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How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)
- krylon 11mo agoI love this album. I often listen to it when programming, Ambient (or more generally: calm, instrumental music) helps me focus.
- ktallett 11mo agoAll of his and his brother, Roger's albums are great for this reason. I would recommend Svaneborg Kardyb as well, who are a great instrumental band.
- gonzalohm 11mo agoDo you have any recommendations?
- badmonster 11mo agoAbsolutely! For instrumental focus music, check out Nils Frahm or Max Richter. Do you prefer more electronic or acoustic sounds?
- averne_ 11mo agoNot OP but I also often to listen to ambient while programming. A couple recommendations would be "Music for Nine Post Cards" and other works by Hiroshi Yoshimura, and "Music for 18 musicians" and others by Steve Reich. In fact, the use of loops described in this article reminded me of what Reich called "phases", basically the same concept of emerging/shifting melodic patterns between different samples.
- jimlikeslimes 11mo agoFor a good intro the Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast radio is well worth listening to. Also their write up on how and why they produce the broadcast is really interesting.
- ofalkaed 11mo agoBiosphere - Shenzhou and Cirque, Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of The Stars of the Lid are favorites of mine. I would also include everything by Microstoria which is not ambient but it works to the same end.
- krylon 11mo agoStars of the Lid are sooooo good, yes! Their entire catalog is amazing.
- bongripper 11mo ago[dead]
- faidit 11mo agoDrone Zone on SomaFM (free internet radio) was how I discovered a lot of that stuff. Although they don't play the old classics as much these days, it's still good and they have a few similar stations there https://somafm.com/player24/station/dronezone https://somafm.com/player24/station/dronezone
- PaulDavisThe1st 11mo agoI generally find Deep Space One more appropriate for most of my coding, though I used Drone Zone a lot many years ago. I've been supporting SomaFM for more than 20 years now, and am so grateful for it. Not just the ambient stuff, but Secret Agent and several others too.
- globular-toast 11mo agoAphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works {85-92,Volume II}.
- dijksterhuis 11mo agomusic for programming podcast: https://musicforprogramming.net/latest/ https://musicforprogramming.net/latest/ some of the artists below are not strictly speaking ambient as in brian eno kind of ambient jogging house, r beny, biosphere, anthony childs (surgeon doing ambient), abul mogard, alessandro cortini, alva noto (glitchy ambient), benoit piouliard, bing & ruth, bvdub, mu tate, jake muir, ulla, log et3rnal, space afrika, heurco s, donato dozzy - plays bee mask, imaginary softwoods, jo johnson, koen holtkamp, mountains, kyle bobby dunn, oneohtrix point never, neel, pendant, romeo poirier, domenique dumont, …
- tuzemec 11mo agoFor me - Aes Dana (Season 5 is still my favorite) and Carbon Based Lifeforms (Hydroponic Garden, World of Sleepers, Interloper). Actually, check out the whole Ultimae catalogue: https://bandcamp.com/ultimae https://bandcamp.com/ultimae
- krylon 11mo agoCarbon Based Lifeforms are amazing.
- ErneX 11mo agoTheir album World of Sleepers is my favourite from them.
- ilvez 11mo agoSadly they peaked pre 2010 and then slowly became average.. Was huge fan on the days and saw them live once and DJ set another time..
- Fnoord 11mo agoI guess I agree (used to be a massive 90's EBM collector together with my ex, though I kind of got out of the loop of EBM end of 00's / start of 10's). Seeing a Woob album from 1994 recommended a few comments below <3 for CBL, I do like the track ~42 degrees. How we used to find music: go to the record store every week to listen to whatever you couldn't afford, look at P2P networks at people who like similar music as you, and browse their collections. Eventually, use Discogs to search. Or simply talk with other people (at parties, on the internet) who also like the same music. How we can find music nowadays: Spotify (and such). I mean, seriously. Their suggestions can open you up to a plethora of new artists. If you then look at the top 10, chances are you'll like some of their work. I found a lot of music this way, for all kind of genres. As Valve's Gabe used to say: piracy is a service problem. Though I am not sure Spotify is so good for the artists, given they earn pennies via that. ..and it is still nowhere to getting and downloading and listening 24/7 to every new release (or, well... trying to), using SMB to the NAS (which automatically gets the releases from a scene FTP) and Winamp locally to add some .m3u files.
