, not to mention how the title/theme "async" manifests itself in several ways. I wish it was a bit more melodic but only because the actual melodies on here are absolutely gorgeous. I like the plinky plonky stuff. Reminds me a bit of The Ship by Eno, not in any thematic way but rather how the openness and sense of space lets you hear the compositions in a number of ways.

― frogbs, Tuesday, May 8, 2018 6:01 PM

huh I considered voting for one of his albums with Alva Noto (which I like a lot) but this went right by me

(as in, I missed it in the noms list and have never heard it)

The next entry will be by far the longest album in the top 100.

Ah, I was afraid it wouldn't make it.

58. Max Richter: Sleep (2015)
283 points, 4 votes, 1 first place vote.

https://i.imgur.com/ru48ycw.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lauw7hvzDkE

Have been listening to the eight and a half hour version the last few nights (and days). Epic and absolutely beautiful.

― groovypanda, Wednesday, September 16, 2015 11:22 AM

anyway i decided to sleep to 'sleep' last night and this morning i feel very refreshed!

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, October 26, 2015 1:49 AM

it's very weird to be able to say: yeah, i guess this piece of music is fit for purpose

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, October 26, 2015 1:49 AM

i have fell asleep to this several times. i have absolutely nothing to say about it except that the first 20 minutes is pretty good. i'm assuming he put a lot of effort into that first track because it's the only one a lot of people will hear

― Karl Malone, Tuesday, November 10, 2015 11:47 PM

i like music for sleep now and again but i would never put on something i knew was 8 hours long. i've been listening while i'm awake to make the world feel more soporific.

i really like the religious feel of some of it.

― doing my Objectives, handling some intense stuff (LocalGarda), Tuesday, November 10, 2015 11:52 PM

Lol, that's not what I had in mind at all.

I like Sleep just fine, but there's something about Richter's prettified melodicism that rubs me the wrong way, it feels too neat and petit bourgeois. Though admittedly it fits the functionality of Sleep much better than his other albums, which I haven't liked that much.

Anyway, my "8 hour long soundtrack to sleeping" album vote went to Robert Rich's Somnium, which I think is better, and more ambient too, obviously.

Fully agreed, re: Richter's melodic, faux-classical vacuity.

I hope Somnium (which I voted for) will appear further along.

I did the sleep concert in NYC. I love Richter but I usually sleep to silence so it was not an easy night of sleep for me!

Yay Alio Die! I think he's said that he considers Aura Seminalis to be his finest work, but don't quote me on that. As noted, dude has like 50+ albums and it's all amazing stuff. Plus his label Hic Sunt Leones releases lots of cool other stuff.

56. (tie) Chapterhouse / Global Communication: Blood Music - Pentamerous Metamorphosis ()
285 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/wAQueTv.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpj6vyxS4kw

yeah, global comm certainly had a deft touch with the remix. i've not heard that lamb remix though. 'pentamerous metamorphosis' was quite special. talk about alchemy - the worst record chapterhouse released (and there was some competition for that title) molded into one of the best global comm titles.

― jon dale, Sunday, October 24, 2004 6:47 AM

Pentamerous Metamorphosis is still my favourite thing, though. Footsteps or tick tocks, take your pick.

― Karen D. Tregaskin, Wednesday, August 18, 2010 12:43 PM

Pentamerous Metamorphosis really is something special. That headspace where the swoony end of drone/shoegaze bleeds into ambient techno, with or without guitars, will always be one of my absolute sweetest spots. (I rediscovered it and started caning it right around the time I started doing a lot of hiking in Cornwall, so it will really forever be associated with striding along bits of the coastal path towards some ruined wheal or other.)

― I'd rather be the swallow than a dick (Branwell Bell), Friday, January 24, 2014 11:44 AM

Forgot how much I loved 'Pentamerous Metamorphosis' by Global Communication back in the day. Haven't really busted it out in well over a decade, probably because '76:14' is always the go-to. This record is a lost classic of the genre and I'm surprised it doesn't come up in conversation more. I've never even listened to the original Chapterhouse material and inspiration from which it is born.

― yesca, Sunday, March 12, 2017 6:33 PM

Sorry, the year for that one is 1993, obviously.

xp re: Hic Sunt Leones - oh yeah I have an Andrew Chalk CD on that label!

and whoa I need this:

https://www.discogs.com/Francesco-Paladino-With-Alio-Die-In-Gowan-Ring-Jack-Or-Jive-Nocturnal-Sessions/release/1111211

I love that Paladino has an album with Alio Die called "Angel's Fly Souvenir"

f. hazel if you haven't ever heard the albums he did under the F.P And The Doubling Riders name, I love them very much

56. (tie) Tetsu Inoue: World Receiver (1996)
285 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/iAa4qmX.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grlYRK1aSus

Tetsuo Inoue's "World Receiver" is ideal for drifting off to (if I had a stereo in my bedroom); the last track, barely there, repeats over and over and over and over....

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, June 28, 2001 3:00 AM

I can't imagine "World Receiver" being made without "Chillout" as an example. Music and field recordings together like transparencies. But if "Chill Out" is a drive across America, "World Receiver" is a train under the sea, running from freight depots in Sweden to caves under the Brazilian jungle, to a dirty bit of sidewalk in Hong Kong, and you're sort of deliberately letting your attention wander from thing to thing.

― Tracer hand, Friday, January 25, 2002 3:00 AM

Surprised Biosphere's substrata did not get mentioned as a "field recordings mixed with music" example. Also Cirque.
Tetsu Inoue's World Receiver is a great call. I love these kinds of albums, they do funny things to my brain.

― brimstead, Sunday, March 2, 2014 9:12 PM

https://phonaut.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/where-is-tetsu-inoue

I feel like Loscil's output walks a fine line between ambient and dub, but certainly falls into ambient a lot of the time.

For those who don't get it, I totally understand. But as someone who lived in Cascadia and has spent a lot of time in the Pacific Northwest, his music evokes the area better than many others i can think of...

hmm I've lived in Oregon for almost 30 years, so I really will give it another shot :)

That Pete Namlook died too young and Tetsu Inoue has disappeared off the face of the earth is obviously sad as it is, but the unfortunate side effect to that is that the Inoue/Namlook albums and his solo material for FAX are in a limbo, where no one can reissue them because Inoue can't be found to give permission to that. (Some other FAX artists have had their rights revert back to them, so in the last 2 or 3 years people like Biosphere and Klaus Schulze have reissued stuff they made for the label.) World Receiver is a great album obviously, but I do rate Inoue's FAX output even higher, and I feel the current state of its legacy has made those albums unnecessarily obscure, so they probably can't reach listeners who might otherwise enjoy them a lot.

I gotta go to sleep early tonight, so that's it for now. I'll try to roll out more albums tomorrow than I did today.

that is super interesting! i'd not heard some of the Namlook/Inoue stuff, really love it.

sleeve, here's a cut from Endless Falls that I love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdAgPn-HYao

(he's from Vancouver, BC, btw)

Btw, I hadn't heard of Loscil before, but I have enjoyed the two albums we've seen so far a lot, definitely one of the several nice discoveries I've made through this poll.

The pace is really good, Tuomas... you could even go a bit slower to let conversation about each placing go on a bit.

And I'll def. check out the Doubling Riders stuff, sleeve!

The pace is really good, Tuomas... you could even go a bit slower to let conversation about each placing go on a bit.

Yeah, I agree, but unfortunately due to work I can mostly post the entries within a 2 or 3 hour time window in the evening, Finnish time. But my summer vacation starts next week, so I can do the top 20 or 30 on Monday/Tuesday in a more relaxed pace. (I'll be taking a break from this on Saturday and Sunday because there's the local Pride plus my birthday party.)

So many good things. I didn't vote for Oval but it's a brilliant album. I'm not aware of the Global Communication (only know 76:14) so will check that out. The Tetsuo is glorious.

Which of his Fax stuff do you recommend Thomas?

I love the roll out so far - the pace is great.

Anyway, my "8 hour long soundtrack to sleeping" album vote went to Robert Rich's Somnium, which I think is better, and more ambient too, obviously.

I consider 76:14 a classic ambient release in my old-school fashion but couldn't vote for it because it's just too energetic overall... I love Pentamerous Metamorphosis though, surprised it didn't place much higher to be honest.

Which of his Fax stuff do you recommend Thomas?

Yeah, Pentamerous Metamorphosis is fantastic. Beta Phase probably my fave xp

Would also recommend this Loscil track from Plume for those who haven't heard him before

Top finds for me so far are Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Meg Bowles.

Looking forward to many more

I love Pentamerous Metamorphosis. I put three GC albums in my ballot. PM was the lowest ranked.

I'm the #1 vote for Sleep. It's everything I want an ambient album to be from a philosophical and execution perspective, and melodically it's immediate and memorable (to me). Monumental release.

Also feel Loscil is overrated a bit, but it's amazing ambient music. I think my considerations for ambient music include spacial fit and atmospheric context in addition to emotional connection when focusing on it directly. As a record you might listen to with intent and focus, it's certainly less engaging than what should be expected on most ballot polls, but as an atmospheric and spacial filler for background sound, Plume is quite brilliant.

An example of an ambient record that both fits in the foreground and background ridiculously well, see SAW II and Mountains' Centralia, both of whom I hope to see later on in this poll.

SAW II is a lock in for top 10 surely?

(And probably higher)

Funny, since I think I have a more liberal sense of what counts as ambient than others here (based on earlier discussions) - but as much as I love Loscil I did not vote for any of his records in this poll. I've always thought of him as a more chilled-out electronica artist. Perhaps I'm forever colored by Triple Point, which was more of a minimal techno record.

mmm this Richard Skelton is hitting the spot, thanks everyone

also holy fuck @ "you are my everlovin/celestial power" now I get why ppl are so into Henry Flynt (I took a couple of false steps)

David Behrman is also heartrendingly, achingly beautiful, def a Discreet Music vibe but with a side of No Pussyfooting and a chaser of electro-bleeps

so grateful to discover all this stuff

55. Fennesz: Endless Summer (2001)
286 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/Pu2jh6o.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skygudx8Rrs

this is inspired by a comment someone made in the autechre thread regarding a friend who liked to listen to autechre during sex. i got to thinking about experimental laptop/abstract idm stuff and i realized that some of that music is actually quite sexy. case in point, fennesz' endless summer. it has the mbv-esque endorphin slur that makes it incredibly well-suited for intimate listening. i would recommend it. so, *rfi* SEXY laptop/glitch/abstract/minimal techno. otherwise tell stories about abstract music that you like to listen to when you're getting it on (and be honest).

― fields of salmon, 18. huhtikuuta 2002 3:00

head goes "Live in Japan" but heart goes "Endless Summer". I hadn't heard it, only read about it, before I bought it. I found it in a record shop in Barcelona, we came back to the apartment from a pre Sonar event a little wasted and I put it on. Amazing stuff. Still think about it being one of the best music discoveries of my lifetime.

― mmmm, 5. toukokuuta 2012 0:23

and i don't think of the beach boys when the phrase "endless summer" is mentioned... i'm instead reminded of a CLASSIC soundtrack to the 1966 bruce brown film by THE SANDELLS. I'd argue that the Fennesz title track "endless summer" borrows fairly heavily from the 2-chord strum of the sandell's "theme from endless summer"...

please bear in mind that i would never attempt to judge the quality of fennesz's music based on the cover art or title eitha... reductionists! listen to the music!

