Everything about Ambient Electronica totally explained
Ambient music is a
musical genre in which sound is more important than notes. It is generally identifiable as being broadly atmospheric and environmental in nature.
Ambient music evolved from early 20th century forms of semi-audible music, from the
impressionism of
Erik Satie, through
musique concrete and the
minimalism of
Terry Riley and
Philip Glass, and
Brian Eno's deliberate sub-audible approach.
Later developments found the dreamy non-linear elements of ambient music applied to some forms of rhythmic music presented in
chill-out rooms at
raves and other dance events, but always with the primary feature that the music is intended to drift in and out of the listener's awareness while creating its effect on the listener's consciousness.
History
Turn of the century French composer
Erik Satie created an early form of ambient music that he referred to as "
furniture music" (
Musique d'ameublement), in reference to something that could be played during a dinner whose sound would simply create an atmosphere for that activity rather than be the specific focus of attention.
Early electronic
soundscape music and theories come from the work of
Pierre Schaeffer, considered as the inventor of "
Musique Concrete", who followed the futurists in classifying music into categories such as man made, natural, short and long. He made some of the first electronic music using record players and natural sounds, and cutting up tape, making the first experimental music use of recording and magnetic tape. Even his work can be seen as preempted by
Schopenhauer's ideas of 'soundworlds', literally worlds made up entirely of sounds.
Karlheinz Stockhausen created pioneering electronic musical experiments later in 1955, and these two (amongst others) lay the groundwork for ambient music to appear decades later when music technology had developed.
Brian Eno is generally credited with coining the term "ambient music" in the mid-1970s to refer to music that, as he stated, can be either "actively listened to with attention or as easily ignored, depending on the choice of the listener", and that exists on the "cusp between melody and texture."
Early albums by
Pink Floyd (such as
Ummagumma and
Meddle) and by the "
kosmische Musik"-oriented
krautrock artists, like
Tangerine Dream,
Popol Vuh, and
Cluster have greatly influenced the genre. Among the first
electronic ambient albums were
Affenstunde (1970) and
In Den Garten Pharaos (1971) by
Popol Vuh. Another important album was Sonic Seasonings (1972) by
Wendy Carlos. Other early artists such as
Klaus Schulze (a former member of
Tangerine Dream and
Ash Ra Tempel),
Jean Michel Jarre, and
Kraftwerk in the 1970s and 1980s were influential. In the 1970s, some ambient, krautrock, and other musicians who were influenced by
new age spirituality created the eclectic genre known as
New Age music, selling millions independent from the mainstream music industry by direct order or new age shops.
Influences on other genres
Beginning in the 1970s, Ambient music influenced some pop bands including
New Order,
Depeche Mode,
Simple Minds and
U2. Later,
electronic dance music and
synth pop merged in many artists' works with the dreamy, meandering sound of Eno-style ambient music. Under the guise of various styles, this new genre sometimes referred to as
ambient house,
ambient techno, ambient
dub,
IDM, ambience, or simply "ambient" in common use, saw the birth of a new wave of artists like
The Orb,
Aphex Twin, the
Irresistible Force, Geir Jenssen's
Biosphere, and the
Higher Intelligence Agency.
Early
Warp records artists, (as well as later ones such as
Aphex Twin), FSOL
Future Sound of London (
Lifeforms,
ISDN)
Autechre, (
Incunabula,
Amber),
Boards of Canada,
Massive Attack,
Portishead, and
The KLF all took a part in popularising and diversifying ambient music.
Chillout is generally linked to club culture and is sometimes used as a term which includes ambient music as a subset of itself, though usually chillout music has a beat and isn't completely ambient with no rhythm at all. UK techno developed in particular at
Warp Records in Sheffield, where previous electronic pioneers such as
Cabaret Voltaire and
Autechre laid the groundwork for ambient techno to develop, and for
Aphex Twin and
Boards of Canada to develop later. From this scene developed ambient dub and ambient techno.
Intelligent Dance Music is another term synonymous with this scene. Electroacoustic and acousmatic music are 'classical' art music forms that use electronic sound creation instead of or alongside acoustic instruments.
Glitch music is a subset of this work. Some club groups have created live ambient music, mixing dub techniques with ambient textures and dance grooves.
Soundtracks
Ambient music has been used in many
television shows and
motion pictures and is notable for contributing to their atmosphere, or
soundscapes.
