Best ambient albums of all times?

HiKite

Hi folks,

I'm trying to fill my "walkman" with lots and lots of ambient, melodic music; we're having a baby soon and need some chilled background sounds! I found this list online, and have some of these albums already, eg Brian Eno and Aphex Twin: http://www.scaruffi.com/music/ambient.html

I'm just looking for some more suggestions, as I'm probably missing some recent gems!

Cheers,

e.

old gregg

Biosphere - Substrata


always gets my number 1 vote. You can get it direct from the good folks at Touch Music

John

+1 for Biosphere.

Stars of the Lid are worth checking out, Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid and And Their Refinement of the Decline are good places to start.

Coil's Time Machines is another great one.

Nurse With Wound Soliloquy for Lilith too.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

Klaus Schulze - Timewind

Krieg

Thanks for the names so far, I just listened to biosphere and it gets a thumbs up from me.

My own favourite
Sephiroth - cathedron

ball ox

Carefull with the Aphex twin if you want him to grow up sane :eek::D

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

Also, I don't know how minimal you want your ambient, but if the answer is very, check out Steve Roach, guy lives in the desert in Arizona and churns out lots of cool, hypnotic ambient records.

If you're interested, try Reflections in Suspension, his second (1984) and probably most famous album, or my personal favourite, Midnight Moon from 2000, which features some very dark, spacious ambient pieces with some heavily distorted (not in the noisy sense) acoustic guitars...

Another Klaus Schulze recommendation, try out Farscape, a recent 2CD collaboration he did with Lisa Gerrard (Dead Can Dance), largely percussionless, again with a slightly dark tone to some of the tracks, and very electronic, heavily sequenced. Not quite 'ambient' as such though.

SPK's Zamia Lehmanni (Songs of Byzantine Flowers (1986), if you've heard of SPK before you're probably thinking angle grinder accompaniment to garbage can tub-thumping, but this album is completely different to the rest, lots of samples, choirs, chanting, (sampled) orchestration and all that. Very interesting album.

Robert Rich & B. Lustmord - Stalker (2006), an album they made to accompany the Tarkovsky movie. If you've ever seen the film, you can probably guess what the music sounds like, lush and slow moving to match the cinematography, deep, dense and forboding sounds add to the sense of discord. Somewhat like Biosphere.

Ash Ra Tempel/Manuel Goettsching - Inventions For Electric Guitar (1974), as the title suggests, this is electric guitar music, but it has more in common with Tangerine Dream than rock. In fact, the back of the album includes the disclaimer "Music, effects and sounds are played with the electric guitar only. There are no other instruments used!", and you'd be forgiven for thinking the big Moog or an ARP appears on the record. Included this one because it's a lot brighter than the rest :-)

A few youtube clips so you can check out some of the stuff I mentioned...(not embedded so I don't ruin the thread with 5 videos on top of one another!)


Robert Rich & Lustmord - Stalker

Ash Ra Tempel - Inventions For Electric Guitar

Klaus Schulze & Lisa Gerrard - Farscape

SPK - Zamia Lehmanni

Steve Roach - Midnight Moon

ntlbell

[SIZE=+1]Woob 1194[/SIZE]

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

Since you mentioned having a baby, check out Soothing Sounds for Baby by Raymond Scott. Don't be put off by the name, this is really really first class electronic music by one of the true pioneers, way ahead of his time, there before Kraftwerk, there before Silver Apples, Raymond Scott.

Raymond Scott - Soothing Sounds For Baby

DominoDub

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI wrote: »

Since you mentioned having a baby, check out Soothing Sounds for Baby by Raymond Scott. Don't be put off by the name, this is really really first class electronic music by one of the true pioneers, way ahead of his time, there before Kraftwerk, there before Silver Apples, Raymond Scott.

Raymond Scott - Soothing Sounds For Baby

Was in this tread early on but you beat me to it as was reading about him last week http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/24/jazz-electronicmusic

Scubadevils

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI wrote: »

Since you mentioned having a baby, check out Soothing Sounds for Baby by Raymond Scott. Don't be put off by the name, this is really really first class electronic music by one of the true pioneers, way ahead of his time, there before Kraftwerk, there before Silver Apples, Raymond Scott.

Raymond Scott - Soothing Sounds For Baby

Must check that out too, cheers.