― gygax!, 6. marraskuuta 2002 0:49

Black Sea >>>>> Endless Summer

Hope it places

The other Behrmann I absolutely love is Leapday Night. I can't think why I didn't nominate it. Fucking weird old cover!

https://img.discogs.com/mJ_8dtJceY6SOaVtLbXv_0ErNH0=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-978862-1471213618-3295.png.jpg

Wow, what the heck are those arrow things? 😀

No idea! I've always had a 'blind pilot plays inexplicable boardgame before leaping to his doom' vibe from it.

Interspecies Smalltalk is great (closer to Terry Riley than a lot of his stuff but no worse for it):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDC5AoBa7uM

54. Thomas Köner: Permafrost (1993)
289 points, 7 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/YhqnAGW.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a7BU_kI7xQ

my favorite three are 'teimo', 'permafrost' and 'aubrite' (his 2nd, 3rd & 4th records), rolling quarter-speed gongs rolling into occasional layered fields, they all sit side by side really well, and any of them are a good starting point. I've played those records at night quite consistently over the last 5 years...

― jl (Jon L), 4. elokuuta 2003 7:59 Bookmark

thomas koner is good, perhaps a little bit simplistic and 'awed' in that biosphere way? very strong sense of place and emotional heft, certainly not nearly as agonized or ambiguous as 'on land'

― no love deb weep (nakhchivan), 16. helmikuuta 2015 21:15

the 3 disc thomas koner reissue that came out this year is so sick. coming from more of an industrial/techno background than much of the stuff in this thread, but it's about as dark and heavy as music gets

― lao gan ma (r1o natsume), 20. syyskuuta 2010 14:54

I love Endless Summer so much. god damn. one of the greatest things ever. 55 seems awfully low though

I, too, prefer Black Sea.

53. Autechre: Garbage (1995)
294 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/9bHwLRs.jpg

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

Easily my favorite EP and I'd argue the first unimpeachably awesome Ae release. Love the cavernous ambient they're doing here, quality is solid to all-time.

― Ou sont les cankles d'antan? (Leee), 1. marraskuuta 2010 5:53

Yeah, this is probably their best EP. Autechre really should have made an entire album like this, too bad they never did.

― NoTimeBeforeTime, 1. marraskuuta 2010 14:03

i think some of their most interesting spaces are on this one. not really sure how to describe what i mean. i just get a feeling that there's a sort of an environment in each track that inhabits a defined physical space. or something...

― everything you do is a meatloaf (another al3x), 1. marraskuuta 2010 20:21

Love Garbage, when I was putting my ballot together, its ambient vibe just hit me in the right spot: mournful and beautiful.

― cichleee suite (Leee), 29. syyskuuta 2014 4:47

when hurricane charlie/frances came through my town and we were without power for a few days i had a burned copy of garbage ep and a portable cd player, and now associate that track with intense humidity and candlelight

― clouds, 3. lokakuuta 2014 21:31

really enjoying this rollout. I decided against submitting a ballot on the basis I didn't know enough True and Pure ambient but looks like that was silly of me

hell yeah Permafrost

52. Iasos: Inter-Dimensional Music (1975)
294 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/2UJ0IJO.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDD29hW5Pj4

I wonder if Iasos was an influence on the mid-90s atmospheric jungle scene. If you took an LTJ Bukem Drum 'n' Bass record, then took out all the drums, and the bass, you'd be left with an Iasos record.

― 3×5, 16. helmikuuta 2015 21:51

oh yeah, iasos is fantastic. youtube has a 1979 documentary he did where he's a total sausalito space-hippie talking about third eyes and multidimensionality and stuff.

― lime pickle (get bent), 2. joulukuuta 2013 6:08

Inter-Dimensional Music Through Iasos from 1975 is mostly flute-heavy drifty modal jazz, with a few 5 or 6 minute all electronic tracks that foreshadow real space music, but I just discovered the followup Angelic Music originally released on cassette in 1978, and I can understand his reputation now, this is distinct from most of the analog synth / space music of the 70's & looks forward to the good aspects of later New Age like Michael Stearns & Steve Roach. It follows on from side 2 of Vangelis' L'Apocalypse Des Animaux, but with two 30 minute long tracks that give you time to go a little deeper. This is exactly what I remember almost any given episode of Music From The Hearts of Space sounding like in the 80's -- back then I was on the fence about the whole genre but it's catching up to me now with a vengeance

― Milton Parker, 8. tammikuuta 2009 22:01

iasos is still around and lives in marin i guess. i think he does more video-art type stuff nowadays, but he still produces crazy stuff like this

a friend of mine booked him to play in sf but ended up backing out when he claimed it'd take 2 days of prep to properly set up the show

― a lagoon par la mer (psychgawsple), 30. maaliskuuta 2011 21:47

That is a spectacular album there!

love the flutes, the nimbus-y pads, the lovely chords, the track that’s just the sound of a jacuzzi or boiling water or whatever...

wish I had picked that up when the original LP was a dollar bin staple, but hey I got the expanded Numero CD so it's all good

51. Harold Budd: The White Arcades (1988)
307 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/C5CrHLO.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1SRZpbiDk

I am quite enjoying The White Arcades of late. Of the records I know, it seems his most synthed out. Which despite his lovely piano playing is not an altogether bad thing.

― Naive Teen Idol, Monday, July 18, 2011 6:42 PM

On Lovely Thunder (1986) and The White Arcades (1988) Budd goes it mostly alone and applies some of the production lessons he learned from Eno with great finesse. On some tracks he also subtly expands is sonic palette. The 20-minute "Gypsy Violin" features long, sad phases on said instrument, bedded gently on a luminous drone that slowly morphs, rises and falls. On "Child With A Lion" and "Totem Of The Red Sleeved Warrior" he also puts the piano aside for playful synth improvisations on the former and a deeply haunting ghost choir on the latter.

Mike Watson, Ambient Music Guide

50. Brian Eno: Music for Films (1978)
307 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/3aCRVHm.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu0PcfX0nIM

But the melancholy Sparrowfall (3x) from Music for Films can put me to tears - what a beaut!

― Roger in Mokum (Roger T), Sunday, March 7, 2004 6:06 PM

I love the "Music for Films" album. Quite short, composed, impressionist pieces. I especially like the fact that those films which are described in the booklet do not exist. That makes the whole project even more charming.

― Ich bin kein Berliner (alex in mainhattan), Saturday, August 25, 2018 3:47 PM

Frankly, the best is probably On Land, but at this moment Music For Films, if only b/c the CS-80 textures are sublime and otherworldly.

― Naive Teen Idol, Sunday, January 6, 2008 8:11 AM

having said that music for films is fucking great, probably underrated? and the one i have the deepest emotional connection with

― umsworth (emsworth), Thursday, April 19, 2018 2:25 AM

Never heard this album before, to me it sounds mostly like a bunch of flimsy and thin vignettes. Not much to delve into.

harsh but fair, I like this but did not vote for it

sleeve, so glad you're enjoying the Skelton, Flynt, and Behrman!!

For the former, it really is worth looking into his other records...particularly A Broken Consort's "The Shape Leaves," which is a lot more intense and LOUD than "Landings."

It certainly isn't "Everlovin'/Celestial Power," but if you like the Flynt and haven't heard the "Back Porch Hillbilly Blues" records, they're sort of...I don't know how to describe them, really, but there are some parts that verge on "country minimalism" and some parts that are quite "country acid trip and not that CCR bullshit," more "free" so to speak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQEio9qEMCw

49. Jon Hassell / Brian Eno Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics (1980)
309 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/YbYGFo8.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFig-OiIwDo

Of the Hassell records proper I know, Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics basically sets the table for the rest of the decade: African and Latin percussion (some electronic), richly-textured synthesizer pads and sometimes ambient sounds, with Hassell's trumpet modally surveying the landscape, itself electronically altered.

― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Thursday, August 12, 2004 2:10 AM

A lot of times (at least on Fourth World Vol.1, which is the one I know best), Hassell sounds like a very abstract image of "eastern"-soundingness. I hesitate to say anything like this since it's so obvious, but it does kind of interest me. I don't know enough to say, but it doesn't seem like he's actually consistently following any modes here, but there are all of these little gestures that evoke eastern, modal, microtonal music. The way one thing follows another, in the long run anyway, doesn't sound to me like anything you'd hear in, say, Indian (not that I know much about it) or Arabic music; but momentarily it does. Sort of an organic sampling effect. At least, I think that's what's going on. Also, at times his horn sounds more like what would be done with a voice than with an instrument. Without question, this music is good preparation for hearing non-western music (not that that is it's only value--I do like it as it is).

(He has studied Indian classical music though hasn't he?)

― Rockist_Scientist (rockist_scientist), Friday, August 13, 2004 4:04 AM

The first time I heard Hassell was at 3am, 1985, on the radio... the previous show had just ended, the next DJ put on 'Charm' without any intro. Imagine listening to that piece for the first time without knowing how long it was going to last, always seemingly winding down and imperceptibly fading out, but then out of nowhere spiraling right back at you full force. I just sat there staring at the speakers for half an hour.

DJ never back announced the piece, either, I didn't find it again for another year...

― (Jon L), Friday, August 13, 2004 5:34 AM

And "Fourth World means: get yourself a world vocabulary; use it with subtlety and a keen sense of surprise; follow pleasure; trust your intuition (after you're sure you know what that is)."

I want to speak in parentheses...

― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Saturday, August 14, 2004 8:19 AM

Never heard this album before either, in fact I've never had much interest in Eno and other older stuff like that. It does sound much better than the previous entry, though maybe the rhythms and especially the trumpet playing are too attention-grabbing for this to count as ambient?

these ritualistic tribal drums are mostly what makes it so good though.

Is there a Spotify playlist for the top 100?

I don't have a Spotify account, but obviously anyone else is free to compile such a list.

48. Tim Hecker: Ravedeath, 1972 (2011)
322 points, 5 votes, 1 first place vote.

https://i.imgur.com/vKCZ5zY.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NkZVWXK5jM

'Ravedeath, 1972' is scratching me right where I itch. It somehow feels Hecker set out to make this his quintessential record. All his previous albums sort of flow into this one, combining his different approaches to sound/noise and melody. It's a very dark and threatening album (which is how I like Tim Hecker best).

― La descente infernale (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, February 18, 2011 3:38 PM

the samples sound like they're in a similar vein to the "decaying music" of william basinski and the new version of the sinking of the titanic (an artist and a longform piece that i love).

― Daniel, Esq., Friday, February 18, 2011 3:45 PM

I didn't know of Hecker until last year, and Ravedeath/Pianos are pretty much always on in my house at the moment. Lovely, lovely music. Am working backwards through his other albums now.

― Not only dermatologists hate her (James Morrison), Tuesday, January 3, 2012 1:28

It's almost cliche, but many times of fallen asleep listening to Tim Hecker. Which is funny - sort of - because I'm pretty sure the last review I read of Ravedeath described it as "drone you can't sleep through" or something of that sort. Fucking nonsense. I'd play this to a kindergarten class.

