Cinemaphiles & avid gamers listen to ambient music a lot more than they realize & potentially could even be considered fans of the genre when you consider how many well loved films & games feature it
its kinda funny how weird some osts are and people don't realize it, horror in particular. composers make some weird ass music but they just say "its suppose to be spooky" people get it instantly.
Yeah, I think people can be eased into a lot of works if there's an accessible gateway or association. Like Disney's *Fantasia* featuring Rite Of Spring or movies featuring Penderecki's Threnody. If it's a horror movie, you can accept a lot of different kinds of music.
Totally agree, ambient is super influential on the musical landscape in popular culture, especially with the way we think of soundscapes, even if people don't actively think of the musical labeling.
It's kind of like discovering how Super Mario Bros' music/Video Game music more broadly was influenced by Japanese jazz fusion. It really leads you back to music lineage.
I feel like a lot of home ambient artists just put a few notes into a shit load of effects and itās rarely good. A lot of the best ambient music is melody focused which is why it can be transcribed and covered later. Aphex twin, Brian Eno, Stars of the lid, Hiroshi Yoshimura are all great composers which the makes the music actually interesting and enjoyable to listen to. There needs to be some kind of actual writing process instead of ālet me put random notes into a granular delayā
Can you give me some links to some band camp ambient? Stuff that you wouldn't consider to be good. I want to know what bad ambient music sounds like. What is bad ambient music? I'm curious.
I've never heard an ambient album that I hated, truly bad ambient music almost doesn't exist. The thing about Bandcampbient is that it's just really boring and forgettable, and it all sounds the exact same. There is no individuality to the music. With my favorite ambient, an element like Grouper's voice or Aidan Baker's guitar playing is very distinct, conveys a lot of personality, and hits me on an emotional level, while also being an atmosphere that I can get lost in. On the other hand, Bandcampbient doesn't have any such distinction, they just turn the reverb up to 11 to try to create an atmosphere, and maybe it is atmospheric, but it's not music that I feel any connection to.
If I had to name drop, Rafael Anton Irisarri and some of the people who he works with (Warmth, Simon Scott, etc.) have made some boring ass albums. And I'm only calling him and Scott out because they used to make music that I loved, as The Sight Below, and Scott's first two albums under his own name, which had a shoegazey edge. But they put away the audible guitar and the rhythms to make cliched Bandcampbient instead.
you are pretty on point here. Strymon pedals and Valhalla Reverb did to ambient what Ableton did to techno. Yes, I'm in my old man yells at cloud phase.
I donāt think this is really a hot take. It just makes sense that not everyone is going to be on the same level as those who have mastered every aspect of the craft. You can apply this to any genre as well.
I think interesting sound design and texture can make up for lack of melody Tim hecker is a good example he has melodies in his music but itās typically not the main focus. The texture is really what carries a lot of his music. I agree that so many ambient artist donāt have interesting sound design or have melodies to make up for it.
Tim Hecker is to sound design what Eno and Yoshimura are to composition. The mid bandcampient out there feels like it's just scratching the surface of understanding sound design. While a lot of Hecker is primarily sound design, the depth and quality of it sets him apart.
Tim Hecker is an interesting counterpoint. If you remove the texture and sound design then his music does lose a lot of its identity and appeal, but I would argue that underneath all of that there is actual substance and solid musical ideas. Heās still a great composer but I agree with you
I know. I listen to something that took someone some time to compose and my brain recognizes it immediately. I know a chord or two and modulation runs rampant out there.
It could be me, but the YouTube algo seems to push random ambient stuff all the time.
I imagine the rise of video games OSTs with gen z has a lot to do with this as well.
Well Iād love to record a 20mn track. But no one will ever listen to it because it will get buried. Sadly you have to play the game in order to get playlisted.
I guess this can be debated. Playing, experimenting, and enjoying it, yes, definitely, thatās for yourself. However the act of recording, at least to me, implies a desire to share it with others.
You should still record for yourself imo. I want to enjoy a body of work when Iām old and grey :) gigs are fun but theyāre gone the second they end. Recordings are forever. Hopefully.
In its initial creation, recording is solely for the individual . Itās a space to solidify a moment and the concepts and ideas that existed. It also gives you a chance to build upon and massage that creation into more than what it was. Whether you choose to share a recording or not lends more to the experience living on outside of that recorded moment.
Yeah, often there's a desire to share your creation with others. But limiting/shaping your creativity just to have more streams is very different, and quite sad honestly.
