An Aspiring Nerd's Guide to Ambient
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An electronic sub-genre too-often grouped with pastoral folks, new age and other, lackluster “background” electronics, ambient is better compared to the frenzy of air molecules streaking just below the surface of a pot at the brink of boil: quiet, vibrant, layered and intensely active.
Incorporating techno tools, drone tropes and elements of minimalist composition, bands and composers generally work layers of long solid tones around subtle, slow-building pulses. The effects can be at turns ecstatic and eerie. The common thread here is the music’s ability to color a room, or a mood, in subtle, but undeniable service to an artist’s intent, one that’s less about the music itself and more about the kind of room it creates.
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Brian Eno – Ambient 1: Music for Airports
Brian Eno’s first and most emulated ambient work, Airports is a less avant-garde than others: a stunning atmospheric set crafted to soften the mood of a public space.
Boards of Canada – Music Has the Right to Children
A classic of ’90s techno AND ambient, this beat-driven, acid-soaked album is awash in warm and unsettling atmospheres, at turns disorienting and avant garde.
Steve Reich – Music For 18 Musicians
While this work is orchestral, it remains a stunning foundational text, a spiraling, tinkling raga linking ambient to the similar, earlier tradition of minimalist composition with a stunning brightness.
Tim Hecker – Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again
An incisive mad-man bent in the service of precise, uncompromising electronics, Hecker is the culmination of all other influencers, a conjurer of demons and angels, a man to be feared but also adored.