- krylon 11mo agoSleep by Max Richter is great (and very long) Sunset Mission by Bohren & Der Club of Gore is very very sleepy Jazz (they have released more albums, but this one is my favorite by a wide margin) Long Ambients 1 & 2 by Moby - he was kind enough to make them available for download free of charge, too Under Wires and Search Lights by Marconi Union In A Silent Way by Miles Davis Pretty much anything by Sigur Rós. It's not strictly speaking instrumental, but the lyrics are Icelandic, which I don't speak, so it's close enough Cocteau Twins recorded many very ambient-ish albums. Not instrumental, but the "lyrics" are mostly glossolalia, so not distracting (at least for me).
- fragmede 11mo agoHere that is on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3d3e49rSmge86cU4D4u8mn https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3d3e49rSmge86cU4D4u8mn
- Towaway69 11mo agoNo particular order: Max Richter, John Cage, Tangerine Dreams, Klaus Schulze, Gavin Bryars, Richard Chartier, Asmus Tietchens, Tomaga, Boards of Canada, Stars of the Lid, William Basiniki, Joanna Brouk, Pauline Oliveros ... I do way too much coding...
- benrutter 11mo ago> Pauline Oliveros Yes yes yes! Finally someone who won't make fun of me for listening to Horse Singd from a Cloud. You should add Laurie Spiegel to your list, something tells me you'd enjoy.
- dackle 11mo ago"Deep Listening" by Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster and Panaiotis is also excellent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U__lpPDTUS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U__lpPDTUS4
- Towaway69 11mo ago> Laurie Spiegel Just listening to "Appalachian Grove I" - Nice, thanks for the tip :thumbsup:
- tuyiown 11mo agoI've not seen Global Communication mentioned, 76:14 really is masterpiece. (Gamers will recognize a tune featured on GTA IV)
- trq01758 11mo agoYeah, everything's interconnected as Tangerine Dream got to work on GTA V soundtrack. There is this note about that track on Wikipedia: The track "5:23" is included in the 2008 video game Grand Theft Auto IV and appears on the soundtrack album The Music of Grand Theft Auto IV. In the digital release it is listed as "Maiden Voyage". This track is very similar to, but does not credit, the song "Love on a Real Train" by Tangerine Dream from the Risky Business soundtrack. They had remixed the song for a then upcoming Tangerine Dream remix album but had their effort rejected so released it as 5'23 instead.
- arcanemachiner 11mo agoHere's a playlist list of long-form ambient drone stuff I've been curating for a couple years now: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGMYnukvmgiXXFxuTKDvZfw-ejEQsfklg https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGMYnukvmgiXXFxuTKDvZfw-e... I listen to it while I work.
- lemonberry 11mo agoAphex Twin's "Digeridoo" is incredible. It's a 4-song EP so it repeats often, but that's a feature for me.
- Towaway69 11mo agoA good place for experimental music is ubu web, in fact Brian Eno is also over there[1]. Edit: Also if you're a programmer and what to learn a new programming language, then check out SuperCollider[2]. You can use that to create your own ambient sounds. SC has a great library for creating user interfaces along with creating sound. [1]: https://ubu.com/film/eno_77_interview.html https://ubu.com/film/eno_77_interview.html [2]: https://supercollider.github.io/ https://supercollider.github.io/
- ElectroSlayer 11mo agoThere's also Strudel as a programmatic music composing app: https://strudel.cc/ https://strudel.cc/
- Libidinalecon 11mo agoThe best is the instrumentals on David Bowie's Low IMO. I know people love Music for Airports but I think it is incredibly boring compared to what Eno did with Bowie. Beyond that the first few albums by The Orb are top notch. Balam Acab - See Birds and Wander/Wonder are incredible.
- leokennis 11mo agoI have so many suggestions. But if I had to pick one: Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of Start of the Lid
- ilvez 11mo agoWoob 1194 by Woob. Immersive, maybe darker than most would like, but deep and very graphical sound. https://woob.bandcamp.com/album/woob-1194 https://woob.bandcamp.com/album/woob-1194
- matteason 11mo agoI have an 'Ambient Radio' channel on https://ambiph.one https://ambiph.one, my soundscape generator: https://ambiph.one/?m=1-Ambient+Radio-bf100 https://ambiph.one/?m=1-Ambient+Radio-bf100 There are some great less-well-known artists on there - if you tap the album art it'll link you to their Bandcamp if they have one
- ilvez 11mo agoIf drone with later neoclassical touch then Marsen Jules has delivered very stable and top tier. Brilliant guy. https://marsenjules.bandcamp.com/ https://marsenjules.bandcamp.com/
- louiereederson 11mo agoi have a 5hr playlist on spotify called lost in the sea of ambien which happens to have many of the artist recos here. title is a reference to haruomi hosono who said he got lost in the sea of ambient in the 80s after leaving ymo.