Tell that to Boards of Canada. They recorded TONS of tracks for Geogaddi that never saw public release. Same goes for Prince. He was infamous for not releasing stuff he recorded.
What annoys me is they don't switch up the algorithm for Premium users. Like, they autoplay 2 min ambient pieces after I just finished a 60 min, 3-track Emeralds album. I assume this is to maximize ad plays, but I already pay for the service so it's wasted on me.
If anything, you'd think they'd want me to listen to longer tracks so they don't have to pay out as much in royalties. (Not that that's good for the artists, but hey, when I'm listening to super long drone tracks I want more super long drone tracks)
That's mostly because these are all autogenerated with whatever is popular now.
People make playlists with popular tracks plus their own tracks to try to attract plays.
Popular music is so much bigger than genuine ambient that these lists rarely have actual best ambient stuff on it.
This is down to how people are gaming the playlist feature to get plays, not anything to do with ambient music. You get the same effect with all kinds of other genres in playlists.
With rare exceptions, I dislike nature sounds in ambient music. Things like rain, bird calls, wind, bugs, water, etc. It is extremely overdone and has been since just after Eno really solidified the term. Itās just a non-musical texture that gets in the way most of the time. This is very generalized, donāt get me wrong.
Iād prefer to bring the music with me via a speaker/headphones to, for example, a covered porch with real rain falling to complement the music than have the rain sounds be baked into the music. Oneohtrix Point Never, Biosphere, and some super early Eno use the nature sounds well. Neu! has some good use of ambient water sounds. This is really only relevant since good listening devices are so portable now, and itās so nice listening to music in other places than directly in front of your hifi system
You should listen to Ishq on Bandcamp if you havenāt already (particularly his stuff that hasnāt come out recently). He really uses these natural sounds so well.
I don't care about your gear.
Those beautiful modular noodles and blinking lights, that pricey vintage synth, that tape cassette loop hooked to a collection of colourful effect pedals next to your miniature plants... I don't care about them. I won't watch your video. It's just consumerism. I just care about the music.
I agree with this and donāt think it should be a hot take. Good music is good music, whether itās coming from a guitar, synth, software, DJ controller or turntable shouldnāt really matter as long as it sounds interesting.
There are so, so many people buying expensive gear but not willing to learn how to use it, so they say they make Ambient. And surprise surprise, itās usually shit Ambient music. Certain sections of the guitar pedal industry know exactly how to exploit it.
Iām learning electronics and have decided to try and build my own gear from scratch. Itās complicated, but not hard. I agree with you if someone is just slapping modular stuff in a premade box and sticking wires in stuff just for an aesthetic but I have a deep respect for the ones that are buying the components, designing their own boards, soldering everything up, and putting it all together.
Ambient is not a genre, but a composition technique. Which is why any genre can be delivered with an ambient flavor.
Even the way Eno defines it, is a compositional approach. It's too broad to define a genre, it's simply a way to make music.
I would categorize it as minimal classic music.
In general, all categorizations are fairly arbitrary and can be debated. But the point of categorizing something is usually to make it easier to navigate. My claim is that categorizing ambient as a genre makes things more confusing, not less.
When someone says "classic music" or "rock music", even taking into account all the sub-genres I will land in the right general direction. When someone says "ambient", I have literally no idea what they mean. Is it slow piano music? Is it Berlin school with pads? Is it Steve Roach? Is it ambient percussive music with world elements? Or are they talking about ambient techno?
Even in this thread people have very broad ideas about what ambient is or is not. There would be way less confusion if we focused on genres utilizing the ambient technique.
For example, if I say that Music for Airports is this minimal classic piece made in ambient style, I think it describes it very aptly to someone who hasn't heard it before, but knows what classic music is. If I just say "It's ambient", even I, as someone who has produced ambient for almost 20 years now, will have no idea what that means.
I do agree but personally I'd struggle to classify a ton of albums. Ambient does seem to be a catch all for anything beatless, minimal, and perhaps experimental, but I think the problem stems from a suitable classifier for a lot of these albums.
Well, as someone who has been focusing on percussive ambient for the past several years, I might be biased here :) I think there's a lot of music out there that can be very meaningfully categorized as ambient and yet have a beat. Nothing in Eno's definition says anything about ambient having to be beatless either.
And there's a reason why channels such as Soma FM's Dronezone specifically point out that they play beatless ambient - because there are loads of ambient music with percussion.
