Top 100 Ambient Albums

(and there's tons of stuff on those charts that's also out of print)

I don't understand how that list works...? Tetsu Inoue's Organic Cloud is at 202th spot, and has rating of 3.79, which is the same rating the album at 23rd spot has. It doesn't look like they are ordered by rating?

Top ten for me. Some certainly stretch the criteria.

Upper Astral - Higher Self Rendezvous
Mirror - Die Spiegelmanufaktur
Steve Roach - Structures From Silence
Ones/Hands - 1997-2005
Climax Golden Twins - Lovely
Bernhard Günter ‎– Un Peu De Neige Salie
Graham Lambkin & Jason Lescalleet - Photographs
Omit - Quad
Andrew Chalk - Gold Fall
Robert Turman - Flux

hahaha, that Rate Your Music "ambient" list also has... a lot of Loreena McKennitt albums on it.

I don't understand how that list works...? Tetsu Inoue's Organic Cloud is at 202th spot, and has rating of 3.79, which is the same rating the album at 23rd spot has. It doesn't look like they are ordered by rating?

― Tuomas

no, it's not by straight rating- the number of ratings also has a large effect. the #23 album has over 2,000 ratings, whereas inoue's "organic cloud" has under 100. it doesn't make statistical sense to simply go by average rating in this case.

Well that kind of rating system is obviously biased against albums with small and/or limited pressings, such as most of the FAX catalogue; they're never gonna have as many people voting for them.

you're misunderstanding how maths works but i think it's a system which works to reinforce a certain ahistoricist kind of canon-building

The weighting needs to give more weight to reviews by people who are familiar with all of the releases, not just the ones that are easy to find. That's more effort than a web site trying to rank all music via crowdsourcing is going to put in though, and it's also why the recommended ambient albums list from Hyperreal from 2001 (http://music.hyperreal.org/epsilon/info/2001_classic_ambient.html) is still a better list than what Rate Your Music generates today.

That's a good list, yeah. Interesting that Tetsu Inoue is rated so high, but I can't argue that his first two FAX albums are proper ambient classics... Tho personally I rate the first two Shades of Orion (Namlook/Inoue) albums even higher.

hahaha, that Rate Your Music "ambient" list also has... a lot of Loreena McKennitt albums on it.

― erry red flag (f. hazel)

That's what happens if you include new age. There's also those Silent Hill soundtracks which receive insanely high ratings (I assume mostly by nostalgic gamers who don't really listen to anything else?) and are not very ambient, there's a few run-of-the-mill droney mood pieces but mostly a shit ton of (very inept) alt rock with drum machines, which sounds like a demo from Garage Band presets.

I think the RYM system doesn't have a bias against albums with few votes (unless it's a few dozen), but it puts much less weight to a rating if it's the only thing the reviewer has rated or if he just rates everything 5 or 1, etc. It's a bit like IMDB ratings.

Can we argue some more about why a bunch of Finnish teenagers who think Madvillain is the best rap album of all time don't rate the Fax catalog

ts: teenagers who think madvillain is the best rap album of all time vs. 40 year olds who think paul's boutique is the best rap album of all time

wow, the #1 new age album is apparently Hosianna Mantra by Popol Vuh

well yeah

Robert Turman - Flux

this album rules, btw

lol RYM ratings... jeez... not an insignificant amount of people are just going through their slsk downloads, previewing a few tracks and then rating them..

xpost you're exactly who I thought of when I saw that! then I thought 'aw, Seligpresung is only at #18"

kids today just can't be bothered to listen to records a few dozen times before forming opinions on them. terrible.

My fondness for the KLF's Chill Out may be down to the cassette being stuck in my car stereo for a couple of months.

"bryter layter" is my favorite nick drake record because all my other nick drake records got stolen

Made another ambient mix. caution, there are beats in the last 2 minutes of the mix. https://www.mixcloud.com/biznotic/ancient-heavenly-connection

for me, Suzanne Ciani's Seven Waves is album of the season

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06nWn98x_ek

mmmm, prismacolor ambient

http://windsmeasurerecordings.net/catalog/wm18/

michael t. bullock and andrew lafkas ceremonies to breathe upon

currently loving the new Biosphere album, Departed Glories:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLMDIG4sJes

Since winter is coming, I guess I could also share this mix I made a couple of years ago:

https://soundcloud.com/kukka-dj/winterchill

It starts with an electronic pop tune, but the rest of it is mostly ambient.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11JITPeYAWs

really great

i'd like to check that out!

suzanne ciani wheeie posted upthread is doin the trick rn

also I'm listening to Seven Waves at the moment but this looks super interesting

https://open.spotify.com/album/5NeWznX1xhs9KzsNh5PZQT?si=1NH6pf0wSTefbjgZghhqAQ

that looks super cool

lots of stuff here i haven't heard: https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/03/17/contemporary-ambient-music-list

That Daru album I posted upthread is seriously good. Apparently he did the music for avatar the air bender

Got rly into virgins by Tim hecker this winter
That is a album of feeeeeelz

I'd completely forgotten about this thread, but last month I did a top 100 ambient albums list for another site, might as well share it here too:

1. Shades of Orion – Shades of Orion 2
2. Meg Bowles – The Shimmering Land
3. Éliane Radigue – Jetsun Mila
4. Lucette Bourdin – Radiant Stars
5. Vangelis – Soil Festivities
6. Air Liquide – Nephology: the New Religion
7. Constance Demby – Novus Magnificat: Through the Stargate
8. Oliver Lieb – Inside Voices
9. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – Tides
10. Biosphere – Patashnik
11. Organic Cloud – Organic Cloud
12. Wendy Carlos – Beauty in the Beast
13. Alio Die – Deconsecrated and Pure
14. Robert Rich – Somnium
15. Datacide – Flowerhead
16. Tangerine Dream – Zeit
17. Sheila Chandra – ABoneCroneDrone
18. Silence – Silence V
19. Deep Space Network – Big Rooms
20. Gas – Königsforst
21. The Irresistible Force – Global Chillage
22. Psychick Warriors ov Gaia – Record of Breaks
23. Lucia Hwong ‎– Secret Luminescence
24. Meg Bowles ‎– Evensong: Canticles for the Earth
25. Alio Die & Sylvi Alli ‎– Amidst the Circling Spires
26. Max Richter ‎– Sleep
27. Lucette Bourdin – Timeless Shore
28. Iotronica – Of Moons and Stars
29. Mariolina Zitta ‎– Concert for Bats, Voices and Natural Sounds
30. Namlook ‎– Namlook XXV: Permutations
31. Music to Films ‎– Music to Films
32. Donato Dozzy ‎– K
33. Solar Quest ‎– Orgship
34. Lorenzo Montanà ‎– Nihil
35. Ambiant Otaku – Ambiant Otaku
36. Omni Vu Deity ‎– Uvunayatu
37. Autumn of Communion ‎– Autumn of Communion
38. Higher Intelligence Agency / Biosphere ‎– Polar Sequences
39. 2350 Broadway ‎– 2350 Broadway 2
40. Minilogue ‎– Blomma
41. Susumu Yokota ‎– Sakura
42. Ishq ‎– And Awake
43. Khan & Walker ‎– Empire State Building
44. Zalys ‎– Wandering Through Space
45. France Jobin ‎– Intrication
46. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Suzanne Ciani ‎– Sunergy
47. Baked Beans ‎– Baked Beans
48. Woob ‎– Woob 1194
49. Thomas P. Heckmann ‎– Ghosts
50. Raw C / Pharmakustik ‎– Anamorph Specimens
51. Global Electronic Network ‎– Rolleiflex / Weltron / Time Square
52. Éliane Radigue ‎– Trilogie de la mort
53. Namlook / Montanà ‎– Labyrinth
54. 2350 Broadway ‎– 2350 Broadway 4
55. Suzanne Ciani ‎– Seven Waves
56. Alquimia ‎– "Coatlicue" Goddess of the Earth
57. Vangelis – The City
58. Global Communication ‎– 76:14
59. Otras ‎– Otras
60. 310 ‎– Aug 56
61. Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom ‎– The Days of Mars
62. Dominic Woosey ‎– Straylight
63. Biosphere ‎– Departed Glories
64. Alio Die & Mariolina Zitta ‎– La Sala Dei Cristalli
65. Tetsu Inoue ‎– Inland
66. Lucia Hwong ‎– Goddess Awakening Vol. 1
67. Indiana Drones ‎– Indiana Drones
68. Atom Heart ‎– Live at Sel i/s/c
69. Deborah Martin ‎– Eye of the Wizard
70. Dr Atmo ‎– Quiet Life
71. Raica ‎– Lucent Glances
72. Jochem Paap ‎– Vrs-Mbnt-Pcs 9598 II
73. Constance Demby ‎– Skies Above Skies
74. DeepChord presents Echospace ‎– Liumin
75. A-Symmetry ‎– I Am Life
76. Single Cell Orchestra ‎– Dead Vent 7
77. Biosphere ‎– Substrata
78. Material Object ‎– Artefacts Digitaux II
79. Laurie Spiegel ‎– Unseen Worlds
80. Banco De Gaia ‎– Last Train to Lhasa
81. Sheila Chandra ‎– Quiet
82. Move D ‎– The Silent Orbiter
83. Dreamfish ‎– Dreamfish
84. Freida Abtan ‎– The Hands of the Dancer / The Temple of the Dreamer
85. Monolake ‎– Silence
86. Cosmic Baby ‎– Stunde Null
87. Ishq ‎– Seascapes
88. Zalys ‎– Sublime
89. Robert Rich ‎– Geometry
90. Tomita ‎– Kosmos
91. Meg Bowles – Blue Cosmos
92. Sad World ‎– Sad World 3
93. Baked Beans ‎– Bean Me Up, Scotty!
94. William Orbit ‎– Strange Cargo III
95. Vladislav Delay ‎– Anima
96. Suzanne Doucet ‎– Reflecting Light
97. TBA / Natalie Beridze ‎– Size And Tears: Alice in Wonderland
98. Terre Thaemlitz ‎– Lovebomb
99. The Fires of Ork ‎– The Fires of Ork 2
100. Geoff Barrow / Ben Salisbury ‎– Drokk: Music Inspired by Mega-City One

https://soundcloud.com/kukka-dj/wintermix-vol-ii

I also did a sequel to that wintery ambient mix mentioned upthread.

Wow, that’s a lot to go through. Thanks T

That's a fascinating list! I think I've heard...6 of them.

Yeah, interesting list. I’ve been gradually tracking entries down. Lots I haven’t heard by artists I have heard.

love Meg Bowles. Have never heard of her until your list.

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.

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.

Have we ever done an ambient albums poll?

No, I don't think so... I'd definitely participate in one.

Same! We did have this thread that died a quiet death: https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=1558318&boardid=41&threadid=80208

I'd definitely be up for participating.

Likewise, although there is so much I would still like to hear first.

count me in

make sure to collect at least 2000 nominations tho