― brodieopolari.... oh fuck it (kelpolaris), Saturday, May 21, 2011 7:38 AM

xx. The Dead Texan: The Dead Texan (2004)
326 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/D8TBik4.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zebxXliFtg

I have been listening to The Dead Texan album all day and have not been able to do any work at all because it makes me think of wistful moments and fallen down broken glass towers and so I've been sketching all day instead. I love an album that's good to draw to.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Thursday, February 10, 2005 3:01 AM

I saw Dead Texan on Tuesday, quite by accident, as they were supporting Final Fantasy. What incredible sounding music! I bought the CD/DVD afterwards, I was so impressed.

― Paranoid Spice (kate), Wednesday, October 26, 2005 10:45 AM

I know even less about the origins of this record, other than it is a side-project from Adam Wiltzie of Stars Of The Lid. Again I got this on a Kranky splurge. It has more of a classically ambient sound than the bulk of SOTL’s dronelike material, it’s very beautiful and restive, a little like Eno or Budd in places. Actually it’s probably a lot more like how Stars sound nowadays.

― disastrous sixth series (MaresNest), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 2:03

finally listened to the dead texan album - very simple 2 chord progressions with lovely deep bass floating in and out and understated melodies on top. definitely a keeper for me

― nonightsweats, Sunday, July 4, 2010 1:13 AM

Sorry, the placing for that is 47, obviously.

I’m surprised that 1194 placed so low, but I guess my ballot is refracted through a late 90s rave prism, which these results mostly aren’t so far.

I feel that “ambient house” as a subgenre/concept is critically at an all time low vs other strains of ambient.

46. A Winged Victory for the Sullen: Atomos ()
327 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/iOMPFmW.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXTlFx5z9_c

The new Winged Victory for the Sullen record, 'Atomos', is very, very beautiful. On my first listen but it's very pastoral and sounds like a soundtrack to a non-existent film. At times it's very reminiscent of Johannssons Virtulegu Forsetar, strings wise.

― definite classic, predicting a solid 8/10 from the p-fork boys (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, October 7, 2014 3:08 PM

I don't see Winged Victory as 'new age' myself; I find it a broody, emotional moving piece of work albeit in a very subtle, subdued way. Perhaps it's also because I've been a long time SotL fan and for some reason have grown to respect Adam Wiltzie but also Dustin O'Halloran for their compositional qualities to not take it for generic new-age music (as my personal definition of 'new-age' tends to be: generic soothing music, which I quite frankly can't stand).

But it's a very fine, personal line.

― definite classic, predicting a solid 8/10 from the p-fork boys (Le Bateau Ivre), Saturday, October 11, 2014 1:34 AM

Yes yes I am not sure I love ATOMOS but it is amazingly well written and executed, holy cow. I've listened to it ten times now and it's still surprising me with how well paced it is, subtle expansions from track to track, really impressed.

― fgti, Tuesday, November 18, 2014 5:21 AM

i've been listening to atomos quite a bit since it came out and i've been really enjoying it. the emotional space it accesses is a bit more ambiguous than the debut which could be a bit like a nonstop cascade of melancholy. i was also surprised to hear far less piano than on the debut, since that tends to be dustin o'halloran's thing, but the arrangements here are quite lovely. that it's not as melodically driven makes some of the subtle shifts in sonics seem much more profound and moving.

― dyl, Sunday, November 2, 2014 1:45 AM

Sorry again, the release year for that one is 2014.

someday I'm probably gonna get really into SOTL and related stuff but that day has not come yet

Two Adam Wiltzie projects in a row. Speaking of Dead Texan, the various Christina Vantzou solo albums are really lovely (and in fact sound very similar to A Winged Victory for the Sullen).

IDK what it is about A Winged Victory, or at least "ATOMOS," that makes it much more digestible to me than any mainline SOTL that I've heard. Maybe because it's just one disc?

I feel that “ambient house” as a subgenre/concept is critically at an all time low vs other strains of ambient.

Yeah I guess the exoticism is out of fashion these days. I bet Chill Out and Ultraworld place high though.

Dead Texan being canonized here is fantastic, it deserves a much bigger audience (goes for more here, but this one especially).

Great run.

I feel that “ambient house” as a subgenre/concept is critically at an all time low vs other strains of ambient.
How quickly things shift, only a couple of years ago stuff like Aquarian Foundation was getting quite a bit of attention and hype as recalling old ambient house.

Well, four or five years ago. But there was a moment where revival would have been embraced.

Think I might have watched The Dead Texan doing a live soundtrack thing to Waking Life?

45. Slowdive: Pygmalion (1995)
332 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/1spFFpC.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b07n8GST2LQ

Someone sent me a tape of Pygmalion three years ago, and I really liked it. The whole album is very good, but the first song, "Rutti", is mindbogglingly beautiful and an absolute masterpiece.

The experience of listening to that song for the first time is one I remember quite fondly: I was sitting in an electronic music studio in an empty mansion, late at night and in the middle of winter, and everything was dead quiet. I had just gotten the tape, and to be honest, wasn't expecting much (actually, what I was expecting turned out to be rather like Slowdive's earlier albums, which I heard soon after and didn't much like). So I was completely caught by surprise by what I heard: beautiful chords, hanging luminously in the air in the way that I thought that only Alan Sparhawk of Low could do. It was rich, understated, and utterly gorgeous. I won't bore you all with a play-by-play of my reaction to each new element in the song, but suffice it to say that I was continually amazed, especially when the shaker entered, about three or four minutes into the song, bringing the whole thing into time in the best possible way.

Whew!

― Phil, Wednesday, May 16, 2001 3:00 AM

Have to agree about Pygmalian, an absolute blinder, and just so typical of Alan McGee to drop an act just when they make a masterpiece! Their other albums I can take or leave to be honest, but I find them reasonably pleasant to fall to sleep to (and that's actually a compliment.)

― Chewshabadoo, Thursday, May 17, 2001 3:00 AM

classic for 'pygmalion' alone -- quintessential acid-comedown-during-the-sunrise music!

― geeta (geeta), Thursday, December 11, 2003 3:00 AM

I'm not sure about all this Mojave 3 business, but Souvlaki and Pygmalion (in that order) are utterly fantastic. Like being absolutely loaded with painkillers and wine and maybe some ecstasy (but you could never appreciate the music fully if you were actually on them all (at once, anyway)).

― Kevin Allen, Tuesday, May 16, 2006 6:33 AM Bookmark

Listening to this has left me completely baffled, as it sounds like... some kind of artsy folk rock? How does it fit into an ambient poll?

yeah it's basically adventurous shoegaze imo

sorry Tuomas I'm gonna have to write up a ticket here ;)

ya weirdos

44. Fripp & Eno: (No Pussyfooting) (1973)
337 points, 8 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/syJZeaz.jpg

(No Youtube for this one, sorry. It seems to have been completely blocked from YT, with no music from it available.)

I have been listening (not 24 hrs a day, mind you) to Fripp & Eno's "No Pussyfooting" and "Evening Star" for 20+ years now, and I still like them. A lot of the "progressive" things I was listening to at that time have not held up very well for me, but these recordings have. A friend once described them as too cerebral, but I find much of the material on these two albums quite moving. Eno's background electronic grid is not terribly exciting, but it serves its perhaps as a background for Fripp's playing. I like other Fripp things here and there, but I think this is some of the best work he's ever done on guitar. Anyone else agree? Disagree?

― DeRayMi, Monday, November 5, 2001 3:00

'no pussyfooting' sounds incredible backwards. wow.

― milton parker (Jon L), Saturday, October 22, 2005 7:54 AM

i also used to think "swastika girls" >>> "the heavenly music corperation" -- maybe i was just really into eno's vcs 3 noises in the background, but once i started really getting into fripp's guitar, and listening for the changes, and how he interacts with the tapes i think i've changed my mind, it's all about this big swirling dark build that resolves with those low sweeping notes at the end and somehow morphs into this really hopeful music, i dunno like a trip that starts out bad and uncontrollable but once you reign it in you start to chill and have the best time

i think "swastika girls" reveals its beauty more immediately so maybe that's why i connected it with it first. the recurring lead is so so gorgeous

― 不合作的方式 (r1o natsume), Tuesday, July 27, 2010 7:19 PM

I made a tape of Fripp & Eno's "No Pussyfooting" for the Palestinian who taught me about Arabic music, but he said he had to turn it off. Weird things started happening around his shop. He seemed to think that it was music that stirred up the jinn. I think he was being serious (though he sometimes said things just to pull my leg).

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, February 23, 2003 8:07 PM

Hey sorry everyone. I nominated Pygmalion. To me about 75% of it fits into what I would consider ambient. There was so much back and forth debate on the nomination thread about what is ambient, that finally I just put it down because I love it and would retract if anyone decided to veto. So, here we are. Still love it but I do agree that some of it does not fit.

It's okay, I don't want to sound overtly critical or genre-fascist. Obviously others thought it fits too, since they voted for it.

Love your snarky glosses, Tuomas (perhaps because I happen to agree with them almost systematically).

I adore Pygmalion but it's not ambient to the cop in me.

43. Eluvium Talk Amongst the Trees (2005)
340 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/zUHJhRF.jpg

Interesting to see this thread resurrected because on a whim I decided to try Talk Amongst The Trees again tonight. And I do think I've given it plenty of chances now to say I think it sags in the middle. Starts out good enough, but then something happens in the middle with this one song that gets far too repetitive with this sequence of guitar notes. And then it ends okay, but I WANT THE PIANO BACK from the FIRST ALBUM THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

― Bimble... (Bimble...), Monday, April 4, 2005 11:06 AM

And yeah, there is no piano on Talk Amongst The Trees, but -- while I like Cooper's piano playing, it contrasts with the textures that play along it on Lambient IMHO. I'm glad he got the piano facet out of his system all in one release, and subsequently ditched it altogether on the new one, as I'm clearly most in love with the latest one, now that it's nothing but gorgeous other-worldly textures from stop to finish, no lame spots (sorry, Bimble, must agree to disagree with you there.). The final piece "One" sounds like a completely flattened, droned chorus of Depeche's "Enjoy The Silence", which is kinda neat.. would make a great segue somewhere in a DJ set.

― donut debonair (donut), Tuesday, April 5, 2005 7:43 PM

Semi-melodic ambient stuff doesn't get much better than this.

― southern lights, Wednesday, April 6, 2005 3:40 AM

Silence if in bed, chill music if in a less sleep friendly environment. Pretty much programmed myself to fall asleep by track 4 of eluvium's talk amongst the trees, except in extreme cases of large italian man snoring like a dying rhino in the couchette.

― chad valley of the shadow of death (ledge), Thursday, August 4, 2016 3:39 PM

re: Slowdive I am also just kidding, couldn't resist (but yeah I didn't vote for it either, too much of a "full band" vibe for me)

never heard of Eluvium at all I don't think

42. Windy & Carl: Antarctica (The Bliss Out, Vol. 2) (1997)
341 points, 8 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/nMQjXxh.jpg?1

oddly enough windy and carl wake me up every morning - antartica's in stereo i use as a glorified cd alarm clock thing. well, nearly every morning - it's so ambient that sometimes i sleep through it.