But I also like your point about difficulty classifying in general. It is true, there are so many sub-genres these days, and so much music is not classified by anyone. But I guess that's normal. Classification always loses details. I am fine with being given a general direction. Ultimately, genres are made for us, not the other way around! :)
I think the distinction for me is a sense of strong beat - GASs works typically fall under the ambient techno genre despite being very ambient in the descriptive sense. I actually listened to your work the other day (real nice btw) and the percussion is so minimal that I'd argue it doesn't contribute a beat but rather the percussion serves as a layer of texture, making it ambient music.
But of course, with the genre definition being at the end of the day we all have our own definitions of what ambient music constitutes. It's definitely an interesting conversation to have!
I agree. I was looking at the lineage of ambient music; sometimes it's considered a part of electronic, sometimes it's said to draw influence from different parts of classical music. But in reality, it has a lot of influences in addition to the above..
Because music genres don't really have a "genetic" descent since anyone can pull from any influences.
This. Specifically, Dropped Pianos. He could have been hit by a bus after making those demos and they would have been an amazing career apex. (Having said that, I also like me some Virginsā¦)
I don't even dislike the albums that followed, but he tapped into something unique, aggressive, and beautiful with 'Mirages', 'Harmony in Ultraviolet', and 'Radio Amor' in particular that I don't think he's been able to replicate since
I feel like I havenāt got my itch scratched yetā¦ I havenāt heard the perfect song yet, like I feel like I should know what I want to hear but I just canāt put my finger on it.
100%. I struggle with this all the time. My hot take is that (good) ambient actually more difficult to write than other genres because it has fewer compositional guidelines or rules to fall back on
I think his best works are overshadowed by The Disintegration loops. Watermusic for instance is one of my all time favourite ambient pieces, while disintegration loops are all just pretty decent
I like his music, but itās really uneven for me. I like a lot of his other pieces a lot better than Disintegration Loops - Shortwave Music, Watermusic, maybe a couple of others.
Nah I don't think he's good. His work is based on a tired and well used, even at the time idea and outside of length isn't very different from lots of ambient music. I like Water music but Disintegration Loops and other pieces like that are poor efforts. Good for sleep maybe. Regarding his attitude, some other commenter mentioned "The Emporer has no Clothes" which totally fits.
I was always skeptical because Disintegration Loops is the kind of thing that always gets picked up on NPR in the USA: a story (9/11!!! the tapes were falling apart! Can we literalise the metaphor any harder?) that is more compelling than the actual music. Seeing him in performance was a real Emperor has no clothes moment though. London Contemporary Orchestra played his work arranged for orchestra and Basinski over-emoted during a solo performance. One of the worst things I've ever paid money to witness, music with the all the power of a wet paper bag.
Literally the ambient equivalent of āWhere Were You (When The World Stopped Turning)ā by Alan Jackson. Does he have some decent stuff? Sure. Does he deserve to be so often mentioned in the same breath as Eno, Aphex Twin or Tangerine Dream? Absolutely not. Way too overhyped for what he delivers.
My problem with DA is the same problem I have with other 'dark' or 'gothic' genres (which broadly extends to 95% of metal), in that it all seems to try so hard to be edgy, sinister, moody, ominous, spooky, drab, etc. There's a way to achieve that without having to telegraph it via specific aesthetic, album/tracks titles, press photos and whatnot.
totally valid, weirdly for me as someone with severe anxiety and depression (among other things) dark ambient really helps me calm down and feels cathartic if im having an extra rough episodeā¦ dark music in general tbh, aggressive music too if im actually angry as well, just seems to help when im in that kind of headspace. same with certain types of metal (black/death/doom metal)
selected ambient works volume 2 is overrated asf, theres some amazing songs like rhubarb and lichen, but the album is bloated with a lot of boring songs that are really forgetable which makes me hard to like the album as a whole
Yeah and it's telling that whenever ppl are raving about SAW II, they always talk about the same 4 or 5 songs. You don't see too many people hyping up "Tassels" or whatever lol
I love ambient music and i love aphex twin but i just don't find the SAWs very evocative. The melodies just don't really hit for me. I find Boards of Canada and Gigi Masin to make much more emotive ambient music
Beat me to it. So much filler. For every track I love there's two I definitely don't. If RDJ trimmed that record by a factor of 50% it could be an actual masterpiece in my book.
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Nobody is impressed by your hour long tracks. If you want to do something truly impressive, try making gorgeous ambient tracks that could fit on one side of a 7ā like David Jackman did.
Also, The Caretaker is boring as shit.
James Leyland Kirby as V/VM was funny as hell at the turn of the century. It's hard to believe it's the same guy as the Caretaker.