My 4 year old daughter has been listening to ambient music every night since she was about 2, especially the various ambient works by Eno which are perfect as they are mainly atmospheric ambience - some of the Fax releases are in a similar vein, especially the following by Tetsu Inoue -

http://www.discogs.com/Tetsu-Inoue-Ambiant-Otaku/release/99901

I would also highly recommend the ambient compilations from Merck (label), Aurora 1 & 2, both really excellent...

http://beta.bleep.com/index.php?page=release_details&releaseid=15137

http://beta.bleep.com/index.php?page=release_details&releaseid=15144

The Pop Ambient compilations are also excellent from the label Kompakt...

http://beta.bleep.com/index.php?page=release_details&releaseid=9004#

Oh and +100 for Substrata, an absolutely essential release.

John

As an experiment, if I have a child they're going to be reared exclusively on Merzbow.

Scubadevils

John wrote: »

As an experiment, if I have a child they're going to be reared exclusively on Merzbow.

Might drive the child insane - Could also throw in some Pan Sonic for good measure.

John

Too mellow! Japanoise all the way!

Scubadevils

I've only heard Merzbow on youtube and could tolerate about 1 minutes worth!

DominoDub

John wrote: »

As an experiment, if I have a child they're going to be reared exclusively on Merzbow.

Was thinking about this tread at the Fennesz gig last night ,,not so strange now

Loved white noise when I was a kid ,,Hair dryer was oK but the "Hoover" was the best

http://www.lullaby.org.uk/

John

Felixdhc wrote: »

I've only heard Merzbow on youtube and could tolerate about 1 minutes worth!

I take it you won't be buying the Merzbox then?

DominoDub wrote: »

Was thinking about this tread at the Fennesz gig last night ,,not so strange now

Loved white noise when I was a kid ,,Hair dryer was oK but the "Hoover" was the best

http://www.lullaby.org.uk/

If you saw a chap with a camera (I appeared to be the only person with a camera) in a black t-shirt and grey jeans, that was me.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

DominoDub wrote: »

Was in this tread early on but you beat me to it as was reading about him last week http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/24/jazz-electronicmusic

Wow, that's a really cool article :-) Would love to see his house!

I think one of the guys from Devo owns the original Electronium, he had a go at trying to get it up and working, but without any instructions the entire thing was far too complicated...

DominoDub wrote: »

Loved white noise when I was a kid ,,Hair dryer was oK but the "Hoover" was the best

Haha!
I never liked hair driers, but my dad had an old angle poise light that I would spend hours flexing and plucking the springs to get different sounds, no wonder I grew up to love the likes of Einstuerzende Neubauten and Test Dept :-D

DominoDub

If you saw a chap with a camera (I appeared to be the only person with a camera) in a black t-shirt and grey jeans, that was me.

Nice pics John love the one with the BLUE light beam on his head.

May just have seen you , will say hi next time , I was one of the people standing in front of you just like the scene out of "close encounters of the third kind" watching the alien music !

John

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI wrote: »

Haha!
I never liked hair driers, but my dad had an old angle poise light that I would spend hours flexing and plucking the springs to get different sounds, no wonder I grew up to love the likes of Einstuerzende Neubauten and Test Dept :-D

I used to do that too!

DominoDub wrote: »

Nice pics John love the one with the BLUE light beam on his head.

Cheers!

May just have seen you , will say hi next time , I was one of the people standing in front of you just like the scene out of "close encounters of the third kind" watching the alien music !

Do, it's always nice to meet folk at gigs. We should really have a gig buddy thread or something...

zenmonk

We had a baby in november and he listenst to Eno (Apollo) and some jazz too but the music to American Beauty is his fave.

HiKite

This is brilliant, a whole untapped realm for me; my better half likes most of the suggestions too, so many thanks all! Timewind is going down a treat at the mo..

rcaz

Do you specifically want to stick to electronic stuff?

If not, Arvo Part!

Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten

Spiegel im Spiegel

John

Part is beautiful, especially any of the recordings with The Hilliard Ensemble. Miserere is incredible.

cornbb

More non-electronic stuff: Morgan Feldman's Coptic Light - http://www.last.fm/music/Morton+Feldman/_/Coptic+Light

John

Just a word of good news to Biosphere fans, new live album out next month on Touch. A promo arrived today and I'm just listening to it now, it's pretty good so far!

damonjewel

Popol Vuh - the soundtrack to the movie Aguirre is a good start. In the garden of Pharoahs is another good start.

