Ambient / Noise / Lowercase / Field Recordings / etc.

Coil's "TIME MACHINES" album. There's ....nothing like it.

The Nurse With Wound / Stereolab collaboration, "Simple Headphone Mind". Back when I used to code, I would put this on and zone out.
Listening to this Coil album now! I have no idea why but I interpreted them as similar to Swans but darker and more bleak and esoteric. They might be, but this album is not bad 5 minutes in. Could easily have been released by some drone artist nowadays, but this is 1998.
 
Listening to this Coil album now! I have no idea why but I interpreted them as similar to Swans but darker and more bleak and esoteric. They might be, but this album is not bad 5 minutes in. Could easily have been released by some drone artist nowadays, but this is 1998.

see a discussion from an earlier thread for more detail (if you want), but they start out as early industrial, then go hard into electronic.

Of their ambient or ambvient-adjacent work, I would recommend TIME MACHINES, Remote Viewer, solstice/equinox EPs, and at least parts of the musick to play in the dark albums (although musick to play in the dark 1/2 have vocals and some beats.
 
see a discussion from an earlier thread for more detail (if you want), but they start out as early industrial, then go hard into electronic.

Of their ambient or ambvient-adjacent work, I would recommend TIME MACHINES, Remote Viewer, solstice/equinox EPs, and at least parts of the musick to play in the dark albums (although musick to play in the dark 1/2 have vocals and some beats.
I've never really gotten deep into Dark Ambient so this'll be a good chance to do so. I've heard plenty of other ambient artists go a little dark but nothing like this -- I'll dig into those!
 
I've never really gotten deep into Dark Ambient so this'll be a good chance to do so. I've heard plenty of other ambient artists go a little dark but nothing like this -- I'll dig into those!
others worth mentioning:

Current 93's "In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land". This was done as a collaboration with horror writer Thomas Ligotti and came with a book of short stories. It's their second collaboration, and while I like their first ("I have a special plan for this world") a lot more, it definitely has more spoken vocals and in any case is so harrowing that calling it "ambient" is not appropriate. Ligotti's name might be familiar to True Detective fans; Rust Cohle's nihilist philosophy is cribbed pretty well from Ligotti's writing, specifically "Conspiracy Against The Human Race".



Although Current 93 is essentially a solo endevor -- David Tibet is C93 in much the same way that Trent Reznor is NIN -- there are three albums that he did with Nurse With Wound's Steve Stapleton that were enough of a departure from either of their "regular" works that they decided to put them out as David Tibet and Steven Stapleton instead of C93/NWW:

Musical Pumpkin Cottage
The Sadness of Things
Octopus (this is a remix album of the other two)

Speaking of Nurse With Wound, although they have a lot of stuff that might be called 'ambient', mostly their stuff falls under experimental or avant garde. Just weird shit mostly. BUT "Soliloquy for Lilith" is a 6-LP album made my chaining together effects pedals and waving hands around over them to cause interference and interact with the feedback.

 
The Ryuichi Sakamoto tribute collection will only be available to buy on Bandcamp through the 28th of this month (the anniversary of Sakamoto's passing). They've also announced vinyl versions coming on Sakamoto's label Commmons. Six LPs, one every two months starting this May. The 5-title collection on digital is just 5500 yen which comes to around $35.


 
Some Celer releases up on Infraction that I highly recommend. I never got around to getting Malaria so I snagged that one for $30 USD shipped.

I highly, highly, recommend any of the other Celer, Willamette or Pausal LPs from Infraction

 
Too soon for year end lists I guess. But here are some of my favorite Ambient albums of 2024
Rod Modell - Music For Bus Stations 1 & 2 (13)

Jake Muir - enmixed (enmossed)

Günter Schlienz - Kurpark (Lighten Up Sounds)

Zaké - Lapis (quiet details)

Low Altitude - Boat (whitelabrecs)

Oberlin - Von Wegen (Shimmering Moods)

Federico Durand - Té De Flores Silvestres (IIKKI)

KMRU - Natur (Touch)

Multi-Surface - Nap (Not Not Fun Records)

Unstern – Es Geht Der Tag (Alter)

Läuten der Seele - Die Reise zur Monsalwäsche (Hands In The Dark)

Free Tala - Underwater Sounds To Lure The Fishes (Satatuhatta)

Jesse Perlstein & Shinya Sugimoto - Fallen (Muzan Editions)

Tren - The Passages Through Space And Time (not meant to happen)

Loscil, Lawrence English - Colours Of Air (Kranky)

Adam Wiltzie - Eleven Fugues For Sodium Pentothal (Kranky)

Nate Scheible - or valleys and (Outside Time)

Akira Kosemura & Lawrence English (Temporary Residence)

Pan American & Kramer – Reverberations Of Non-Stop Traffic On Redding Road (Shimmy Disc)

Funcionário - Momento Claro (Glossy Mistakes)

Donato Dozzy - Magda (Spazio Disponibile)

Ear to Ear - Live Recordings (Astral Industries)

Benoit Pioulard, Offthesky - Sunder (Laaps)

Mashu Hayasaka - Piano Études (All Night )
 
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