Top 100 Ambient Albums

chris meloche - recurring dreams of the urban

at the moment. i never really liked fax much as a label, but this is quite nice

finally heard the Environments record I posted the Head Heritage link to upthread. It's unbelievable, just hundreds of human voices singing one note. 1976, so predates Prima Materia, David Hykes & the Harmonic Choir, Michael Vetter's Overtone Choir, etc.

all the Environments records need a complete CD reissue

275. Environments 7 - Intonation / Summer Cornfield

http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/review/527
http://nonmusic.discogs.com/release/892588

that is so cool, I have 4 or 5 of those but have never even seen that one.

276. Aloof Proof - Piano Text (just reissued on CD and pretty great)
277. Wind Harp - Songs From The Hill
278. Lou Reed - Hudson River Wind Meditations
279. Michael Stearns - Planetary Unfolding

280. Earth - Pentastar
281. Bohren and Der Club Der Gore - Midnight Earth
282. Tangerine Dream - Phaedra
283. Tones on Tail - Pop

284. Oren Ambarchi - Grapes from the estate
285. Phil Niblock - G2 44 +/X 2
286. Rafael Toral - Sound Mind Sound Body

287. Waki - Music for Lazy People

This is a great list but can anyone recommnend something from 2008?

wyld wyzrdz - mzg wvz

free download here
http://www.magicgoatmusic.com/digitalmagic.html

289. Mark Wastell - Come Crimson Rays

every night for the last three weeks

290 & 291

Lawrence English's last two albums (both from 08) Kiri No Oto and Studies for Stradbroke are both really awesome. SFS is mostly field recordings.

..from Stradbroke Island.

http://www.residentadvisor.net/images/reviews/2008/pop-ambient-2008.jpeg

I agree that the Pop Ambient comps are still a consistent source of decent tunes, but the recent ones seem more formulaic. The 2006 version was the most outstanding to me.

Not necessarily from 2008, but some more recent finds:

• Information - Biomekano (a bit on the glitchy side)
• Oren Ambarchi - In The Pendulum's Embrace
• Loscil - Plume

I'm amazed that the Astralwerks Excursions in Ambience Vol. 3 comp got some love on here...a definite classic, but one I'd assumed was lost to obscurity. I'd be interested in seeing a similar list with a more limited scope. The extent of this one is a little overwhelming.

Check out The Caretaker's Persistent Repetition of Phrases for your hauntology ambient hunger.

no fleischmann?

XXPOST Ambarchi's 7 inch on Touch from this year is fantastic as well. Lots of organ.

This is a great list but can anyone recommnend something from 2008?

― Ned Trifle II, Monday, September 22, 2008 8:43 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

297. Karma Moffett - Golden Bowls Of Compassion

The Beatless Collection with Tokyo Black Star, Deadmau5, Joris Voorn, Gui Boratto, Hiroshi Watanabe etc is fantastic.

can anyone recommnend something from 2008?

Stretching the definition of "ambient," but...

298. Carlos Giffoni - Adult Life
299. Tim Hecker and Aidan Baker - Fantasma Parastasie
300. Patti Smith and Kevin Shields - The Coral Sea

http://www.trackitdown.net/genre/electronica/track/545575.html

that's the Beatless Collection I mentioned above. highly recommended.

now that's a lot of ambient

how do we get the incense stores to buy these and play these instead of Enigma's "The Sadnads Part 1"

from 2008, machinefabriek - dauw is essential. also recently got lawrence english - kiri no oto, beautiful drones

just discovered Oneohtrix Point Never, totally awesome hangover soothing analog tone washes, let's go for 400

301 - Oneohtrix Point Never - "A Pact Between Strangers"

"Ruined Lives" is terrific too but it's < 20 minutes so won't count as an album

that beatless comp looks fun

"Lawrence English's last two albums (both from 08) Kiri No Oto and Studies for Stradbroke are both really awesome."

just got a disc in the mail by lawrence english and francisco lopez called hb that is really cool. on baskaru. lotsa mutated environmental field recordings.

been passing out nightly to a couple of robin guthrie and harold budd collaborations

you gotta play those back to back, skipping the final tracks from both of them, for the real bliss out.

302. http://soundcloud.com/shamantis/j-biebz-u-smile-800-slower

I just saw that on someone's Facebook! I haven't listened yet, though.

WHOA, this is really, really awesome! What was done to it to make it not sound choppy/fragmented?

its this paulstretch programme

sounds like Belong

http://sourceforge.net/projects/hypermammut/files/

it's open source - i'm tripping out to ambient 'Tik Tok' right now

http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/

Please note that this is suitable only for extreme time stretching (e.g. if have a melody of 3 minutes and you want to listen it in 3 hours).

ha, someone's already updated the wikipedia page for '9 Beet Stretch': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_Beet_Stretch

the real landmark timestretching ambient piece is Carl Stone's 'Shing Kee' from 1986, which expands 4 seconds of Schubert to 16 minutes from the album 'Mom's'. it's got some uptempo things on it that kept me from posting it to this list earlier, but I used to program tracks 1-4-5 to sleep to, so...