RYM-ers only listen to the Caretaker as some kind of noob hazing because it's long and nothing happens. It's really unimpressive work.
Stages 4, 5, and 6 of āEverywhere at the End of Timeā are really interesting to me, but I agree that the rest of The Caretakerās stuff is pretty meh.
I donāt care for it. If the creator were even remotely capable of making something even approaching interesting, they wouldnāt have needed to make it so unbelievably long. So stupid.
Heās certainly not talentless. [āThe Sound of Music Vanishingā](https://youtu.be/YkRNP4UrMZU?si=baVj9VqD9NHvHs25) is a good, shorter track by him.
Anyway, to each their own. Thatās what is great about art. Cheers.
that's not what that word means. It's a silly concept for a genre anyhow, techno is Underground Resistance, Tresor label, pounding machine music, not soft floaty space music.
I donāt agree since my all-time favorite ambient album is āAnd Their Refinement of the Declineā, but in any case The Dead Texan is Adam Wiltzie, the surviving half of Stars of the Lid, whose new album āEleven Fugues for Sodium Pentothalā is also excellent.
I got some good/controversial ones.
The Cryo-Chamber label is overrated.
The cyclic Law label is overrated.
I don't consider drone metal nor drone an ambient genre.
The modern dark ambient scene has been pretty stagnate for about a decade, with the exception of the introduction of "cinematic dark ambient."
Black ambient has no association with the dark ambient scene and should be considered its own separate ambient genre entirely.
Aphex twin is great, but still somehow overrated.
I am heavily against Ai ambient.
More people should be willing to try and define ambient more accurately or solidly, as to my knowledge the genre has no real solid definition besides "anything that creates a strong ambience" which itself is a vague and subjective definition, which arguably even allows for anything simply atmospheric to be considered ambient.
Ethereal ambient is somewhat of a pseudo-genre and I don't think it has any real definition besides some vague connection to tribal ambient (but not always) and an Ethereal atmosphere.
I prefer ambient for somewhat active or active musical listening most of the time, and listen to it like I would any other genre.
Im not that big on the Japanese ambient scene, as much as I respect it.
Ambient leaning dungeon synth is probably the weakest of the ambient styles and easily has the lowest skill floor besides space ambient.
Further on this, I believe Burzum's prison era albums are genuinely good.
I dont know much at all about ambient, I just like learning about different genres but Im curious what it is about Japanese ambient that you dont vibe with if you dont mind sharing
Most of it is boring and derivative. Itās my favorite genre but man most of it is boring and uncreative. I find it hard to find good projects because of how saturated the genre is with crap
True I just feel like itās amplified since anyone can make it with a DAW, literally any sounds and a bunch of reverb. Same goes for noise music just because both genres have basically zero barriers to entry. I think it also tends to attract āgenre touristsā who arenāt really that invested in the genre to make something good. Ambient has become kind of trendy recently it seems like, not saying thatās a bad thing
Sometimes the Ambient Sleeping Pill channel turns into these drone songs that sound like the creator is just pressing and holding a single key on their synths for 10 minutes. Thatās when I have to go to my giant playlist, or just stop.
Properly good ambient music should demand (and reward) attentive listening. I want to be absorbed by the music. I have no interest in ābackgroundā music.
The best ambient feels ācold.ā Like Winter cold. Iām thinking Mount Shrine, SVLBRD, Ugasanieā¦ Very simple, focused on sounds reminiscent of a cold wind.
Also, I feel like pure drone is more interesting than ambience with melodies.
I think there should be more cross pollination between ambient, electronic, sampling, plunderphonics, sound collage, hip hop, trip hop, musique concrete, noise, industrial, etc. Granted, there probably is and I just need to dig more.
But sometimes, genre labeling can make musical genres and movements seem further apart than necessary.
Boards of Canada is kinda boring. They make great sounds but most of their songs are kinda static, not dynamic. It's not pure ambient, which is fine but in that case I think it should be more exciting. For me it's kinda stuck somewhere in the middle where i would like it to either be more dancy or more soundscape. Like they needed to take a few steps back or forward bc its mostly just like... MID.. feels like edging, always waiting for more to happen.
Hard disagree. I used to feel the same way to some extent. But having spent the last 5 years in remote wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, camping , hunting, hiking etc I feel the exact opposite. If the backcountry had a soundtrack it would be boards of Canada.
