Hi Jeremy!
"Ambient" as a term actually gets used pretty loosely nowadays. Brian Eno,
a brilliant man in so many ways, "invented" it on his releases "Another
Green World", "Discreet Music" and culminating in "Ambient 1: Music for
Airports" Around the time of The Orb's first CD, there was a widespread
groundswell of quasi-techno artists doing ambient textures accompanied by
beats. This style ends up being what most people call "ambient" today. I
think of it more as "chill out" music.
I *highly* recommend finding and reading David Toop's terrific book, "Ocean
Of Sound", sort of a history/meditation on ambient music that really puts in
a artistic perspective. Toop also releases CDs of his own occasionally, but
I have to say I found his "Ocean of Sound" disc to be less than satisfying.
So finally, here's some of my musical picks. Like others' several of these
are not strictly "ambient" (in the Eno sense) but all are recommended:
* Brian Eno - "Another Green World" (actually a variety of styles),
"Discreet Music", "Ambient 1 - Music For Airports", "Apollo: Atmospheres &
Soundtracks"
* Harold Budd/Brian Eno - "The Pearl"
* Harold Budd & Cocteau Twins - "The Moon And The Melodies"
* The KLF - "Chill Out"
* Aphex Twin - "Selected Ambient Works Vol. I" & "Selected Ambient Works
Vol. II"
* Pole "1"
* David Sylvian "Down To Earth" (this was originally a two LP set, one
vocal, the other ambient works with Bill Nelson -- avoid the single CD
version)
* Bill Nelson - "La Belle Et La Bete" (his own soundtrack to the Cocteau
silent film classic)
In addition there are dozens of classic "chill out" releases and artists who
include wonderful ambient tracks amongst other more lively compositions, but
at least you know you've got a lot of leads to track down now.... :-)
Cheers!
John
> First off, I wanted to thank everyone for their input with the ambient
> selections. However, I started to realize that everyone started to include
> many other forms of music into ambient i.e. Orb etc... however, I was under
> the impression that ambient was much slower and "chilled out" like music for
> airports. Maybe I was wrong to assume that was definitive of ambient music.
> Anyways, I'm looking for music that is slow and can send me on a journey.
> I'm going to sift through the list I compiled and try to locate them on the
> web to see how they sound. Thanks again for all your help.
>
> -Jeremy
-- "No man knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan and raised an adolescent." - Mercelene Cox
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