- goosejuice 11mo agohttps://richardhoughten.bandcamp.com/music https://richardhoughten.bandcamp.com/music https://domeniquedumont.bandcamp.com/ https://domeniquedumont.bandcamp.com/ https://marylattimoreharpist.bandcamp.com/ https://marylattimoreharpist.bandcamp.com/ https://archive.org/details/Tipper-CosmAmbientSet https://archive.org/details/Tipper-CosmAmbientSet https://williamtyler.bandcamp.com/ https://williamtyler.bandcamp.com/ None of these artists are strictly ambient though
- eej71 11mo agoYou might like Patrick O'Hearn.
- bradly 11mo agoA lot of great recs in this thread, but I'll a couple others I didn't see listed yet: Mort Garson: Mother Earth's Plantasia Hiroshi Yoshimura: Surround Satoshi Ashikawa: Still Way (Wave Notation 2) Shameless plug... Search BirdyMusic.com in Spotify/Apple Music/YouTube Music to hear some ambient music algo generated based on realtime Birdnet detections and weather in my backyard.
- jacquesm 11mo agoHania Rani: Esja.
- doron 11mo agoFor a more droned style - the works of Abul Mogard
- fallinditch 11mo agoI recommend Stair (2:22:22) by datassette for focus and ambient background. The artist recorded the sound of downtown Chicago overnight from his hotel and then processed and mixed this together with processed sounds from MS-DOS strategy game soundtracks from the 80s. Brilliant. https://datassette.bandcamp.com/track/stair-2-22-22 https://datassette.bandcamp.com/track/stair-2-22-22
- dasneueprogram 11mo agoDatassette has a site with mixes, from himself and others, all "intended for listening while ${task} to focus the brain and inspire the mind." Concerning games, Datassette released a brilliantly beautiful arcade shooter called (Utopia Must Fall)[https://store.steampowered.com/app/2849680/Utopia_Must_Fall/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2849680/Utopia_Must_Fall/], with lots of retro sounds.
- hylaride 11mo agoLoscil - First Narrows album is great and was used in the game Osmos. Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing by Album, particularly the songs "passing by" and "knuddelmous" Kromattic "song "porcelain" Peardiver - song "hangout" lechiffrebeats - song Moonlight Garden Lori Travel - song "apple lamp" King of Woolworths - Song "Theydon" Aisake - song "autumn Leaves" Christopher Willits - song "wide" Northscape - song "approaching the trig point" Kiasmos - song "blurred" Celer - song "Diphenhydramine" Tony Anderson - song "Ariana" East Forest - Album "Music for Mushrooms: A soundtrack for the Psychedelic Practitioner" If you're on Apple Music, look for the shared playlist Lo-Fi Chill: https://music.apple.com/ca/playlist/lo-fi-chill/pl.1d5ead185d8a4a9089f3b952770b762c https://music.apple.com/ca/playlist/lo-fi-chill/pl.1d5ead185...
- anjel 11mo agoThe Dead Texan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zebxXliFtg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zebxXliFtg
- jcynix 11mo agoI'll second Max Richter's Sleep. Timeline by Edith Progue might interest you too. The later is my favorite xcalm down" CD even before Max Richter's, when I'm too restless to sleep. And maybe Glitch (music) might be of interest as a starting point, especially the "Clicks & Cuts Series" which gave me a lot of pointers to interesting niche artists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clicks_%26_Cuts_Series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clicks_%26_Cuts_Series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_%28music%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_%28music%29
- cal_dent 11mo agoHear me out...the sim city soundtracks are excellent
- JoBrad 11mo agoThe radio show/podcast Echoes with John DiLeberto is a great way to find new ambient/chill music. https://echoes.org/ https://echoes.org/
- littlexsparkee 11mo agoMissing here are Gas (Wolfgang Voigt - Pop might be a good first album) and Oval (94diskont is my favorite)
- andyjohnson0 11mo ago> I love this album. I often listen to it when programming Me too. Its been a coding zone favourite of mine for many years. The classical/instrumental version by Bang on a Can [1] is good too. [1] https://www.discogs.com/release/1140705-Bang-On-A-Can-Brian-Eno-Music-For-Airports https://www.discogs.com/release/1140705-Bang-On-A-Can-Brian-...