― koogs, Thursday, November 7, 2002 2:42 PM

I have listened to three releases (Dream House/Dedications To Flea, Antarctica, and Depths), and I have to say I adore the quieter dronestuff (e.g. Antarctica and the first track on Dream House) as opposed to the noisy Fenneszish Depths (soz Ned).

― Où sont le Lord Custos d'antan? (Leee), Monday, April 16, 2012 1:34 AM

I’ve been listening to a shit tonne of W&C recently although to be fair that’s the norm as they are my go-to relaxing/sleep music. Lately I’ve been playing ‘Drawing of Sound’ a lot, it’s the one LP of theirs I don’t own a physical copy of and I’ve probably overlooked it as a consequence. Crazy thing is, it might be their best. I say that but I’d probably find W&C albums impossible to rank. One day I’ll swear by Antartica, the next Depths, and so on. Magnificently consistent band.

― Internet Alan, Tuesday, February 5, 2013 11:42 AM

This sounds much better than the other Windy & Carl album in the poll; I just personally can't stand the sound of heavy metal guitar.

Look like I should've voted for Antarctica!

Coming up next is one of the oldest albums in the poll. Probably controversial too?

41. Miles Davis: In a Silent Way (1969)
343 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/UsU28jp.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHesqaMhh34

In a Silent Way has also been occupying a LARGE amount of my listening lately.

There are some grooves on there that are just thick.

― Big Loud Mountain Ape (Big Loud Mountain Ape), Thursday, November 3, 2005 5:15 PM

The Complete Silent Way Sessions is amazing listening, not just for the extra music but for the insight --

The original take of 'Shhh/Peaceful' actually hinges upon an extended melodic phrase that sounds exactly like a Miles In The Sky era composition -- it's a fantastic melody they return to about every four minutes or so. The one bar riff (the descending two note bassline) is just a downtime noodle they stretch out on between that phrase.

Macero cuts the phrase out entirely, leaving just 14 minutes of the improvisation on that one bar riff. Then he takes one of Miles' improvised melodies over the riff, and repeats it at the very beginning and the very end so it becomes a motive that bookends the piece.

I always wondered how the musicians could stay so intensely, maniacly focused on such minimal material -- and the answer is, in the real life performance, they were building and charging towards a composed phrase which they'd refresh themselves with every four minutes before returning to the trance section. It must have taken balls for Macero to cut out the heart of the piece, but the result is nothing is the sound of musicians staying electrified on the most minimal materials imaginable, they would have arrived at either that structure or that magnified focused sound without the editing...

The original phrase they cut out, though -- it's prime Miles, totally beautiful

― milton parker (Jon L), Thursday, November 3, 2005 9:53 PM

Listened to In A Silent Way for the first time in ages today, using it, oddly, for background while writing (oddly, because I rarely write with music on at all). It was perfect. Something about that electronic hum in the background was both soothing and aided in concentration. I've always loved this record. And Jack Johnson, too. Johnson was the first Miles I really listened to, though I think I prefered it for McLaughlin at first. But now I hear something different and wonderful in it every time.

― moriarty (moriarty), Wednesday, November 9, 2005 7:00 AM

It's interesting that in both the Tim Buckley and Brian Eno biographies, both subjects got so obsessed with In A Silent Way that they listened to little else for a long period (nearly a year).

― Fastnbulbous, Wednesday, August 6, 2008 4:28 PM

wow @ teo:

Teo Macero: Miles would record his stuff, and then he’d just leave. He would sometimes say, ‘I like this or that,’ and then I’d say: ‘I’ll listen to it and I’ll put it together. If you like it, fine, if not, we’ll change it.’ So I was the one with the vision. Miles also had a vision, but he wasn’t really a composer, he didn’t compose in an organized way. It was happenstance. He played with these great musicians, and when they had played enough, I was able to cut out the stuff that wasn’t good, and piece something together from the rest. When we began editing In A Silent Way we had two huge stacks of 2” tape, 40-something reels in total. They were recorded over a longer period. It was one of the rare times Miles came to an editing session, because I’d told him, ‘This is a big job, you want to get your ass down here.’ So Miles said, ‘We’ll do it together.’ And we did. We cut things down to 8 ½ minutes on one LP side, and 9 ½ on the other, and then he said to me, “That’s my record.’ I said, ‘Go to hell!’ because it wasn’t enough music for an album. So I ended up creating repeats to make it longer. A lot of the stuff we cut was bullshit, and some of it is put out on this new boxed set. I raised hell at Columbia the other day and told them it was ridiculous they’re putting this bullshit out.

― festival culture (Jordan), Tuesday, February 18, 2014 10:50 PM

That's the final entry for today, will continue tomorrow.

ouch, pygmalion and in a silent way

*sounds of approaching ambient fascist police get louder*

I've fallen asleep to IASW more than once, didn't vote for it but these lower-40's placing seem right

IaSW is by far my favourite Miles Davis album, and even though it obviously has had a big influence on ambient and minimal electronic music (with people like Namlook and Pole having made records that are clearly following its example), I didn't feel justified voting for it here. In a jazz poll it would easily make it into my top 10, though.

The extended Laswell re-edit of IASW is also great, shame that ppl seem to ignore it, I suspect they confuse it with the terrible remix record that came out at the same time.

Oh, I didn't know about an extended edit, what's it called?

What Tuomas said = basically my thoughts. Top 3 all time album for me but don’t consider it ambient.. it is certainly mighty chill. The ultimate early morning album

XP - Here 'tis

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

as an aside, I’m kinda surprised no one nominated that lee gamble diversions thing

I'm going to upset some people but while I don't really care to argue whether Pygmalion is ambient, I will honestly say that I just don't get Slowdive. And I loooooooove Low, Bedhead, Duster, and other stuff that sometimes gets lumped with them.

(Multiple xposts) Yeah it didn't feel right voting for In a Silent Way even though it's one of my favourite albums of all time. I don't mind that it showed up though.

agree with you there, Gavin.

also i am listening to the U SMILE version *very loud* right now and it is everything

way way xpost up there—Richard Skelton where have you been all my life?!

I KNOW

his newer stuff is really good, too, but way different!!

Is there a Spotify playlist for the top 100?

― Shoegazi (Leee), Thursday, June 27, 2019 1:33 PM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't have a Spotify account, but obviously anyone else is free to compile such a list.

― Tuomas, Thursday, June 27, 2019 1:35 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3xzEpOLwQ9j1dObjUTIgQo?si=dNzrHSJ2R5Kz_ZmyJoqj1A

A few things are not on Spotify (at least in the USA) but most of them are here ... I'll update this as the rollout progresses.

nice, thank you!

yesss

This sounds much better than the other Windy & Carl album in the poll; I just personally can't stand the sound of heavy metal guitar.

― Tuomas, Thursday, June 27, 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What Windy & Carl album includes heavy metal guitar?? If you like Antarctica you should like every single W&C album.

Depths (the other one in the poll) begins with a distorted sort of squall, right? Is it that sort of "doom drone" sound that you dislike, Tuomas? I'm personally a fan, but can see how someone could be turned off by that type of sound... I do think that the rest of that album is intensely beautiful and that the beginning isn't necessarily indicative of its remainder.

I guess it's safe to say that you didn't vote for any Sunn 0))) albums, then ;-)

Yeah maybe they use distortion here and there but that’s not at all indicative of their records.

I always wanted to love Flying Saucer Attack but their guitar tone gave me headaches.

aww I love that shit but it's way too rockin to be ambient aside from isolated tracks

Depths (the other one in the poll) begins with a distorted sort of squall, right? Is it that sort of "doom drone" sound that you dislike, Tuomas?

speaking of amazing bill laswell re-edits / re-mixes of classic (spiritual) jazz, this whole thing is worth checking out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkffKy_7v3A

also re: henry flynt, i wanted to share this recording, also from '81 and also featuring c.c. hennix on tamboura:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnma2Q2QHGI

and also xp yes the "back porch hillbilly blues" records are amazing !!

lastly there is this radio broadcast from '13 that is arguably the most brilliant thing HF has ever done and especially recommended if you like tape loops / weirdo electronic experiments with violin samples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LstLpd_iVWA&t

^ last link gets really wild around 5m, apparently these are recordings from the '70s ? woweee

also "in a silent way" isn't an ambient record what in heaven's name is going on here

Nothing much. Just the rampant lawlessness that ensues whenever the polis's social contract is breached.

Several albums in this poll so far haven't been ambient by a strict definition. I guess IaSW got grandfathered in because it was so influential to the development of ambient.

40. Harmonia & Eno '76: Tracks and Traces (1997, reissued in 2009 with extra tracks)
360 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/cBo8SQS.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dVvUogQVtM

I heard a track from the Harmonia/Eno '76 album yesterday. Beautiful stuff. I never knew a Harmonia/Eno record existed!

― i;m thinking about thos Beans (Michael B), 12. huhtikuuta 2016 17:34

the harmonia+eno tapes were home recordings/demos/jams never meant for release and shouldn't be judged by the same standards, although they are also completely beautiful in their own right.

― (Jon L), 4. marraskuuta 2003 10:24

Three minutes into the reissue - gorgeous. The first two tracks are an awesome addition/introduction to the 'ambient schaffel" of "Vamos Companeros" and from there on it's, well, terrific textures, really. I only had a low bitrate rip (that I listen to at work a lot), this is a massive improvement. Great work from Groenland records on the packaging, as usual.

― willem, 21. syyskuuta 2009 21:54

it's a shame harmonia 76 doesn't get more accolades. i think the recent tracks and traces reissue w/ the extra trax is my favourite harmonia overall. parts of it are so dark and weird, but it still has that delicate, melodic roedelius touch here and there

deluxe is waking up sunday morning music, musik von is like a druggy early morning after party, live 1974 is hypnotic; but none have that perfect late night wooziness like harmonia 76

i love the setup as well -- eno, cluster and michael rother in a farmhouse just jamming out every day and pressing record. such an inspiration

― that habit kick man (r1o natsume), 8. elokuuta 2010 23:59

reissue is so good

can't believe these three tracks were left off the first time

other tracks completely remastered, much clearer / less fuzzy, sounds less like demo fidelity. though the appeal of this album is still that the playing is on the casual side. the long sprawling drone tracks are still my favorites.

packaging much better this time around. ilife's liner notes are a bit on the precious pie side but they're not boring and I'm right there with him when it comes to getting sentimental over just about everything every single one of these musicians recorded around this time

all day listening

― Milton Parker, 11. lokakuuta 2009 3:19

39. Vangelis Papathanassiou: L'apocalypse des animaux (1973)
360 points, 7 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/CJN1sAb.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGZp3KweVtA

L'Apocalypse is maybe one of the most beautiful albums ever, it's totally flooring from start to finish.

― frogbs, 6. tammikuuta 2014 19:41

he seldom lets himself go longform cosmic, side 2 of l'apocalypse, beauborg, invisible connections, but when the unmoving camera's tightly focused on an opened spine for hours, you've got the license for some deep musical thinking

― Milton Parker, 5. joulukuuta 2013 2:53

L'apocalypse des Animaux has some really compelling atmospheres, for sure — "Création du Monde" sounds familiar as hell. I think it would be particularly disturbing for those who find Apollo to be Eno at his most innovative — I don't, so it isn't.

― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), 15. syyskuuta 2005 16:19

I'll never forgive Vangelis for ruining my best pair of jeans. Perfect fitting vintage 517s. Intro to L'Apocalypse Des Animaux took hold of me and inspired me to do this kind of cosmic hillbilly dance, like something from that all-primates production of SEven Brides for Seven Brothers. I dropped into a squat and RIIIIP! You don't just find vintage 517s like that every day, Papathanassiou!

― andrew m., 10. tammikuuta 2014 22:20

Looks like anytime I'm searching for quotes for any of these albums, there is a thoughtful Milton Parker/Jon L post available. So thanks, Jon, for writing all those things here throughout the years.

As a sidenote, anyone care to share what their favourite ambient(ish) ECM releases might be?

Gee, that Vangelis excerpt sounds exactly like a thing I should already be acquainted with!

I didn't put Apocalypse des Animaux high on my ballot, but it wasn't possible to leave off an album that has Creation du Monde on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0QQJfPi3ps

Vangelis is one of those on again/off again sorta artists for me but there are a lot of moments in his catalogue that make me want to cry. a lot of them are on this album

38. Susumu Yokota: Sakura (1999)
362 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/Ribu7sY.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Ribu7sY.jpg

sakura > all albums ever, except maybe 4 or 5 really great ones.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Tuesday, April 13, 2004 1:45 AM

We're playing Sakura by Susumu Yokota in the office this morning, and whilst Billy & I both love it, Julie (who's 15 years or so older than us and an punk/Velvets/Hendrix/Joni Mitchell/Janis Joplin fan) hates it and can't see the attraction in it at all. She says "computers and music don't go together- 'electronic music' is an oxymoron to me". She says she cannot hear any melody in it nor understand why anyone else would enjoy it.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, July 24, 2003 1:00 PM

this record is so amazing! when i got it, i must've listened to it 20 times in a row. i did an ilm search on it not too long ago, but didn't find anything. the aural equivalent of a wong kar wai film.

― prada robot (disco stu), Wednesday, April 13, 2005 6:06 AM

Sakura came out when I was 19 or so, and it blew me away. One of my favorite ambient albums still. Grinning cat is also excellent. Can vouch for Image, Triple time dance, and symbol too. I never really connected with his houser stuff but "on and on" and "re: disco" were super addicting tracks for me.

― Michael F Gill, Wednesday, July 15, 2015 2:06 AM

Ah, sorry, here is the Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jicNeV2ftY

never heard of this either, cool cover

I'm a bigger fan of Yokota's '90s house and techno records than his later downtempo ones, but admittedly Sakura is the best one of the latter bunch, a beautiful and sublime album. RIP.

37. Tim Hecker: Harmony in Ultraviolet (2006)
364 points, 8 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/jkygXAK.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qse2KT65ZcE

Nothing beats Harmony In Ultraviolet for me.

― Evan, Tuesday, August 26, 2014 9:18 PM

Tim Hecker's Harmony In Ultraviolet was pretty high up my 2006 favourites. Superbly melding drone, discordant noise, and ambient atmospherics against a lush electronica, this was a big leap on from previous Hecker outings. Listen loud, listen passive.

― Mister Craig, Wednesday, May 2, 2007 11:50 PM

Harmony in Ultraviolet was always my favorite and I could never fall in love with his other albums in the same way however much I wanted to.

― Evan, Tuesday, April 12, 2016 6:47 PM

I def don't "get" Hecker at all

I finally connected with Hecker when I decided he was a noise artist whose records need to be played at extremely high volume, rather than an ambient artist with interesting textures.

The run from Harmony in Ultraviolet to Virgins is pretty outstanding.

I finally connected with Hecker when I decided he was a noise artist whose records need to be played at extremely high volume, rather than an ambient artist with interesting textures.

Yeah, I went to a “sound bath” event one time (they have these all the time here now?) and was sort of underwhelmed. But I went to an incredibly loud Tim Hecker show and it was just perfect, full brain rinse.

36. Tangerine Dream: Zeit (1972)
367 points, 7 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/6X7bRzb.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjvF36gzLF8

I sort of got the same feeling listening to this that I do when watching "2001: A Space Odyssey" in that it was just made in a different era and that this kind of music could never really be done today. Newer droney bands like GYBE usually have a lot more going on than this. Was a different time back then when it was okay to just space out in front of your record player for an hour+ at a time.

― frogbs, Wednesday, June 15, 2011 12:01 AM

I wonder if it's possible to make a record that sounds like this without smoking lots and lots of weed.

― Bass Solo (Matt #2), Wednesday, June 15, 2011 12:12 AM

Listening to this album on headphones all the way through in the dark feels like going on a journey into outer space. Top that.

― Garyln (La Lechera), Wednesday, June 15, 2011 1:34 AM

Classic classic classic, an album to lose yourself in, deep dark immersive droney goodness.

― phuturephase, Sunday, January 15, 2012 4:23 PM

they really pull off this marvelous sense of fluctuating otherness

like, you're not enveloped, you're not having a cinematic experience, you're not JUST 'going on a journey', the record doesn't take over your space and you don't always enter into its space, but you intermittently seem to encounter it as a thing in its own right

― j., Saturday, May 2, 2015 6:21 AM Bookmark

To me, Zeit feels like the first "proper" ambient album, aesthetically, moreso than any of their later, more electronic records. I mean, both in form and function it isn't really different from most droney space/dark ambient that's been released 20 or 40 years later.

And it still sounds awesome 47 years after it's release.

agree, great one

35. The Caretaker: An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2011)
373 points, 7 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/Fi52yfi.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL998ajnjN4

Oh man oh man oh mannnn....

Just got back from a long city hall meeting for work... I was ballroom-minded all night, art-deco twinkling in the chandeliers, grainy landscape photos on the wall, cuddly static noise and crackles over the PA driving the voices to the background and the crackling and pops to the fore... and I come home and there it is! There it fucking is. The digital subscription delivers the new Caretaker album!

Oh man... A night to remember... I'm busting! I feel like a schoolboy being floored by a crush.

― ...wow! (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, May 20, 2011 12:20 AM

Been hammering An Empty Bliss Beyond this World recently...what a perfect, heartbreaking, sentimental record that is. Sounds so...English?

― the Shearer of simulated snowsex etc. (Dwight Yorke), Friday, March 1, 2013 1:23 AM

I love the Disintegration Loops to death but The Caretaker stuff is a lot more specifically 'about' various forms of memory degradation not 'cultural memory' - as the MP3 collection Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia in 2005 and tracks such as Von Restorff Effect, Unmasking Alzheimer's and Libet's Delay suggest.

― Doran, Wednesday, September 28, 2016 9:37 PM

Like you, memory and all it entails, especially its shortcomings (loss, false memories, how they are stored and wired neurologically, memory conditions) is probably my biggest "hobby", field of interest outside of what I do for a living. Out of mere fascination. It was like that already well before I got to know The Caretaker. He is undoubtedly one of my all time favorite artists, for a lot of reasons, but the shared fascination of memory obviously a big one too. Your questions and reservations deserve to be looked at more closely. I'll give it a first try.

Caretaker's focus on memory's flaws and rare conditions started out way earlier than his HAFTW records. I feel this needs to be pointed out. The massive 80 track collection 'Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia' seems to have been his starting point of making music with the idea of memory malfunction and amnesia disorders behind it, conceptually. I was, and still am, deeply struck by the sheer power of that monumental release. And sonically I'd say it approaches Alzheimer's more truthfully than anything else he's done after that. For Alzheimer's isn't a romantic thing slowly and merrily sailingthe person suffering from it into a place where reality and dreams merge into something in between those states indefinitely. It's harsh, it's full of sadness and tears, frustration and utter helplessness (loneliness) for someone who half realizes he is going down that road but is unable to take a turn. I've seen the demise in my grandfather, and it was heart shattering. TPAA sonically is in many ways unforgiving, relentless, blurry, confusing and chaotic. Which is why it struck me as 'truthful' in a way (despite from being beautiful music).

― the tightening is plateauing (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, October 7, 2016 8:23 PM

Oh man... A night to remember... I'm busting! I feel like a schoolboy being floored by a crush.

― ...wow! (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, May 20, 2011 12:20 AM

This sounds nice enough, but kind of a one trick pony, doing some ambient filtering and editing to pre-1950s pop music, and that's it? And this guy has done like 20 albums of that? Or do the other albums sound different?

lol my thoughts exactly, but ppl love this stuff so hey I'm glad they get something out of it

I didn't mean to sound too critical, it does sound pretty cool to me, but can't imagine wanting to own more than album of this kind of stuff.

34. Éliane Radigue: Trilogie de la mort (1998)
378 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/qystSMr.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMfGLNrLvGA&t=308s

trilogie de la mort, and e=a=b=a+b, seem opposite ends of the scale?

i like trilogie, but i only really ever listen to the final track, koume, which is very rich sounding.

― charltonlido (gareth), Saturday, April 15, 2006 11:44 PM

listened to Jetsun Mila last weekend on headphones while hiking the Pacific coast. that & L’île re-sonante are the ones I listen to most often the last two years -- all of Trilogie d'la Mort is almost too heavy to casually throw on.

― Milton Parker, Thursday, March 12, 2009 1:12 AM

loved this bit from that interview:

I ’ve been working alone
for so much of my life. My only assistant
has been my cat .
I would always know something was wrong
when she made a face , but when she was
very quiet I’d just carry on .

― original bgm, Saturday, October 8, 2011 11:51 PM

trilogie d'la mort on has been on repeat for the past two weeks while i read / sleep / do yoga etc

― until the next, delayed, glaciation (map), Friday, September 9, 2016 5:14 AM

and sit and eat chocolate and nuts like i'm doing right now.

― until the next, delayed, glaciation (map), Friday, September 9, 2016 5:17 AM

Sorry, I dunno why that Youtube isn't working, let's try another one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnbGirPTgF0

what is with all the heavy noise

starting to think a lot of my personal favorites in my top ten won't make it

can't imagine wanting to own more than album of this kind of stuff.

reminds me of a gentle dig at Edward Ka-Spel/Legendary Pink Dots that I read years ago I think in Bananafish magazine "no one can ever accuse Edward Ka-Spel of glossing over ideas" - obviously there are still artists like that where I get obsessed and don't care and *do* end up with like 20 albums that are fairly similar

This one is one of my absolute favourites, so I'm glad it made it this high. To me, Radigue's drone music and Trilogie de la mort especially are the most extreme example of stripping music to its absolute minimum while still retaining its emotional core. On the surface the tones seem static but once you start listening more carefully, they soon create an vertigo effect of continously sinking/ascending deeper/higher with no firmament in sight. You can sense all the spiritual searching mournfulness, and transendence that comes with an extended piece composed in the memory of one's dead son.

wow, that caretaker album is amazing. reminds me of one of my own favorites, Vangelis' May '68 album (which he called a symphonic poem)... sorta meta-evocation of place, in that it evokes both the place and the imperfections of the act of recalling it, a sort of narrative seasickness that is pleasant like opiates or a rollercoaster.

damn, good post - that def gets at what I've seen others say about why they like it so much

I finally connected with Hecker when I decided he was a noise artist whose records need to be played at extremely high volume, rather than an ambient artist with interesting textures.

his current live show (which i have never seen) features tons of fog. like so much fog you can't even see other people in the room. that, combined with what i assume to be very loud volumes, would be an excellent way to experience his music

When I tripped over an amp and broke my leg in three places, I finally got it.