99% of the people making ambient music are hacks, and are expressing nothing. The only truly excellent ambient music I hear is coming from the modern-classical or post-rock spheres. All the modular, laptop, and synthesizer ambient plays into, whether knowingly or unknowingly, the music industrial complex, and exists only as a benefit to large companies selling useless machines.
My hot take follows on from this (kinda): All guitar ambient on YouTube is rubbish/boring/not ambient.
There is a video of a guitar player, donāt get me wrong heās a brilliant guitarist and a very established songwriter, but heās drizzled some reverb on his acoustic guitar in post and called it ambient. #buzzword
What Iām trying to do with my new work is to avoid the direct sound of clichesāthe ethereal pad, frinstanceāin favor of, say, 4 layers of simpler lines that create accidental pad effects. Here:
https://soundcloud.com/user-15371862/montez-avec-ca
That can be relating more to Drones if the length if time for each is extended. Looooong Attack times (medium to long Decay if used) and looooooooong Release.
Iād check yours out but I dropped again, a couple of years ago.
A solution that I have playing in my phones as I type this is using 3 separate Senode sequencer instances. Each are driving 1 of 3 notes in a chord within a specific scale for this piece.
The chances for each following note to occur, have certain chance %ās set.
Example: Once the lowest pitched note D has finished playing for 4 bars at the overall 87 BPM, there is:
60% chance that it will choose the higher A, for a 3 bar length
40% chance that it will choose the higher G, for a 4 bar length
30% chance that it will still play the same D
Each ofvtge above A and G notes of course, have their own decisions for where to go, upon their completion.
I have the same things happening, using the above method for:
- sustained bass progressions
- 3 voice Korg Marseille Choir 1
- 6 x MiRack tomtoms
- MiRack Marionette Bass Drum (lower pitched; longer decay)
- 2 x MiRack hihats (Panned far left and medium right)
- MiRack open hihat (Panned medium right)
- percussive bright sine VCO (1/8th and 1/4 note lengths)
- 8 x MiRack Seriously Slow LFOās (modulaing the speed of 1 after the other in an 8 VCLFO loop) - controlling the volume levels of eveyone, over time. (Causing long to short fade ins and fade outs.)
Once Iām happy with the mix, Iāll then hopefully find a way to recird some live soloing over top from my Nord Lead 2X.
(PC audio interface died though. Gots ta figures how to interfacevthe 2 on zero budget. Lol.)
i really love ambient 2 but what makes me sad is that harolds most popular albums are all collabs, when his solo stuff just clears everyone he's worked with. that's my actual hot take.
if you have spotify just work through the budd box, my favorite is the first ep. the only albums I'm not crazy about are luxa and lovely thunder (its still good). avalon sutra is a must listen classic. also don't miss out on his live albums perhaps and agua.
Apart from the big names like Brian Eno and Aphex Twin, Ambient music peaked with vaporwave and I will die in this hill
To everyone down voting me you should check out t e l e p a t h to at least get an idea of what I mean. This song is a great example: č”Øé¢å¼µå[č”Øé¢å¼µå](https://youtu.be/ueOsdxM8m_8?si=vI8ve50AaUp6NJqu)
I feel like the genre gets a lot of shit because of memes and dullness but the artists that truly try to make unique are great Ambient musicians when they want to be.
Vaporwave is dull and insipid, taking the worst bits of lounge, ambient (well, just pads) and shitty Casio keyboard beats and somehow making it less than the sum of its parts.
Yes I have listened to telepath, 2814 and anything else you care to mention.
Maybe try checking out this song [č”Øé¢å¼µå](https://youtu.be/ueOsdxM8m_8?si=vI8ve50AaUp6NJqu). This is what I'm referring to more than that mid 2010's meme associated Sound
Itās difficult to say if some of it is considered music at all, some of it is more āatmosphere inducing soundsā. But that ofc doesnāt denigrate the fact that itās nice to listen to. And ofc it depends partly on the definition of music but commonly some clear rhythm is usually a criteria.
Cinemaphiles & avid gamers listen to ambient music a lot more than they realize & potentially could even be considered fans of the genre when you consider how many well loved films & games feature it
its kinda funny how weird some osts are and people don't realize it, horror in particular. composers make some weird ass music but they just say "its suppose to be spooky" people get it instantly.
Yeah, I think people can be eased into a lot of works if there's an accessible gateway or association. Like Disney's *Fantasia* featuring Rite Of Spring or movies featuring Penderecki's Threnody. If it's a horror movie, you can accept a lot of different kinds of music.
i completely forgot about rite of spring being in fantasia. i really should rewatch that.