303. Carl Stone - Mom's

love the new album by bacteria earth.

http://middlesearecords.wordpress.com/

Hey Milton, I never did thank you for that recommendation in feb '09 - which is still on my late night listening playlist, so thanks!

How the fuck is DJ Shadow - Endtroducing ambient? By that reasoning, any DJ set with a minute long beatless break is ambient too.

just ran across this today. very good and actually ambient.

http://www.archive.org/details/JOAT006

xxx-post: OK the paulstretcb utility is really awesome, but why the fuck can't you save it as an .mp3?? you really do have to save it to .wav? anybody know how to convert these things? i tried converting it to an mp3 using vlc media player and it failed miserably. harumph!

you can do it w/ itunes

180. Brian Eno - Thursday Fucking Afternoon

Haven't heard this one -- is it rare??

Ok so this is the place where I am supposed to talk about the Environments series? I bought 5 today for $4 and this is the description

Environments 5 (1974)

Side One: Ultimate Heartbeat (20:00)

A stethoscope heartbeat recording which can be used to calm infants, aid meditation or enhance lovemaking.

Side Two: Wind in the Trees (34:00)

The soft rush of wind rustling the leaves of a grove in late autumn.

The girl behind the counter fell just short of high fiving me once she read the description on the back. What part of the series was included on the Voyager album?!

I don't know, but when I die I hope I wake up on the Psychologically Ultimate Seashore.

The front cover states that the human heartbeat side can be played at 33 or 45. I can report that switching back and forth is pretty fun.

Also look at the cover image
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8491/8407641043_afd705b639_z.jpg

The trees sound kinda like soft washes of static with birds.

I've been listening a lot to Blamstrain's "Disfold" album from 2006 on Sending Orbs... it's sort of a city version of an Environments album. Field recordings from train stations and city streets mixed into a narrative about a relationship. I love it.

Pitchfork just posted their 50 best ambient albums of all time:

“As ignorable as it is interesting.” That’s the classic definition of ambient music, stated by Brian Eno in 1978 on the sleeve notes to his album Ambient 1: Music for Airports. And he should know, since he basically invented the genre three years earlier with his album Discreet Music. But while Eno’s definition of ambient has been cited continuously in the decades since, the sphere of music he first defined has broadened, especially if you judge by how that word is used by listeners. “Ambient” is now used to describe all kinds of music, from tracks you can dance to all the way to harsh noise. For our exploration of the greatest ambient albums, we polled critics for their favorites, with the suggestion that “ambient” meant, in part, music that creates an environment, something like a cloud of sound, be it soothing, sad, haunting, or ominous. We also suggested that our take on ambient music shies away from heavy rhythms and tends more toward “drifting” than “driving,” which meant de-emphasizing ambient house. And we considered the fact that not all albums in a given artist’s catalogue qualify as ambient. Taking into account our writers’ interpretation of those loose guidelines, here’s our list of the 50 best ambient albums.

01. Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports
02. Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Volume II
03. William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops I-IV
04. Terry Riley - A Rainbow in Curved Air
05. The KLF - Chill Out
06. Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid
07. Oval - 94diskont
08. Pauline Oliveros/Stuart Dempster/Panaiotis - Deep Listening
09. Tim Hecker - Harmony in Ultraviolet
10. Fripp & Eno - Evening Star

11. Gas - Pop
12. Laurie Spiegel - The Expanding Universe
13. Brian Eno - Apollo
14. The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
15. Robert Ashley - Automatic Writing
16. Terry Riley - Persian Surgery Dervishes
17. Alice Coltrane - Turiya Sings
18. Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline
19. The Orb - Orbus Terrarum
20. Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica

21. Grouper - A I A : Alien Observer
22. Fennesz - Endless Summer
23. Keith Fullerton Whitman - Playthroughs
24. Brian Eno - Ambient 4: On Land
25. Folke Rabe - What??
26. Iasos - Inter-Dimensional Music
27. Oneohtrix Point Never - Rifts
28. Pauline Oliveros - Accordion and Voice
29. David Behrman - On the Other Ocean
30. Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place

31. Ashra - New Age Of Earth
32. La Monte YoungMarian Zazeela - The Tamburas Of Pandit Pran Nath (An Homage)
33. Steve Roach - Structures from Silence
34. Charlemagne Palestine - Four Manifestations On Six Elements
35. Laraaji - Ambient 3: Day of Radiance
36. Windy & Carl - Depths
37. Tim Hecker - Virgins
38. Biosphere - Substrata
39. Suzanne Ciani - Buchla Concerts 1975
40. Max Richter - Sleep

41. Brian Eno/Harold Budd - The Pearl
42. Ekkehard Ehlers - Plays
43. Eluvium - Talk Amongst the Trees
44. Microstoria - snd
45. Huerco S. - For Those Of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have)
46. Edgar Froese - Epsilon in Malaysian Pale
47. Jon Hassell - Vernal Equinox
48. Ernest Hood - Neighborhoods
49. Bing & Ruth - Tomorrow Was the Golden Age
50. Deathprod - Morals and Dogma

Psyched that Alien Observer is on there.