David Lynch's 1984 film
Dune, for example, forgoes the
epic sci-fi adventure style theme music popularized by
Star Wars in favor of a more atmospheric music score by
Toto and Brian Eno. Electronic musician
Paddy Kingsland is noted for the music style he brought to several serials of the television series
Doctor Who which had until then relied mostly on stock music cues or minimal music for much of its history.
Related and derivative genres
Ambient dub
Ambient Dub was a phrase first coined by the now defunct
Beyond record label in early 1990s in Birmingham, England. Their defining series of albums "Ambient Dub 1, 2, through to 4 inspired many, including sound engineer and producer
Bill Laswell, who used the same phrase in his music project
Divination, where he collaborates with different musicians on each album (though sometimes the same ones are on more than one of the albums such as
Tetsu Inoue and others). Laswell also presented Ambient dub and
Ambient house music on albums by his collaboration project
Axiom Dub, featuring recording artists
the Orb,
Jah Wobble,
Jaki Liebezeit and
DJ Spooky.
Ambient dub involves the genre melding of dub styles made famous by
King Tubby and other Jamaican sound artists with DJ inspired ambient electronica, complete with all the inherent drop-outs, echo, equalization and psychedelic electronic effects. As writer and performer
David Toop explains in an early Beyond Records newsletter, "Dub music is like a long echo delay, looping through time...turning the rational order of musical sequences into an ocean of sensation."
Organic ambient music
Organic ambient music is characterised by integration of
electronic,
electric, and musical instruments. Aside from the usual electronic music influences, organic ambient tends to incorporate influences from
world music, especially
drone instruments and hand
percussion. Organic ambient is intended to be more harmonious with
nature than with the
disco. Some of the artists in this sub-genre include
Robert Rich,
Steve Roach,
Vidna Obmana,
O Yuki Conjugate,
Ma Ja Le,
Vir Unis,
James Johnson,
Loren Nerell, and
Tuu.
Some works by ambient pioneers such as
Brian Eno,
Laraaji or
Popul Vuh who use a combination of traditional instruments (such as piano or hammered dulcimer or hand percussion, though usually processed through tape loops or other devices) and electronic instruments, would be considered organic ambient music in this sense. In the 70s and 80s
Klaus Schulze often recorded string ensembles and performances by solo
cellists to go along with his extended
Moog synthesizer workouts.
Nature inspired ambient music
The music is composed from samples and recordings of naturally occurring sounds. Sometimes these samples can be treated to make them more instrument-like. The samples may be arranged in repetitive ways to form a conventional musical structure or may be random and unfocused. Sometimes the sound is mixed with urban or "found" sounds. Examples include much of
Biosphere's Substrata,
Mira Calix's insect music and
Chris Watson's
Weather Report. Some overlap occurs between organic ambient and nature inspired ambient. One of the first albums in the genre,
Wendy Carlos'
Sonic Seasonings, combines sampled and synthesized nature sounds with ambient melodies and drones for a particularly relaxing effect. The album
Second Nature by
Bill Laswell,
Tetsu Inoue, and
Atom Heart is an ambient album that uses processed nature sounds, with reverb and echo to create a hypnotic environment.
Dark ambient
Dark ambient is a general term for any kind of ambient music with a "dark" or dissonant feel, but often involves extensive use of digital reverb to create vast sonic spaces for frightening, bottom-heavy sounds such as deep drones, gloomy male chorus, echoing thunder, and distant artillery. It has an eerie feel. The
Robert Rich/
Lustmord collaboration album
Stalker epitomizes this sub-genre. Related styles include
ambient industrial and
isolationist ambient.
(See also List of dark ambient artists)
There are also a few
black metal bands, such as
Burzum and
Beherit, who produce ambient music, be it not always with such a dark atmosphere.
Illbient is another kind of dark ambient music that has more of a beat but still creates the spooky disturbing feelings.
Ambient techno
A rarified, more specific re-orientation of ambient house, ambient techno is usually applied to artists such as B12, early Aphex Twin, the Black Dog, Higher Intelligence Agency, and Biosphere. It distinguished artists who combined the melodic and rhythmic approaches of techno and electro -- use of 808 and 909 drum machines; well-produced, thin-sounding electronics; minor-key melodies and alien-sounding samples and sounds -- with the soaring, layered, aquatic atmospheres of beatless and experimental ambient. Most often associated with labels such as Apollo, GPR, Warp, and Beyond, the terminology morphed into "
intelligent techno" after Warp released its
Artificial Intelligence series, although the music's stylistic references remained largely unchanged.