- soulofmischief 11mo agoThis album helps me wake up, helps me go to sleep, helps me focus, and keeps me centered. Eno's works are so versatile. Another favorite is Eno's Discreet Music. Gives me chills every time. One of my favorite records to fly to.
- bamboozled 11mo agoI've never really understood the appeal honestly. I feel it's more of a "masterpiece" in a historical sense, because it was an early electronic / ambient work which no one had really heard before and that gave it a huge cult following. Which is understandable, but outside of that, I don't see how it's any more interesting than basically any other ambient work of which I would say there is much much much better. Robin Guthrie comes to mind... I don't see it a masterpiece in the same way I see Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" is. The reason? Because I don't think there is a better Jazz album, ever, where as with Eno's early Ambient work, I think it was surpassed very quickly. That said I'll give it another listen today and see if I can hear the magic. Am I missing something?
- defrost 11mo agoPeople have many tastes; some like Steve Reich, others Wim Mertens, Michael Nyman, or even Shostakovich. If Guthrie does it for you (with or without Elizabeth Fraser?) perhaps The White Arcades also fits the bill, it's a Guthrie, Eno, Budd collaboration. One thing to admire about Eno is just how deeply and broadly connected he was as an engineer and contributor to so many artists and albums. David Bowie owes much to Fripp, Eno, Belew, ... etc.
- ktallett 11mo agoI am always vastly impressed by the beauty of instrumental albums, and just how memorable and easy listening they are. Eno is of course so high up the list, but as I have got older I have explored instrumental music, from classical to jazz far more and there is true beauty and artistry in conveying your message and making people feel with just instruments and no words.
- MultifokalHirn 11mo ago"Ambient 4: On Land" is for me one of the most beautiful and mystical Albums of all time
- pickledoyster 11mo agoI did not realize Eno could not read sheet music. I always thought he used graphical expressions in his presentations as an artistic choice.
- rckt 11mo agoWow. I turned on the randomized tracks under the "Deconstructing 1/2" and it's beautiful.
- interleave 11mo agoAlso a huge Eno fan here. Put together, I probably have listened to Music for Airports, Another Green World, Taking Tiger Mountain and Discreet Music more than any other artist. Maybe Philip Glass comes in at a close second. Anyways, in 2016, Tero Parviainen (@teropa) shared this really cool long-form exploration called "JavaScript Systems Music – Learning Web Audio by Recreating The Works of Steve Reich and Brian Eno" that I enjoyed tremendously (and I don't even like Javascript!) Check it out at: https://teropa.info/blog/2016/07/28/javascript-systems-music.html https://teropa.info/blog/2016/07/28/javascript-systems-music...
- bradly 11mo agoThanks for sharing. I've been on a path of algo music with JavaScript (I also do not enjoy JavaScript) and have mostly just guess-and-checked my way through it. I'm going to work through this as my advent of code project. Yesterday I put up a little dictionary of synth sounds that I'm building out to help me on my journey (https://synthrecipes.org https://synthrecipes.org). The goal to be able to export any particular sound in a format for different live coding environments. Sounds are defined in a JSON format like https://synthrecipes.org/recipes/acid-bass.json https://synthrecipes.org/recipes/acid-bass.json. I'll open source it today so other can submit sounds. -- Edit: I've open sourced the repo so others can improve existing sounds and add new ones. https://github.com/bradly/synth-recipes/tree/main https://github.com/bradly/synth-recipes/tree/main
- HansardExpert 11mo agoDid you know https://play.generative.fm/browse https://play.generative.fm/browse
- bradly 11mo agoI did not! Very cool. Thanks for sharing. Is there a way to see the source for the sounds?