Scubadevils

John wrote: »

Just a word of good news to Biosphere fans, new live album out next month on Touch. A promo arrived today and I'm just listening to it now, it's pretty good so far!

Cool... look forward to that.

Another great one is 76:14 by Global Communication...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/76-14-Global-Communication/dp/B000024DL2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1242170213&sr=8-2

Its not their very best work - quite pricey for what I would consider their very best...

http://www.discogs.com/sell/item/4998621?ev=bp_titl

DominoDub

Have the Original free card sleeve CD copy of "Blood-Music-Pentamerous-Metamorphosis" that came with the Chapterhouse album. Picked it up for £4.99 around the time in Freebird records back in the Day. (One for sale at €249.00 now discogs LOL )

http://www.discogs.com/Chapterhouse-Retranslated-By-Global-Communication-Blood-Music-Pentamerous-Metamorphosis/master/16312

eviltimeban

I'd recommend "Sakura" by Susumu Yokota. And of course the Brian Eno classics.

There's some homegrown stuff too in this vein, from Geisha: www.myspace.com/thesoundsofgeisha.

You can download the geisha album in full here.

Scubadevils

DominoDub wrote: »

Have the Original free card sleeve CD copy of "Blood-Music-Pentamerous-Metamorphosis" that came with the Chapterhouse album. Picked it up for £4.99 around the time in Freebird records back in the Day. (One for sale at €249.00 now discogs LOL )

http://www.discogs.com/Chapterhouse-Retranslated-By-Global-Communication-Blood-Music-Pentamerous-Metamorphosis/master/16312

Wow, never knew it was originally free with the Chapterhouse album, I only have a digital version of the remix but been seriously tempted several times to fork out for the actual release. I did pick up the Blood Music album there a few months back which in itself is a very good album.

Another huge recommendation for ambient listening - Loscil, any of his albums...

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Loscil

Pan American is another favourite of mine, every album is really excellent, just picked up his latest today in Tower Records and again a huge recommendation...

http://www.discogs.com/PanAmerican-White-Bird-Release/release/1654938

John

Yeah, that new Pan American is great. I really love it.

Scubadevils

John wrote: »

Yeah, that new Pan American is great. I really love it.

You should definitely check out Loscil then too if you haven't already, equally amazing and very similar style.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

damonjewel wrote: »

Popol Vuh - the soundtrack to the movie Aguirre is a good start. In the garden of Pharoahs is another good start.

Great call on Popol Vuh, and especially Aguirre. Some really really beautiful music on that

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBD0vZNlxtI&feature=related
This will probably be a bit noodly new-agey for most, but I've always liked Kitaro, a Japanese New Age/Electronic composer. Calling this kind of stuff ambient is the sort of well deservedly maligned practice that makes people think ambient is something that it is not, but it might still be of interest to some.

thusspakeblixa

John wrote: »

As an experiment, if I have a child they're going to be reared exclusively on Merzbow.

I had thought about raising a child on Merzbow and Melt Banana before, oddly enough.

Terry Cotta

check out Kettel

http://www.discogs.com/Kettel-Through-Friendly-Waters/release/368271

and the other stuff from Sending Orbs

http://www.discogs.com/label/Sending+Orbs

Bochum Welt is deadly as well. Really nice synth lines.

http://www.discogs.com/Bochum-Welt-ROB-Robotic-Operating-Buddy/release/1241494

Also check this out this label which releases under Creative Commons. Some nice stuff to be had.

http://www.archaichorizon.com/

You'll here some good stuff on this station as well.

http://www.limbikfreq.com/

Scubadevils

Yes definitely agree with Sending Orbs as a label recommendation... the only problem is trying to get your hands on some of their releases, gold-dust springs to mind! I often listen to 'Disfold' by Blamstrain as my going to sleep album, great release. Also HIGHLY recommend Yagya, absolutely brilliant producer.

As for Kettel, some of his releases definitely for relaxing/sleeping but several are quite upbeat or playful in their structure - I don't have 'Volleyed Iron' which I believe is his most ambient. I see Myam James 2 is now out, must get that!

run_Forrest_run

I also recommend Stars of the Lid (Tired Sounds of.. & Refinement of the Decline & Avec Laudenum). I saw them perform in Cork last year which was excellent.

Most stuff from Brian Eno (especially Music for Airports & Thursday Afternoon)

Make sure to check out Windy and Carl too.

