Top 100 Ambient Albums

persian surgery dervishes sounds really intense and ecstatic to me, for example, like let's all have a rave up with terry

this is THE Seefeel ambient jam, afaic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm4rtr03ZV8

but i don't know, just doesn't seem correct.

just doesn't seem right or wholesome to have them on an ambient list, i should say, unless you widen the tent to encompass more 'ambient is a feeling' stuff in jazz/classical/world etc

or like, eagles greatest hits

yeah. it makes sense as a process but feels really cynical as a category of music to me.

like a list of 300 'spiritual' albums would have been so much better + more coherent

So an interesting closing of the loop... Back in 2000 I was in college and just getting into ambient music vie extreme insomnia. hyperreal.org (which is still up - although it says "Copyright 1992-2004 Hyperreal" at the bottom of the page) was an electronic music/rave culture/drugs (via the connected Erowid) site and had DJ sets to download as 'instructional material'. I downloaded an ambient one in Real Audio (yep) format by a guy called Tim Fothergill and listened to it a lot - an awful lot. As I learned more about ambient music I started to recognise a lot of the tunes as Aphex Twin, Eno etc., but eventually I got a big CD and MP3 collection and forgot about this crappy Real Audio file.

Fast forward to two years ago and I found it by accident - I tracked Tim down on Twitter, and he posted up a much higher quality version on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/tim-fothergill/evolution

Some of the track ids of this 20 year old mix were lost to the mists of time, but we got nearly all of them (including using Shazam for a few). I still think it's a nice intro for a beginner, and personally for me it's very evocative of an era:

00:00 Brian Eno - Neroli
01:00 u-ziq - ?
03:40 Aphex Twin - 1-10 SAWII
05:00 Speedy J - Grogono
07:30 Aphex Twin - 1-5 SAWII
09:30 Slowdive - Albatross
10:50 Speedy J - Lanzarote
13:00 Aphex Twin - 1-3 SAWII
15:00 Neutron 9000 - She Trails Flowers
17:50 Dreamfish - Underwater
(20:00 The Orb - Sticky End)
(21:35 FSOL - Bird Wings)
(22:50 Woob - Creek)
25:00 Aphex Twin - 2-4 SAWII
27:00 Aphex Twin - 2-9 SAWII
28:30 Brian Eno - Tal Coat
32:30 The Orb - Valley
35:00 Brian Eno - Unfamiliar Wind (Leek Hills)
36:00 Aphex Twin - 2-6 SAWII
38:30 Woob - Depart
39:30 Dead Can Dance - Piece For Solo Flute
41:30 Woob - On Earth
44:00 Slowdive - Avalyn II
46:00 Aphex Twin - 1-12 SAWII
47:30 Cabaret Voltaire - Project 80
(49:00 FFWD - What Time Is Clock)
51:20 Woob - Strange Air
55.00 Wagon Christ - Aerhaart, From Within
57:00 ?
59:00 Wagon Christ - Glass World
61:00 Psychonavigation - Angel Tech
63:30 Slowdive - Losing Today
65:45 ?
67:00 Cabaret Voltaire - Exterminating Angel (Intro)
69:00 Woob - Odonna
71:30 The Orb - Back Side Of The Moon
73:00 FFWD - Meteor Storm
75:30 The Young Gods - Moon Revolutions
77:00 Slowdive - Golden Hair
78:00 ?
80:00 Woob - Emperor
82:00 Aphex Twin - 1-10 SAWII
84:00 Woob - Odonna
86:00 FFWD - Hempire
88:30 Harold Budd & Brian Eno - First Light
91:00 Aphex Twin - 2-12 SAWII
91:30 Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent)

If anybody has an idea what the remaining ones are then let me know!

I also used to read the reviews at Ambience for the Masses and listen to the associated 24/7 Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast stream which unbelievably seem to be going strong almost two decades later as well.

As for the Pitchfork list, I'm sure they'll have a top 50 New Age albums list next with all your missing favourites.

i like a lot of what's on here but it's undeniably on-trend wrt new age. like, erik satie should really be on a list that's actually interested in uncovering what ambient is, just as much as eno should be. i love laurie spiegel but i don't think she's ambient at all. eliane radigue 'fits' better i think. (don't mean to weigh token women artists here.) psycho-acoustic sound art type stuff feels connected to the ambient concept imo. maryanne amacher. robert ashley was a good call. in general there seems to be a fear of experimental classical / institutional sound art that isn't outsider-y enough. i love minimalism but solely focusing on it betrays a certain predictable pov.