- criddell 11mo agoThat's really cool. Music is funny. I played the closed hi-hat sound (https://synthrecipes.org/#closed-hi-hat https://synthrecipes.org/#closed-hi-hat) a couple of times and my brain instantly started playing AC/DC's, Back in Black. I probably haven't listened to that song in 15 years and now I'm shuffling AC/DC on Spotify. Also, the "Sub bass" link might be broken: https://synthrecipes.org/#Sub-bass https://synthrecipes.org/#Sub-bass
- tomhow 11mo agoPreviously: How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33172448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33172448 - Oct 2022 (127 comments)
- flobosg 11mo agoRelated: “A 6-Hour Time-Stretched Version of Brian Eno's Music for Airports” – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43520122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43520122
- zebproj 11mo agoI often use the general algorithm for 2/1 as my "hello world" when I'm building new generative music systems. You don't need too many ingredients to set it up, and it yields some surprisingly decent sounding results. The most recent one[0] I made was done when I was playing around with Rust, WASM, and WebAudio. (You'll need to press somewhere to start the sound) 0: https://pbat.ch/isorhythms/ https://pbat.ch/isorhythms/
- bradly 11mo agoGreat sound! This Sonic Pi example really blew my mind when I first heard it. Such a rich sound out of three notes. use_synth :hollow with_fx :reverb, mix: 0.7 do live_loop :note1 do play choose([:D4,:E4]), attack: 6, release: 6 sleep 8 end live_loop :note2 do play choose([:Fs4,:G4]), attack: 4, release: 5 sleep 10 end live_loop :note3 do play choose([:A4, :Cs5]), attack: 5, release: 5 sleep 11 end end
- jacquesm 11mo agoNice one! Really like the visualization, as a note starts expanding I try to predict what it will sound like.
- matt_daemon 11mo agoThis is an insanely cool blog
- cons0le 11mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geL0UVnSfvQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geL0UVnSfvQ
- jmclnx 11mo agoI like this type of music when working and other things, that does not get many mentions. And they play a decent amount of Brian Eno's stuff. http://www.echoesofbluemars.org/ http://www.echoesofbluemars.org/ I think their bluemars stream is great.
- welcome_dragon 11mo agoWow! I had no idea blue Mars was still around. I've been looking for an alternative to soma fm
- jmclnx 11mo agoWhen Blue Mars disappeared, echos appeared to play the same music :)
- JKCalhoun 11mo agoConny Plank was a catalyst or genius (or both). He keeps showing up when I look into some of my favorite produced music. Besides Kraftwerk, I think the Ultravox! album, "Systems of a Romance", was the next time I saw his name. And then, more and more…
- Kreutzer 11mo ago>To dig deeper into this style of tape loop ambient music, check out William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops. William Basinski used a similar concept to Brian Eno, only the tapes he used rapidly deteriorated upon playback, causing the musical material to degrade over the length of the recording. I've never "bought" the story of Disintegration Loops that Basinski tells about its creation. The idea he composed it literally during the 9/11 attacks was just a silly attempt to add gravitas to abstract music. The more you think about it, the more off-putting it becomes. Reminds me of Stockhausen's stupendous remark about 9/11 being "the biggest work of art there has ever been". In the same vein, tape doesn't normally just deteriorate before your eyes. The gradual change in sound of the loops is more likely due to the guitar pedal chain he was running his loops into (Basinski tends to omit this part of its creation).
- jdee 11mo agoI went to see William Basinski 'live' in Liverpool at Yoko Ono's Tung Auditorium. William stood in front of his MacBook, waving his arms like a conductor and drinking red wine. Halfway through, he said he was tired with travelling and left the stage. The audience continued to sit there for another hour, staring at the lid of the MacBook that was making the music. When it finished, we applauded the MacBook and left. Quite surreal. Very enjoyable though.
- pram 11mo agoThat isn't true. The "loop tape" was already like 20 years old IIRC, it was already disintegrated by 9/11
- olelele 11mo agoThis. He was digitizing older works on tapes where the ferrous material starts breaking away from the plastic, literally disintegrating the sound. It's what happens to old tape.
- uslic001 11mo agoOne of my first ambient records I bought after I got into Music for Airports by Eno. Still one of my favorites. After those two I got into Stars for the Lid.
