Looking for recommendations in the ambient genre.
My favorites are (in no particular order):
- Brian Eno - Mixing Colours
- C418 - Minecraft Volume Alpha
- Jon Hopkins - Music for Psychedelic Therapy
- The KLF - Chill Out
- Experialist - Excessive Refinement
- Biosphere - Substrata
What are your favorite ambient albums?
Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon
Laraaji & Brian Eno - Ambient 3: Days of Radiance
Tim Hecker - Haunt Me, Haunt Me, Do It Again
Blood Incantation - Timewave Zero
Christian Fennesz and Jim O’Rourke - It’s Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry
PBK and Jim O’Rourke - Unidentified Again
Oreb Ambarchi - Grapes Of The Estate
Golden Retriever - Light Cones
Kassel Jaeger - Swamps/Things
Growing - Color Wheel
Most of these are probably considered more “experimental” than ambient, but whatever, genres are weird
Edit: formatting
I listened to an album by Blood Incantation this year, great metal stuff and was ready to react, then I went and checked that out and Holy shit its straight up Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze type shit. Have to give this a listen
I really like After the Night Falls by Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd.
Anything Boards of Canada is good, but I find their A Few Old Tunes have a particularly good ambient feel.
A Few Old Tunes Vol. 1Iirc these might not actually be authentic. The real cassettes were only given to friends and family and there is a long history of fakes being spread online. I hope we will someday get the real deal like with the obscure first GYBE tape.
I didn’t realize that! I’ll keep listening because they’re nice mixes, but darn.
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Tangerine Dream - Phaedra, Zeit, Alpha Centauri
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Loscil - Plume
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Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2
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M. J. Harris & Martyn Bates - Murder Ballads
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Mirror - I paint for the love of color, Nightwalkers, A Pilgrim’s Solace… Any of them pretty really I love Mirror
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Andrew Chalk - Time of Hayfield, same goes here, Chalk is half of Mirror)
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Thomas Köner - Nuuk
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Michael Bross - Subway Meditations
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Akira Yamaoka - Silent Hill 1, 2 and 3: The Complete Soundtracks to all three
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Jorge Reyes - Mort Aux Vaches, The Flayed God and if that’s up your alley be sure to check out Antonio Zepeda as well!
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William Basinski - Melancholia, The Disintegration Loops
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Oöphoi - The Rustling of Leaves, The Spirals of Time and so many others
And some borderline ambient, but might scratch the itch:
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Gavin Bryars - Jesus blood never failed me yet
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Jon Hassell - Vernal Equinox, The Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things by the Power of Sound, others from his earlier half
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Rapoon - Vernal Crossing
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Tuu - All Our Ancestors
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The Body Lovers/The Body Haters
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Scott Walker - The Drift, Tilt
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Dead Can Dance - The Serpent’s Egg, Into the Labyrinth, Toward the Within, Within the Realm of a Dying Sun
edit: There’s too many! I didn’t get to Robert Rich, Gas, Jan Jelinek, Muslimgauze, Biosphere and so many others
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- Roly Porter - Third Law
- Tim Hecker - Love Streams
Haven’t heard those, I’ll give them a try. I liked Ravedeath and No Highs by Tim Hecker a lot.
Can’t go wrong with Tim Hecker. That album in particular just stuck with me.
The Roly Porter one is super interesting. Especially the song “Mass”. It’s like “POV you’re inside of a basketball”
Yeah, “Mass” stuck out for me, too. Overall a good album, a bit too harsh and noisy for listening while working, though. But that also applies to a lot of Heckers output.
- 1 2 3 - Pole
- And Their Refinement of the Decline - Stars of the Lid
- Plume - Loscil
- The Sound of Lights When Dim - Slow Dancing Society
Have been listening to Chihei Hatakeyama’s albums a lot while working and studying. Coastal Railroads in Memories is my favorite
Hiemal by Hiemal, they’ve got a bunch of other similar dark ambient albums too
To be honest, this album is closer to folk, but his more recent stuff is more ambient. I love this record though. The title track is a stunning piece.
Patrick O’Hearn!