― savvinesslessness (map), Monday, September 26, 2016 1:50 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah if they're gonna go broad with the definition there's quite a few 'non outsidery' notated compositions that'd fit right in. Rothko Chapel, Les Heures Persanes, Egdon Heath, Musica Callada, A Haunted Landscape...

So, cos I had nothing better to do, here's my corny top 50 ambient albums list to complement the "cool" one Pitcfork did:

2350 Broadway - 2350 Broadway 4
310 - Snorkelhouse
Air Liquide - Nephology: The New Religion
Alio Die - Deconsecrated and Pure
Alquimia - Coatlique: Goddess of the Earth
Autumn of Communion - Autumn of Communion
Baked Beans - Baked Beans
Biosphere - Patashnik
Constance Demby - Novus Magnificat: Through the Stargate
Constance Demby - Sacred Space Music
Cosmic Baby - Stunde Null
Datacide - Flowerhead
Deep Space Network - Big Rooms
Dots - Dots
Dreamfish - Dreamfish
Elodie Lauten - Inscapes from Exile
Exquisite Corpse - Inner Light
France Jobin - The Illusion of Infinitesimal
Freida Abtan ‎- The Hands of the Dancer / The Temple of the Dreamer
Gas - Königsforst
Global Communication - 76:14
Higher Intelligence Agency & Biosphere - Polar Sequences
The Irresistible Force - Global Chillage
Ishq - And Awake
Jochem Paap - Vrs-Mbnt-Pcs 9598 I
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - Tides
Khan & Walker - Empire State Building
The McLean Mix - Rainforest Images
Meg Bowles - Blue Cosmos
Meg Bowles - The Shimmering Land
Minilogue - Blomma
Move D & Namlook - Raumland trilogy
Music to Films - Music to Films
Natasha Barrett - Trade Winds
Oliver Lieb - Constellation
Oliver Lieb - Inside Voices
Organic Cloud - Organic Cloud
Psychick Warriors ov Gaia - Ov Biospheres and Sacred Grooves
Raica - Lucent Glances
Robert Rich - Somnium
Shades of Orion - Shades Of Orion 2
Sheila Chandra - ABoneCroneDrone
Solar Quest - Orgship
Susumu Yokota - Sakura
Tangerine Dream - Zeit
Vangelis - Soil Festivities
Vladislave Delay - Anima
Woob - Woob 1194
Zalys - Sublime
Zenith - Zenith

Oh man soil festivities
What a strange recording

There's a lot of FAX in it, but IMO it's pretty inexcusable for any top 50 ambient list to completely ignore the most important ambient label (and the most prolific ambient producer) of the last 25 years, so I tried to balance that a bit.

(xpost)

IMO Soil Festivities is Vangelis' best attempt to do "proper" ambient. Albums like Beauborg or Invisible Connection are a bit too on-the-nose avant-garde for my tastes, and stuff like The City is a bit too cheesy, but on SF he gets it right.

fun list, Tuomas. Zeit would go on my list as well, epic gloomy space ambient.

i must check out that Minilogue album

Anima too but that's another borderline "waht is ambient" case. it's a little too lively and unstable (?) for proper zoning out. Entain is the most "ambient" of his albums, i think. just imo/ime.

i was too young for the late80s/early90s period when "ambient" also referred to ambient house/techno

zeit is so heavy like dark ambient ground zero kinda

If it has beats at all, it shouldn't be considered as an ambient album, imo. Here's an ambient mix I did this weekend with my friend. There are no beats.

https://www.mixcloud.com/biznotic/ambient-excursions-to-44/

rong

or right, i don't know lol

some of the things on the pfork list are like "if it doesn't have beats at all, it can be considered an ambient album"

I never really got why the aphex twin collected ambient work- sounding stuff like fsol is considered ambient, it's p banging and also distracting with the off-kilter beats

I wasn't there at the time but I think "ambient" mostly was being used as a prefix to -house or -techno.

Which makes a lot more sense given most of that stuff is too soft and slow to dance to (at a time when house and techno were almost exclusively conceived of as club or dancing oriented), but predates and doesn't fit in with the "intelligent" frame that started to sweep through circa 1993.