(Hecker is great.)

I saw him play in Marfa back in April, with the Konoyo ensemble... there were indeed a ton of fog machines, although the performance space was a cavernous warehouse with a lot of windows in the middle of the day, so that aspect probably didn't work. Sounded like standing next to the tracks while a freight train went by though.

this is an interesting poll, in that you can tell many people are refraining from voting from deeply loved all time favorites simply because of their personal definitions of ambient. I didn't vote for IASW or the Radigue or the Conrad or the Palestine yet I'm still relieved to see them here (simultaneously sad Radigue didn't place higher, she is an all time favorite but I'm like a cat picked up by the back of its neck thirty seconds in to any of her pieces, even when they're playing quietly, can't check e-mail can't drive a car can't sleep)

>So thanks, Jon, for writing all those things here throughout the years

ILILM

Just wanted to say thank you for this thread, I have quite a few things on the list so far but have been on the lookout for ambient music recommendations recently.

Unfortunately I need to sleep and can't post any more entries today, and I'll be busy for the rest of the weekend... But I'll continue the countdown on Monday and will finish it on Tuesday. Sorry about the delay.

This sounds nice enough, but kind of a one trick pony, doing some ambient filtering and editing to pre-1950s pop music, and that's it? And this guy has done like 20 albums of that? Or do the other albums sound different?

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

semi-related:

How Ambient Chill Became the New Silence

Hecker is a noise artist, it’s just pretty and cinematic and has harmonies and stuff

starting to think a lot of my personal favorites in my top ten won't make it

Finally catching up with the list:

[*] Ballasted Orchestra = YES. Why can't all SOTL sound like this?
[*] Liumin = if Basic Channel kept releasing stuff like "Phylyps Trak II/II" = YES.

finally listened to Strumming Music, well there's another CD I gotta buy (ordered the Behrman CD today, LP is more readily available but splits the track, also not on Spotify fwiw).

Can anybody recommend stuff that sounds like Robert Turman’s Flux?
― brimstead, Friday, June 28, 2019 7:05 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes but ahh will post on the morn post drunk haze love y’all

<3 <3

Hanging with Charlemagne Palestine today at his studio in Brussels. Charlemagne rules!! ❤️ #bearmitzvah pic.twitter.com/xIElzzWX3m

— Oren Ambarchi (@orenambarchi) June 27, 2019

Zeit is amazingly cold and deep. Along with Alpha Centauri and Atem, what a supreme trilogy of dark deep synth fantasias

Charlemagne is the shit. Schlongo!daluvdrone is my fav of what I’ve heard. It’s weird cause he has stuff that’s much closer to ambient than strumming music ok ok I’ll stop

the ambient poll went in unexpected directions and that is very very cool

This sounds nice enough, but kind of a one trick pony, doing some ambient filtering and editing to pre-1950s pop music, and that's it? And this guy has done like 20 albums of that? Or do the other albums sound different?

As someone who owns a couple dozen Alio Die CDs... slight variation on a theme is absolutely great if it scratches an itch.

^^ yeah Muslimgauze was exactly who I was thinking of with my post upthread, I still have dozens even after selling a bunch off

loving this radigue btw. la mort la merrier if you ask me :)

we call for devotion to subtle variation in the age of aleatory and non-persistent listening

list-dependent pissing is not an ameliorative clarification of such dull swales of emotion

I didn't mean to sound too critical, it does sound pretty cool to me, but can't imagine wanting to own more than album of this kind of stuff.

― Tuomas

I don’t disagree, but that album is AEBBTW.

The Caretaker stuff just isn't my bag— like I get why people are into it, it just doesn't "scratch the itch" as f.hazel said a bit upthread.

Now Richard Skelton? That's where my itch gets scratched.

Turns out I have some extra time tonight, so I'll post a few entries more...

woot!

33. Fripp & Eno: Evening Star (1975)
380 points, 8 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/oHfGxvI.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW85KrKEphY

Side Two of Evening Star - An Index Of Metals - is one of the scariest songs I have ever heard.

― Damian, Tuesday, November 6, 2001 3:00 AM

I love Evening Star. Mixing that w/ some Windy & Carl is fuzzy drone heaven. Classic.

― Mark, Thursday, November 8, 2001 3:00 AM

Evening Star is such a better ambient record than Another Green World and yet the latter is the one that gets all the praise. Idiots.

― Mr. Snrub, Tuesday, October 14, 2008 7:42 AM

I've only heard Evening Star, but I love it. It's equally appreciable as background or for a close listen, and it has the one qualifier I've come to need from ambient music. I can't stand these constant 'round' synth tones, I don't know how to describe it, they're not bells exactly, but they're very cool and they turn me off everytime I listen. This has the kind of hiss I like, and of course the loops are cool too.

Index of Metals is my favorite track because it closely matches my favorite sound, the fireplace floo in the morning as it's wearing down. I used to sleep beside it before the bus on winter mornings, on the cold stone hearth, with that slowly modulating whistle, and it's just ingrained in my psyche as the most pleasant, wonderful sound.

― trashthumb, Saturday, October 20, 2007 8:27 PM

Never heard this one before either, but I'm on track two ("Evening Star"), and it sounds pretty nice. Not keen on guitar noodling in general, but this is all soft and mellow, and I love the peaceful synth washes.

it's OK, but it's no "No Pussyfooting". the side with the short tracks is kind of pointless iirc, at least one is just "Discreet Music" with guitar noodles added

Following on from Evening Star, it's a shame only 50% of Gone to Earth by David Sylvian is ambient, sides 3 and 4 are absolutely classic, especially if you love a nice low-key Robert Fripp:

https://youtu.be/tbJTOcdoRPU?t=3255

(that link should start at 54:15, which is the beginning of side three)

ps it's a pretty good Powell/Pressburger movie too

(oh yeah, Bill Nelson on guitar too)

Coming up next is the highest-rated multi-artist compilation in this poll.

Only one in the Top 100, no?

My favorite Fripp and Eno is the Air Structures 2lp boot, all of which (i think) is on here.

yeah that thing is awesome

I wondered when Pure Moods was going to show up!

32. Various Artists: I Am the Center - Private Issue New Age Music in America, 1950–1990 (2013)
382 points, 8 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/ezzuWNA.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AADFqc84LEg

This might be comp of the year in terms of overall presentation/tie-in with current underground trends/sheer quality of content over such a long running time. It's really addictive, all I've been playing since the beautiful vinyl landed last week.

― Badmotorfinger Debate Club (MFB), Sunday, November 10, 2013 11:08 PM

love this comp. I was worried it just wouldn't work; it can be a challenge to make a compilation of immersive ambient music that still flows well, especially when so many of the pieces are so iconoclastic / strange. but this is just great. even in the cases of the artists I'd heard of, they pick tracks that are obscure but still very representative (best example -- I love Don Slepian's process music work with the Alles synthesizer more than his live keyboard & flute music, so 'Sea Of Bliss' is a hallmark new age record for me, but I did not know about his other all-Alles cassette only album 'Open Spaces' -- http://www.discogs.com/Don-Slepian-Open-Spaces/release/556677)

the weekly music from the hearts of space show changed tack pretty dramatically in the late 80's as new age evolved, this compilation captures just how truly weird that show sounded to me in the early to mid-80's when I occasionally caught it on KPFA on sunday nights while trying desperately to do all the homework I'd put off all weekend. captures it a lot better than the HoS CD compilations & syndicated shows that came out later.

― Milton Parker, Monday, November 11, 2013 9:30 PM

bought the 'i am the center' comp on vinyl, would have paid twice as much for how good it is. really intrigued by constance demby, her cut on the comp is incredible. as is everything else, tbh. been a steven halpern head for some time already.

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, November 20, 2013 9:11 PM

Seriously though, I'm not sure I've played a single compilation this much since, err, DGC Rarities. Aside from maybe one or two tracks, this thing is perfect for pretty much every mood. Maybe I'm just getting mellow?

― Jimmywine Dyspeptic, Monday, December 9, 2013 7:27 AM

I remember the hype when that comp came out, but I felt I had enough new age music in my life already, so I didn't have any need to get it. Maybe I'll do one day.

great album, Douglas knocked it out of the park as the compiler, just perfect choices all around

32. David Hykes & The Harmonic Choir Hearing Solar Winds (1983)
386 points, 5 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/bjBCqxM.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVfnWJm1nyE

I believe David Hykes' website has some info on his version of overtone chanting, mostly how it will bring about world peace and such.

― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, January 8, 2003 10:26 PM

the David Hykes record to die for: 'Hearing Solar Winds'. all overtone chorus moving slowly, one unbroken long movement that takes the time it needs.

― (Jon L), Wednesday, November 5, 2003 3:08 AM

i love it. i don't know how you would classify them. just your average trippy choir making strange mouth sounds and recorded in a cave somewhere. but beautiful! and mind-altering.

― scott seward, Wednesday, November 5, 2003 3:49 AM

I think my single favourite album of the 80s is David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir - Hearing Solar Winds. Seriously, one of the most beautiful albums I've ever heard. A whole choir of master overtone singers (able to sing melodies in overtones, hold fundamentals and change overtones, hold overtones and change fundamentals, etc.) singing in a resonant cathedral. Just some spectacular drones and sonics. Enveloping. Can feel like you're floating.

― sund4r (sund4r), Monday, August 29, 2005 8:19 PM

I was not aware of David Hykes at all when I started compiling the results for this thread, but as soon as I listened to that album online, I immediately bought a copy of it. It sounds amazing!

Whoops, sorry, that album is 31., not 32., obviously.

that one's a monster

https://www.discogs.com/Harmonic-Choir-David-Hykes-Hearing-Solar-Winds-Alight-Special-25th-Anniversary-Remastered-Edition/release/5010897

^^ you want to hear the original first, but if you've listened to that more than 30 times, this is a very interesting remaster which drastically alters the high end and condenses the composition by a good 5-8 minutes.

30. Bohren & Der Club of Gore: Black Earth (2002)
395 points, 8 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/6DepF4P.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvnROH91GLk

One of my favorite groups of recent years, sinister, bleak, doomy jazz music, absolutely fantastic.

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, May 30, 2005 4:51 AM

whenever I'm listening to Black Earth I'm convinced they're the best band in the world

― Simon H., Sunday, May 13, 2018 8:58 PM

By far the heaviest "quiet metal" CDs I have are the last two by Bohren & der Club of Gore. Black Earth is massive doom metal disguised as a jazz trio.

― a. begrand (a begrand), Friday, January 26, 2007 8:47 PM

The most Lynchian stuff I've ever heard that hasn't actually been used on one of his soundtracks (yet) is that album Black Earth by Bohren and Der Club of Gore (Ipecac).

― Nate Carson, Sunday, April 6, 2008 2:21 AM

hearing solar winds was my #2!

i did a quick 30 second skim of the 'alight' version and yeah, that's waaay different! i'll give it more of a listen this afternoon

Hearing Solar Winds was def high up on my ballot. Amazing stuff

29. Autechre: NTS Session 4 (2018)
398 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/f6Pauwo.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVjlmLmAi2w

it is trippy as hell. want to say it exudes a cosmic darkness lol.