Ambient house
Ambient house is a musical category founded in the late 1980s that's used to describe
acid house featuring
ambient music elements and atmospheres. Tracks in the ambient house genre typically feature
four-on-the-floor beats,
synth pads, and vocal samples integrated in an atmospheric style. Ambient house tracks generally lack a
diatonic center and feature much
atonality along with synthesized chords.
Ambient industrial
Ambient industrial is a hybrid genre of ambient and
industrial music; the term industrial being used in the original experimental sense, rather than in the sense of
industrial metal or
EBM. A "typical" ambient industrial work (if there's a such thing) might consist of evolving dissonant harmonies of metallic drones and resonances, extreme low frequency rumbles and machine noises, perhaps supplemented by gongs, percussive rhythms, bullroarers, distorted voices and/or anything else the artist might care to sample (often processed to the point where the original sample is no longer recognizable). Entire works may be based on radio telescope recordings, the babbling of newborn babies, or sounds recorded through contact microphones on telegraph wires.
Among the many artists who work in this area are
Coil,
CTI,
Lustmord,
Susumu Yokota,
Hafler Trio,
Nocturnal Emissions,
Zoviet France,
PGR,
Thomas Köner,
Controlled Bleeding, and
Deutsch Nepal. It is important to note, however, that many of these artists are very eclectic in their output, with much of it falling outside of ambient industrial per se.
Space music
Space music, also spelled
spacemusic, includes music from the Ambient genre as well as a broad range of other genres with certain characteristics in common to create the experience of contemplative spaciousness.
Space music ranges from simple to complex sonic textures sometimes lacking conventional melodic, rhythmic, or vocal components,
generally evoking a sense of "continuum of spatial imagery and emotion",
beneficial introspection, deep listening
and sensations of floating, cruising or flying.
Space music is used by individuals for both background enhancement and foreground listening, often with headphones, to stimulate relaxation, contemplation, inspiration and generally peaceful expansive moods and
soundscapes. Space music is also a component of many film
soundtracks, commonly used in
planetariums, and used as a
relaxation aid and for
meditation.
Hearts of Space is a well-known radio show and affiliated record label, specializing in Space Music since 1984, having released over 150 albums devoted to the music style. Notable artists who have brought elements of Ambient music to Space music include
Michael Hedges,
Michael Stearns,
Constance Demby,
Jean Michel Jarre,
Robert Rich,
Steve Roach, Numina,
Dweller at the Threshold,
Klaus Schulze and
Tangerine Dream (as well as the group's founder
Edgar Froese).
Isolationist ambient music
Isolationist ambient music is also known as "isolationism", differentiated from other forms of ambient music in its use of repetition, dissonance, microtonality, and unresolved harmonies to create a sense of unresolved unease and desolation. The term was popularized in the mid-1990s by the British magazine
The Wire and the Ambient 4: Isolationism compilation from
Virgin, this began as more or less a synonym for ambient industrial, but also inclusive of certain post-techno streams of ambient, such as
Autechre and
Aphex Twin.
(External Link
) The Sombient label is now the primary purveyor of isolationist ambient, in particular with the "drones" compilation series. Some of the artists known for this style of ambient music include
Robert Fripp and
Chuck Hammer Guitarchitecture.
Notable musicians and works in chronological order
Notable films incorporating ambient music or sound design
Notable ambient music shows on radio and via satellite
- Echoes, is a daily two-hour music radio program hosted by John Diliberto featuring a soundscape of ambient, spacemusic, electronica, new acoustic and new music directions - founded in 1989 and syndicated on 130 radio stations in the USA.
- Hearts of Space, a program hosted by Stephen Hill and broadcast on NPR in the US since 1973.
- Musical Starstreams, a US-based commercial radio station and internet program produced, programmed and hosted by Forest since 1981.
- Star's End a radio show on 88.5 WXPN, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1976, it's the second longest-running ambient music radio show in the world.
- Ultima Thule Ambient Music, a weekly 90-minute show broadcast on community radio in Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra since 1989.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Ambient Electronica'.
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