Selected Ambient Works Vol II is "proper" ambient tho.

right, it was more shorthand... like calling hardcore techno "hardcore"

I think that large swathes of Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld (esp. the last three tracks on disc one and "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain...") do in fact meet a narrower definition, but I can appreciate not wanting to include an album that also features "Little Fluffy Clouds" and "Perpetual Dawn" etc.

makes sense, thx tim. and yes of course vol ii is the good shit ~_~

that's a good example of why words are so annoying, you can't just make a list of humming ambient drone without someone being like WHY DOESNT BRITISH TECHNO THAT U CANT DANCE TO FROM 2002 IN THERE

qn: do u pronounce it << auhm-bient >> or whatever?

the 'b' is silent

<i>IMO Soil Festivities is Vangelis' best attempt to do "proper" ambient.</i>

not an official release, but what you want to hear is his soundtrack to "microneurosurgery with videotapes" also called the Tegos tapes. most of the online recordings edit out the narration but it still leaves you with about twelve hours of ambient vangelis. it's as fantastic as you might hope that would be.

here's a collection of them on soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/kitlightning/sets/tegosauron

try case 4, for example

I don't even follow my own proclamation most of the time. Plastikman's Consumed album is full of beats but functionally, it works like an ambient album to me.

If ambient music is defined as something you can chill to, nothing precludes it from having beats. There's plenty of albums by proper, recognized ambient artists that have unobtrusive, chilled down beats.

Obviously there are types of ambient house and ambient techno, where the latter genre is more important, and which have fairly banging 4/4 beats. That's one of the reasons I don't consider the From Within albums or Selected Ambient Works I to be proper ambient. But there are also distinguished types of ambient beats. There are even some tunes I'd consider to be ambient where percussion is the main element.

I think it should be beatless. But then: Gas.

If beatlesness was an absolute requirement, a lot of acclaimed ambient albums would have to be disqualified: Microgravity, Patashnik, Organic Cloud, all albums by Air, Silence, Woob, Gas & The Irresistible Force, most Atom Heart, etc.

I'm fine with that - it'd make it 'neater' as a genre descriptor. As it is, it's kinda messy and vague. (It doesn't keep me awake at night. But still.)

Drawing clear genre boundaries is impossible anywhere.

What's more interesting in discussing these lists (or at least, treating them as some sort of 'critical consensus') are the blind spots and shifts in focus - new age used to be one of those, it's now firmly back in the canon. 90's ambient (incl -house and -techno) is receding. But large swathes of the ambient landscape (ha!) still lay undiscovered - lots of soundtrack work (film and increasingly, video game), dark ambient (Lustmord, Cold Meat Industry, Thomas Köner etc), psybient (Shpongle, Ott, Ultimae Recs etc).

Even within this debate re beats or no beats, some of those 0PN records on their list seem pretty far removed from ambient.

Rifts made sense. Replica made no sense.

yeah, the absence of ambient artists in this list from labels like Projekt/Hic Sunt Leones/Cold Meat Industry makes sense, as goth + world music is still terminally uncool. It's sad though, artists like Robert Rich and Alio Die have been putting out amazing work, often collaborating to great effect, for 20-30 years now. I'm surprised there's nothing by any Em:t artists... obviously Woob's 1194 but also magical releases like Lucid Dreams 0096:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuQj1txL2Bs

Scanner doesn't seem to get any love these days either.

I think we can all agree that one defining characteristic of ambient is Beatleslessness.

the easily cornball intersection of world music + new age/ambient is highly highly beloved of me

The Em:t albums seem to have sort of suffered the same fate as FAX: they're out of print and not so easy to acquire. I kinda feel lists like this are compiled by people who weren't listening to this stuff in the '90s, and these days the newcomers don't have an easy access to it, so it's dropped off the radar. Which is sad, because their catalogue include some of the best electronic music of all time.

here have a mix..

https://www.mixcloud.com/crystalsprings/evening-fog-mix/

dude made his own list:

http://www.self-titledmag.com/2016/09/30/100-best-ambient-albums/

dude's list runs pretty close to my tastes but I don't know if that makes the list very useful for me wrt new discoveries.

nice list, weird that it's framed as a rebuttal when it deliberately excludes albums from the p4k list.. it's really just "another hundred great ambient albums" and obviously that's a totally good thing to post but the disconnect is odd, i'll go ahead and blame clickbait culture (sorry)

also because his list features plenty of artists from the pitchfork list. kinda getting into narcissism of small differences territory.

good for dude

Dude also made a pretty remarkable ambient album of his own (Daydreaming, 2007)

duane pitre - organized pitches occurring in time