Biosphere (Substrata & Man with a Movie Camera) - It was actually Substrata that got me into all this type of music, love that album still after all these years.

cL0h

Howie B - Music for Babies is an obvious choice.

Riqis

Alio Die - Leaves Net
(Actually, I could mention just about everything by Alio Die--that one though is really incredible. It's like the soundtrack of a Near Death Experience, and I don't mean this in a "negative" sense. It isn't dark at all, in a way, but deeeeep...! Really haunts me, that record.) Should you like Alio Die, try "Password For Entheogenic Experience", "Sol Niger" & "Il Sogno Di Un Piano Veneziano A Parigi", too. The Italians make some amazing ambient, anyway.

Then, there's the "Expanding Horizon" which Alio Die produced with Mathias Grassow.. which means that here's a collaboration of, in my opinion, two of the greatest ambient producers alive.

Also I recommend:
Busso de la Lune - Around Borderline
(A bit more instrumental, very quiet, but enthralling!)

cosmic

Autechre - EP7
Well, anything from Autechre really!

Squarepusher - Budakhan Mindphone - very tasty!

:pac:

cornbb

cosmic wrote: »

Squarepusher - Budakhan Mindphone - very tasty!

:pac:

Squarepusher isn't the first name to spring to mind when talking about ambient albums but when it comes to that album you're absolutely right actually. Never thought of him as a maker of ambient music before

Nedermeyer

"Drift" by Nosaj Thing.

Type "aquarium" into www.hypem.com

It is bliss

cornbb

Nedermeyer wrote: »

"Drift" by Nosaj Thing.

Type "aquarium" into www.hypem.com

It is bliss

Sounds good, I've just checked out the album on emusic and may get around to buying it...

dinneenp

Ulrich Schnauss- far away trains passing by- stunning.

Or The ORB, UFORB- suprised they havne't been mentioned yet.

old gregg

If you've not checked out the work of Anthony Paul Kirby who records as 'Nunc Stans' and 'The Circular Ruins' and 'Lammergeyer' then you could well be in for quite a treat.

There's much of his stuff available for free download from his record label's site. Some choice music to try would be:
Nunc Stans - Land (some excellent ambient on this EP) http://www.pingthings.com/ptnr004nuncstans.zip

The Circular Ruins - Retrospective (a seriously wonderful free compilation of his work to download in hi bitrate) http://www.dataobscura.com/free.php

cornbb

dinneenp wrote: »

Ulrich Schnauss- far away trains passing by- stunning.

Or The ORB, UFORB- suprised they havne't been mentioned yet.

I do really like the Orb - I think "Adventures beyond the Ultraworld" would have to be their best ambient work! On paper it sounds like a crap album but its grown on me an awful lot over time.

Not the biggest fan of Ulrich Schnauss myself, but I know plenty who like him so recommendation noted

Scubadevils

I'm a fan of The Orb and have been a long time but I wouldn't recommend them in this scenario as they are not ambient enough to send a baby to sleep! Neither UForb or Adventures is strictly ambient from start to finish, plenty of relatively upbeat moments... same for all of their albums. They spawned the 'Ambient House' genre back in the day.

Terry Cotta

Brian Eno - Apollo - Atmospheres And Soundtracks

http://www.discogs.com/Brian-Eno-With-Daniel-Lanois-Roger-Eno-Apollo-Atmospheres-Soundtracks/master/6531

A great album thats the soundtrack for the Apollo Missions documentary "For All Mankind". Keep on eye on BBC3/4 because they showed it the other night and they'll probably show it again. They doing a lot of Apollo/NASA docs at the moment for the 40th anniversary.

Heres the end of the film....A nice tune and brilliant images.

Scubadevils

It's hard to beat Apollo really when it comes to the gems of ambient music and especially 'An Ending'... never fails to put shivers through me, not matter how many times I listen to it, a truly spectacular piece of music.

c_o_ck p_i_ss chillage

These 4 are definitely in my Top 10 (no particular order)

Harold Budd - White Arcades

"Balthus Bemused By Color" excerpt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qI6sotgXkM

Roger Eno - Voices

"A Paler Sky"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Aqn4y5FgiM

Harold Budd and Brian Eno - The Pearl

"Their Memories"

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

Brian Eno and Harold Budd - The Plateaux of Mirror

"First Light"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgF99zTv6nY