- xrd 11mo agoReading this article makes me want to point out the difference between commercial music software and open source software. What stands out here was that Eno used very simple sounds and looped them. This was not a complicated rube-goldberg machine he built to finally get to these masterpieces. It was simple recordings of voices, looped. Reggie Watts makes incredible, and non-traditional, electronic house music, basically just his voice and looping machine (granted he does have a 4 octave range, but...). So organic and human. Same for Matthew Herbert, see his manifesto: https://prruk.org/personal-contract-for-the-composition-of-music-incorporating-the-manifesto-of-mistakes/ https://prruk.org/personal-contract-for-the-composition-of-m.... It is all organic. This is what makes me a little sad when I play with all the amazing open source tools on Linux. Ardour is great. Hydrogen is great. Sonic-PI is incredible. But, the UI's are not the best. Getting started requires a ton of reading and researching. It is a long way to just "play" (I mean playing like a child, not playing piano). For example, I wish Sonic-PI had a better way of writing music than JUST writing out ruby. I like ruby as a language, and I'm surprised there is not a way to easily extend the Sonic-PI tool so I can plugin my Novation drum pad and easily trigger samples and notes. I can absolutely watch for MIDI notes from Novation, and take actions in ruby code, but it kills my creativity to do it that way. I wish I could build a tiny set of buttons that shows me that which is not a stream of logs. I never feel like Sonic-PI puts me into a creative mode. It feels like trying to jam the beauty of a harp into emacs. And, I love emacs. Open source music software could have bespoke custom UIs for any user. I'm a command line guy so I'm part of the problem. But, these tools should be customizable to make our own bespoke UIs which match the beginner level, or the advance level, or anything in between.
- barfoure 11mo agoYou think open source has a UX problem? Try learning to play a guitar. It’s so bad it makes some people’s fingers bleed. People spend years learning how to play and they still say they have a long way to go!
- PaulDavisThe1st 11mo ago> But, the UI's are not the best. Try jumping into any DAW without "a ton of reading and researching". Granted, there are hardware drum machines and sequencers that you can "play" with as a completely fresh user, but these tend to be the exception rather than the rule. The newer generation of hardware sequencers (say the Elektron series) are quite impenetrable without spending a significant amount of time learning about what they can do and how to do it. > Open source music software could have bespoke custom UIs for any user. from the voice of experience, I'll tell you that this makes user support almost impossible, or at least, extremely difficult and frustrating.
- firefax 11mo agoI always assumed he spoke to the airport about what sorts of music it enjoys, this method seems needlessly hostile to user research.
- cromulent 11mo agoI imagined it was what he - as an airport user - thought airports should play.
- Duanemclemore 11mo agoEno has been an inspiration for my entire music listening life. U2's Achtung Baby and Zooropa - both of which Eno was a partner in making - came out in my preteens. It's tough for a kid in the rural midwest to find Brian Eno, but as soon as I got to a place with cultural access I was all over his work. And once Pandora and internet radio came out I was able to go deeper and in to contemporary composition and other related genres. But even with almost 30 years of listening to this stuff, sometimes a really obvious one slips through the cracks. I hadn't heard of or listened to Tim Hecker until just this year. And oh man, I haven't felt this way about finding a "new" artist in a long time. If you want a good entry point start with his mid-career Ravedeath, 1972 [0] and its companion Dropped Pianos (both of which feature the MIT Piano Drop on the cover) and work forward and backward from there. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravedeath,_1972 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravedeath,_1972
- soiltype 11mo agoWeird - I also listened to ambient music for almost a decade before hearing about Tim Hecker. I have to second the recommendation, although I started in a different place - when I first heard Harmony in Ultraviolet, it was like something clicked into place. Ambient music had been missing something and I hadn't even known it. I had a similar experience with Abul Mogard. Whoever they really are is a genius of immense soundscapes.
- xoxxala 11mo agoBrian Eno has this great line from the liner notes for this album: "Ambient Music must be able to accomodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting." I've always found ambient to be perfect for listening while working. Now I understand why!
- soiltype 11mo agoThanks for the quote. It shows why Eno was so successful - I find all my favorites work either as entirely background sound or as a total listening experience on their own.
- ravetcofx 11mo agoI was often confused by Brian Eno and Brian Green, who made one of my favorite albums Music for Home. The later has been a musician and producer for Rufus Wainwright, Michael Bublé, John Legend and others.
- soulofmischief 11mo agoThere is also Brian Greene, the theoretical physicist.
- CompoundEyes 11mo agoI trained myself to take a power nap to track “2/2” on that record. After a really hard workout, getting cleaned up, having a bite to eat and drifting off for 30 minutes so many times it has a warm spot in my heart. I like that music can serve as “functional”. I also recommend Mindspring Memories if you have nostalgia of the personal computing boom for a unique ambient. To me it evokes what trying out a Phillips CD-i at my local department store felt like in 1991. YMMV
- msephton 11mo agoThis was wonderful. So inspiring.