― macropuente (map), Sunday, December 9, 2018 2:46 AM

music like “all end” is not something I’ve ever quite heard before. I know most people don’t relate to drones or ‘unchanging' music, but being carried into a trance by this kind of music is really underrated imo

― Dan S, Sunday, December 9, 2018 3:03 AM Bookmark

i wouldn't say all end is unchanging - it feels like a static, shimmering cloud, with a rapidly shifting intensity... or there's a weird limiting effect, similar to the outro of nodezsh. it bears a superficial resemblance to instances of Tim Hecker's music on Virgins and/or Ravedeath, in its 'bright' density of glassy-textured sound spectra. kevin drumm's drone stuff (on Imperial Distortion) feels heavier, and less stacked somehow, with deeper or more involving movement and tangible mass.

― braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n), Sunday, December 9, 2018 9:17 AM

I adore every track on this set, especially mirrage and column thirteen (the latter being gorgeously accessible and trance like ambient, cosmic electro), and on the surface either one of these could be my pick, but all end has taken me to a space few, if any, other songs have. Maybe Laraaji's Sung Gong or some local sound mediation performances using gongs and delay/reverb effects in San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, but that's about it. Sound mediation at its finest, but more alien and abstract. It's incredible. The way the underlying tones pulse and mutate underneath the unrelenting granular chord that dominates the mix creates this visceral organic texture in my mind visually. Very easy to get lost in it and to lose your sense of self. It is kind of a more digestible expression of the constant, hypnotic chaos at the end of Lentic Catachresis. The vinyl release splits it into 3 sections, about 20 minutes a side. It's a really great way to take in all end as a smaller and more casually digestible composition (definitely recommend part 3 for this). I consider it a capstone track to their very large and very brilliant oeuvre.

― octobeard, Monday, December 10, 2018 7:01 AM

I'm 3/4 of the way through "all end" now and it's like a combination of some kind of pink-cloud ambient music, Aine O'Dwyer's church organ improvisations, and the beginning of Godflesh's "Love, Hate (Slugbaiting)." This whole set is amazing, but this one piece - which I'm assuming will get its own CD when the physical version arrives - is the kind of thing you want to turn up to window-rattling volume and just live in for an hour.

― grawlix (unperson), Sunday, April 29, 2018 9:37 PM

I tried to listen to "All End", but it feels like they've just brought their unmistakable wonky engineers' touch to drone music. If I want to get into mood like this I'd much rather play France Jobin or something, not these guys... But I guess I've never been impressed by any Autechre music that I've heard, except for a couple of their early '90s techno tunes.

28. Gas: Zauberberg (1997)
401 points, 7 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/AkXsGRQ.jpg?1

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

It's the third track on Zauberberg that really gets me. This album somehow manages to both creep me out and pacify me at the same time.

Also, the only way to suitably describe the last track is heavenly.

― lou, Wednesday, January 16, 2008 3:00 PM

yea zauberberg is really bizarre, isn't it? you have the first and last tracks which are completely gorgeous - yea, heavenly, the third track (which is one of my favorite Gas tracks) which kind of envelopes you in this really calm way, but all the other tracks are downright creepy.

― Mark Clemente, Wednesday, January 16, 2008 4:29 PM

track 3 on zauberberg is astonishing, i used to listen to that on loop for hours

― marcos, Tuesday, May 13, 2014 5:43 PM

This question was inspired by 5 listens in the last 24 hours to the first track from Gas' _Zauberberg_. Not far from Christian music tradition, w/ deep organ drones that go on forever. But tweaked enough to get me inside and kneeling at a pew.

― Mark, Saturday, August 18, 2001 3:00 AM

now we're talking

This is actually the one among the original four Gas albums to which I return the least. The first one has its own cosmic and steamy vibe, which I love, and the string miasma approach he started on this record I feel he perfected on Königsforst (which remains my favourite of all six Gas albums). But Zauberberg is still good too!

That's all for today, I'll return to the countdown on Monday.

thanks for the bonus!

Really glad that Black Earth placed. I'd heard of but never heard Bohren & der Club of Gore before this poll, and now I am fully obsessed, particularly with that record.

Speaking of really doom-laden ambient, I wish I'd remembered to nominate David Terry's "Sorrow," which is very unlike his group Bong in that guitars seem totally absent. Instead, it's just heavy bass drones, minor-key piano loops, weird chanting, and sustained synths. On a somewhat long drive yesterday, the track below came on, and I *almost* had to change it about 30 minutes in because it was starting to seriously freak me the fuck out. The low end is really something on it, too, so play through good speakers.

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

Midnight Radio is my favorite Bohren

Zauberberg is so huge, I remember first discovering Gas in 10th grade and just being like so thankful that it existed. That music means a lot to me!!!

the vastness... first album I listened to when I bought an iPod in 2002/2003

this poll rules... thanks yall

I decided against submitting a ballot on the basis I didn't know enough True and Pure ambient but looks like that was silly of me

Haha. I'm feeling more like this with every passing selection.

Just wanted to chime in and share that I recently visited Cologne, Germany and hiked through Konigsforst while listening to GAS. I was not on LSD, however, so the experience was not 100% authentic.

The results so far lead me to think there are some very large but non-overlapping ambient fandoms.

have been interested in GAS for a long time, to me the most recent albums, narkopop and rausch are the best

Oh, that's interesting, I don't think I've ever heard anyone prefer the new albums to the old ones... What makes you feel that way?

Sorry I didn't end up voting. Last few weeks were really hectic and it felt like I would have to think and listen a lot to do it right. Good to see albums I love on here. I should really listen to Hykes again.

I also prefer the newer albums, I think there's a level of refinement to them that feels more like a culmination of a style and expression than the earlier records.

loving this radigue btw. la mort la merrier if you ask me :)

― budo jeru, Friday, June 28, 2019 11:28 PM (two days ago)

otm

27. The Future Sound Of London: Lifeforms (1994)
406 points, 8 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/wf6kw4N.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCUN46Rb3Q4

God, this brings it back. Too many earnest late night conversations on this new-fangled thing called ~the internet~ with boys who made me Loop Guru mixtapes and talked about Freemasonry and the secret meaning of Babylon5. Oh god, the mid 90s, did they really happen.

― I want to smother him in electronic butter. (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Thursday, July 26, 2012 1:41 PM

future sound of london's "lifeforms". disc 1 is the most indescribably beautiful piece of musical lushness evah. disc 2 is OK.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), 28. elokuuta 2003 0:58

FSOL do sound a bit dated, but it's dated to a time and place musically that I happen to be really very fond of so I'm not going to complain.

― 3-D Whinge-ometer (Masonic Boom), Tuesday, May 11, 2010 12:28 PM

But I will rep for Lifeforms some more. In addition to being playful, it also very much has the feeling of happening in a city, or some place full of people, and that makes it delightful to me... I get this same thrill from the KLF's Chill Out. Although like WCC, I usually want my ambient albums to knock me out of time and space, or take me to some natural landscape bereft of people... but Lifeforms doesn't do that and still works.

― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), 26. heinäkuuta 2012 19:27

26. Hiroshi Yoshimura: Music for Nine Post Cards (1982)
410 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/rAXfH2M.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyY7NU4cbtY

Yoshimura started work on Music For Nine Post Cards in an unassuming manner. He stared out the window and played the piano, attempting to mirror what he saw in short, one-measure phrases. While at work on this project, he visited the Hara Museum Of Contemporary Art, in the Shinagawa ward of Tokyo. Inspired by the clean, white minimalism of the museum's architecture as well as the trees that rustled in the courtyard, he envisaged the nine pieces as environmental music for Hara, an offer its administrators accepted. It was only after visitors frequently asked how to acquire the music playing throughout the grounds that Ashikawa and Yoshimura launched a record label, Sound Process, to release it.

In so doing, Yoshimura removed this music from its intended environment, but the nine pieces would bring an atmosphere of quiet grace to any setting. The static beauty of Yoshimura's nine pieces, which revolve around simple Fender Rhodes figures, have the ability to bring a sense of comfort into the hustle-and-bustle of a morning commute or a long flight (as Huerco S noted in interviews surrounding his 2016 Yoshimura-indebted ambient LP, For Those Of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have)). But a sense of place remains central to Music For Nine Post Cards. On "Urban Snow," Yoshimura quietly intones: "Snow... this is Tokyo."

Matt McDermott, Resident Advisor

25. Brian Eno: Thursday Afternoon (1985)
421 points, 7 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/xG8Fd8M.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyY7NU4cbtY

An aside -- Didn't Brian Eno once try to make a film that was meant to be seen many times (I think you actually had to turn your TV on its side to watch it), with "Thursday Afternoon" as the soundtrack?

― Mark Richardson, Sunday, September 10, 2000 3:00 AM

With songs like "Thursday Afternoon," he was experimenting with what he called a "holographic" style, composed according to mathematical principles, in a series of repeated loops in which each component represents the whole. >> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/magazine/04funny_humor.html?_r=1

I enjoyed Wendy McClure's True-Life Tale (June 4) that chronicled the less-than-enthusiastic reception Brian Eno's ''Thursday Afternoon'' received in Rossi's, ''an amiable dive bar.'' I am concerned, however, that readers unfamiliar with Eno's work might accept the reaction of the bar's patrons as informed and legitimate criticism. In that setting, Bach's ''Goldberg'' Variations would have evoked a similar response.

'' Thursday Afternoon'' is an organically complex work best experienced through a quality sound-reproduction system, in an environment without intrusive noise that would obscure the myriad intricate details suspended through the recording's dynamic range. McClure's ''Ting . . . ting. . .ting . . .'' characterization of the piece, while not inappropriate in context, is analogous to reducing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to ''da-da-da-DUM''; there's really quite a lot lost in the process. >> http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE6DC1331F93BA25755C0A9609C8B63

― Andrew O'H, Monday, May 3, 2010 7:14 AM

my favorite was always Thursday, mainly because it was the longest, but also because I think it's the most complex his harmonies & feel for textures ever got while remaining subtle and ignorable -- though I loved them all, many of the other ones either get so busy that they'd distract me from studying, or stayed so simple that they'd numb me out if I tried to listen, and Thursday allowed either mode of listening. I would go back and forth between the 60 minute CD version and a cassette dub of the 80 minute video soundtrack version which seems to pick up exactly where the CD version fades away.

― Milton Parker, Monday, January 7, 2008 2:27 AM

Mine is Eno's Thursday Afternoon. That's the go-to record for sleepless nights, and I never listen to it any other time.

― Mark, Wednesday, June 19, 2002 3:00 AM

Oops, I had the wrong Youtube link there, here's the correct one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyY7NU4cbtY

Argh, let's try one more time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTHF2Dfw1Dg

The rest of the top 25 will be wall-to-wall Eno?

hopefully not, though I've given up on the two I most hoped would make the list

finally made an mp3 that crossfades the CD & video mixes into a 142 minute version. seamless enough that it does make me wonder if they were both mixed in one go.

Great to see Yoshimura place so high, did not expect that. I've only known it for some years now (as opposed to a lot of others here) but it'd be in my top ten all time ambient records (if I'd ranked my ballot).

24. Harold Budd / Brian Eno: Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror (1980)
424 points, 6 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/L0b0EUy.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbFT7FXaggw

plateaux of mirror is it for me. the piano sounds as if it had exactly the dose of absinth you need to feel out of this world.

― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Saturday, January 21, 2006 10:53 PM

Harold Budd/Brian Eno – Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror (1980, synth, keyboards, treatments, instrumentation, producer) – With Budd falling into a Fripp-like role, this was pretty improvisatory, with Eno paring it down into spare, smooth results.

― Fastnbulbous, Tuesday, August 5, 2008 7:14 AM

But my fave has always been Plateaux of Mirror. The aural equivalent of jumping in a bed of cottonwool, the translation of the absinth experience into sound. Wooly, otherworldly bliss. How I love that piano sound.

― Ich bin kein Berliner (alex in mainhattan), Monday, January 21, 2019 9:09 PM

decided today The Plateaux Of Mirror is the best hangover listen ever. just the right balance of tragic, comfort and quiet.

― Jamie_ATP, Thursday, January 28, 2010 1:57 AM

Music for Airports confirmed #1.

23. Oneohtrix Point Never: Rifts (2009)
445 points, 8 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/BqAWcci.jpg

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

yeah rifts all the way through is good at evoking that woke up from cryo sleep too early and contemplating the void thing

― teflon dawn (uptown churl), Friday, September 24, 2010 11:38 PM

it's the boards of canada vibes (subtle pitch bends, spacious tonal wafts) that keep me returning to returnal and rifts

― Palpatean Mists (Lowell N. Behold'n), Sunday, August 15, 2010 7:24 PM

i like rifts more than returnal, and play it front to back sometimes, but i usually start or stop somewhere in the middle. i like how sprawling it is. it can blur together, but i'm a total sucker for cosmic synth drones and arpeggios. current favorite is zones without people

― a fucking knitted scarf (another al3x), Friday, September 24, 2010 8:17 PM

i'll join the chorus of ppl who prefer rifts. i get that he couldn't keep making synth drone forever for fear that he'd turn into jean-michel jarre and, like, play casinos or something... but the synth stuff was so much nicer aesthetically.

― oneohtrix point zero (fennel cartwright), Friday, November 4, 2011 5:42 AM

rifts is great in a single sitting if you're tired, sitting in the dark, drinking scotch and posting to ilx (inter alia)

― the decline of the altbro-hongarian empire (nakhchivan), Friday, September 24, 2010 10:15 PM

22. Laurie Spiegel: The Expanding Universe (1980, reissued in 2012 with 100 minutes of extra material)
456 points, 9 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/vJm5OVs.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD8hkveKmYQ

I found The Expanding Universe on a blog, and I'm mesmerised. Lovely ambient Tangerine Dream-y sort of soundscape stuff, but also incredibly melodic and great sense of movement amidst all the drifting.

― Evren Kader (Masonic Boom), Tuesday, September 8, 2009 4:58 PM

her writings on computer software for music production are important and visionary -- her tone gets more frustrated in the 90's as consumer gear pushes the user further and further into narrow boxes, but I think the concepts & ideas she pioneered in the 80's are only going to come back around and be entirely validated. there were many people who wrote papers about the potential for the 'voice of the computer' being sounded as an improvising partner for real time performance, but I think she (along with the League of Automatic Music Composers) backed up their papers by making the most interesting sounding music -- that clip that Masonic posted, just look at where she was at while everyone else was just vamping over eighth-note sequencer loops

'The Expanding Universe' is wonderful, if you like that be sure to track down 'Appalachian Grove' from this amazing compilation. These are pieces where the computer is responding to her key inputs with algorhythms that constantly vary the arpeggios under her control, so she's improvising rhythmically in response to what the computer is doing with her inputs

― Milton Parker, Tuesday, September 8, 2009 9:14 PM

love the liner notes, especially the comparing of conscious interaction w/ programmed processes to conscious interaction w/ subconsciously generated processes (finger-picking patterns); there's some rich phenomenology in there. didn't realise the images that were posted upthread were actually programmed in a similar fashion to the music. that is so, so cool, i'd been thinking about this a bit after looking at databending & then, there they are. & she was a big john fahey fan!

― ogmor, Tuesday, September 18, 2012 12:49 AM

when all I had was an old scratchy vinyl copy of this, I preferred the range & sonic variety on her other records, especially Unseen Worlds, but now that this has been cleanly remastered, I've been listening to it constantly -- it is so simple and elegant -- and the bonus material helps with the immersion, now with two discs it lasts long enough that you don't ever quite burn out, it's always changing just enough to stay ahead of you, like a continuous stream

― Milton Parker, Monday, September 24, 2012 8:08 PM

I dunno if "The Expanding Universe" is ambient, well, the 28 minute title track certainly is, but probably not all of the extra material on the CD reissue. Anyway, I'm glad they reissued it, Spiegel is such a phenomenal and groundbreaking artist, and otherwise it would've been quite hard to come across all this wonderful and weird and inspiring material... So yeah, I had to rate it high in my ballot.

Love 'Thursday Afternoon', though not everyone does https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/magazine/04funny_humor.html

Bartender OTM.

lol

The bartender is clearly the person who put it on the jukebox.

I'd rather hear Thursday Afternoon than hear Under Pressure or Dirty Deeds for the twentieth time in a week.

(we used to put on Atom Heart Mother at the pool hall we hung out at but the bartenders could and did skip past it the second anyone started whining about it)

i've been a "regular" at a few bars in my life, and the only bar where they ever skipped past a song i put on was when i played the long version of Kraftwerk's Autobahn. i never returned to that bar ever again lol.

21. Arthur Russell: World of Echo (1986)
459 points, 7 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/nhZIwlv.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cQ2CDfTKaQ

these are incredibly intimate performances, almost as if Arthur is whispering the songs into your ear. so to have a video with such intense close-ups makes sense. to where you can watch the light reflected off his fingertips as he taps the cello, or even more incredibly, in near-darkness, seeing the light inside of his eyes is a powerful viewing experience.
minimal music with sympathetically minimal video made by one of America's most powerful minimalists...

― Beta (abeta), Tuesday, November 9, 2004 5:07 PM

this is one of the most unique sounding records ever made, and the music is brilliant and memorable to boot. my girlfriend just got me The World Of... on vinyl for Christmas! What a sweetie.

― sleeve, Tuesday, December 25, 2007 6:51 PM

this is the loneliest album in the whole wide world ;_;

― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, September 16, 2011 11:34 PM

i've just downloaded "world of echo" and am listening in full for the first time. oh, new obsession. where have you been all my life. beautiful.

― Emily Bjurnhjam, Thursday, March 20, 2008 5:21 AM

I think what stands out most about this album for me is it doesn't seem like it's really as old as it is. It seems very modern and it's hard for me to believe I can trace it as far back as my teenage years. Another thing that stands out is just that there is nothing in the entire world that sounds like this record. Nothing. Other than saying it probably should have appeared on the 4AD label, you can't really narrow it down any further than that.

― Bimble, Sunday, March 23, 2008 4:13 PM

first encountered World Of Echo as MP3s from Limewire, I forget how I first heard of him but I was totally transfixed when I listened

I have the same issue with this album as the Slowdive one, to me it sounds like artsy folk rock, not like ambient at all.

(Also, it's not half as good as Russell's disco output, but that's another discussion.)

yah World Of Echo is another one I love but did not vote for b/c NOT AMBIENT

agreed with Tuomas and Sleeve, World of Echo is not ambient by any stretch.

Aye, I scrubbed World of Echo from my ballot because NOTAMBIENT. But damn it's good.
Completely forgot to vote for Yoshimura and I Am the Center! Both glorious.
Laurie Spiegel is next level. I didn't rank but I'd have had her pretty high.

ambient is just stuff without drums

drums and vocals

I'd argue that Russell uses the cello as percussion on WOE

Interesting that Autechre is so present but Scanner wasn't even nominated.

That is an oversight for sure. 'Lauwarm Instrumentals' is a huge album.

Have to say though Tuomas, I am really digging the pace of the rollout. It allows for plenty of time to check out albums I don't know.

20. Gas: Königsforst (1998)
486 points, 7 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/eq0AgHc.jpg?1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j360WlQPr4

Yesssss... I LOVE Gas--I played the second track off 'Konigsforst" with the signature low thrum moving from speaker to speaker at Night of the Living Drone, and I must say, Jess, you are WRONG about it verging on the ignorable! ;-) At "appropriate" volume, this music (to borrow an old-school Reynoldsism) evokes the womb, the feeling (not like any of us can remember it, but it's a cool comparison) of immersion in amniotic fluid.

― Clarke B., Thursday, December 13, 2001 3:00 AM

the last track on konigsforst always makes me think of a sunrise because it sounds like a warped/looped "william tell overture", that waking-up music they use in cartoons

― am0n, Wednesday, January 16, 2008 5:37 PM

Before today, I had only heard Pop. I liked it, but I mentally filed it away as music to do homework to. Today I listened to Konigsforst over and over again, and I realized I'm going to have to look into everything Voigt has done. Track 5 is AMAZING.

― 2 5 (Z S), Wednesday, December 31, 2008 5:03 AM

Königsforst is frikkin' great, though. Sounds of it have that sort of distant, slow-motion epic procession quality that characterises some of The Disintegration Loops audio by W. Basinski.. very regal or golden. I imagine it's an excellent album for Autumn, maybe it's the cover art/color that's coloring my impression of it.

― braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n), Monday, April 17, 2017 12:09 AM

Königsforst is pure magic, I completely forget myself when it is on at loud volume.

― calzino, Thursday, November 3, 2016 5:11 PM

TOO LOW

Agreed. My fave GAS album by far.

This is my favourite of all the Gas albums, it's magical in ways that are hard to put into words... Like, at this point things like "forest techno" or "sea ambient" have become sort of cliches, it's easy to create a sense of place in electronic music through established, recognisable signifiers. But the Gas project, and this album especially, seem to be more about ideals of places than the actual environments, so despite being named after a real forest, to me it invokes more the idealised concept of "mother forest", so well known to Germans (and Finns!) because it has been shaped and reshaped in the national culture since the romantic era. I don't actually enjoy real, physical forests as much as I do Königsforst.

Yagya are really good at this sort of thing as well, particularly with Rigning and Stars and Dust

19. Pauline Oliveros / Stuart Dempster / Panaiotis: Deep Listening (1989)
515 points, 8 votes.

https://i.imgur.com/ElZbeHj.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U__lpPDTUS4

Deep Listening – recorded 14 feet underground in an unused cistern with a 45-second reverb time.

― aaaaaaaauuuuuuuuu (melting robot) (WilliamC), Monday, November 28, 2016 3:56 PM

I got to participate in what I guess was a deep listening piece at UC San Diego once. It was fun. Everyone laid on the floor with eyes closed and we were supposed to make vocal sounds imitating other sounds that we heard.

― Tim Ellison, Saturday, June 26, 2004 1:20 AM

Alien Bog / Beautiful Soop is pretty great. That Deep Listening stuff creeps me out a bit tho

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Saturday, June 26, 2004 8:19 AM

I concur with the love. Just today I found the "Accordion And Voice" album on Lovely Music from like 1981, so psyched to hear it. My favorite is Deep Listening I think. The one in the cistern.

― sleeve, Monday, March 26, 2007 1:08 AM

my #17 pick, definitely "deep"