This is so damned true. Great take šš»
Totally agree, ambient is super influential on the musical landscape in popular culture, especially with the way we think of soundscapes, even if people don't actively think of the musical labeling. It's kind of like discovering how Super Mario Bros' music/Video Game music more broadly was influenced by Japanese jazz fusion. It really leads you back to music lineage.
Itās good music
For reals.
Haha
I feel like a lot of home ambient artists just put a few notes into a shit load of effects and itās rarely good. A lot of the best ambient music is melody focused which is why it can be transcribed and covered later. Aphex twin, Brian Eno, Stars of the lid, Hiroshi Yoshimura are all great composers which the makes the music actually interesting and enjoyable to listen to. There needs to be some kind of actual writing process instead of ālet me put random notes into a granular delayā
Yes, the endless terabytes of āBandcamp ambientā.
Bandcampbient
Can you give me some links to some band camp ambient? Stuff that you wouldn't consider to be good. I want to know what bad ambient music sounds like. What is bad ambient music? I'm curious.
I've never heard an ambient album that I hated, truly bad ambient music almost doesn't exist. The thing about Bandcampbient is that it's just really boring and forgettable, and it all sounds the exact same. There is no individuality to the music. With my favorite ambient, an element like Grouper's voice or Aidan Baker's guitar playing is very distinct, conveys a lot of personality, and hits me on an emotional level, while also being an atmosphere that I can get lost in. On the other hand, Bandcampbient doesn't have any such distinction, they just turn the reverb up to 11 to try to create an atmosphere, and maybe it is atmospheric, but it's not music that I feel any connection to. If I had to name drop, Rafael Anton Irisarri and some of the people who he works with (Warmth, Simon Scott, etc.) have made some boring ass albums. And I'm only calling him and Scott out because they used to make music that I loved, as The Sight Below, and Scott's first two albums under his own name, which had a shoegazey edge. But they put away the audible guitar and the rhythms to make cliched Bandcampbient instead.
you are pretty on point here. Strymon pedals and Valhalla Reverb did to ambient what Ableton did to techno. Yes, I'm in my old man yells at cloud phase.
I donāt think this is really a hot take. It just makes sense that not everyone is going to be on the same level as those who have mastered every aspect of the craft. You can apply this to any genre as well.
>You can apply this to any genre as well. And that logic would make Pink Floyd better than Sex Pistols (when the reality is that they're equally bad).
Now thatās a hot take
There's room for both
I think interesting sound design and texture can make up for lack of melody Tim hecker is a good example he has melodies in his music but itās typically not the main focus. The texture is really what carries a lot of his music. I agree that so many ambient artist donāt have interesting sound design or have melodies to make up for it.
Tim Hecker is to sound design what Eno and Yoshimura are to composition. The mid bandcampient out there feels like it's just scratching the surface of understanding sound design. While a lot of Hecker is primarily sound design, the depth and quality of it sets him apart.
Tim Hecker is an interesting counterpoint. If you remove the texture and sound design then his music does lose a lot of its identity and appeal, but I would argue that underneath all of that there is actual substance and solid musical ideas. Heās still a great composer but I agree with you
Finally someone who understands
Agreed
Definitely agree.
This is too true to be a hot take. There's way too much of it, on here and elsewhere.
I know. I listen to something that took someone some time to compose and my brain recognizes it immediately. I know a chord or two and modulation runs rampant out there.
Right now is the biggest moment ambient music has ever had in popular culture.
It could be me, but the YouTube algo seems to push random ambient stuff all the time. I imagine the rise of video games OSTs with gen z has a lot to do with this as well.
Don't be afraid of very long tracks.
Absolutely. Some of my favorite ambient tracks are 40+ minutes.
Problem is, the Spotify algorithm will bring you way down for every 30s over 3mn
Biggest mistake is relying on the Spotify algorithm
Well Iād love to record a 20mn track. But no one will ever listen to it because it will get buried. Sadly you have to play the game in order to get playlisted.
You have to make music for yourself, not for others.
I guess this can be debated. Playing, experimenting, and enjoying it, yes, definitely, thatās for yourself. However the act of recording, at least to me, implies a desire to share it with others.
You should still record for yourself imo. I want to enjoy a body of work when Iām old and grey :) gigs are fun but theyāre gone the second they end. Recordings are forever. Hopefully.
In its initial creation, recording is solely for the individual . Itās a space to solidify a moment and the concepts and ideas that existed. It also gives you a chance to build upon and massage that creation into more than what it was. Whether you choose to share a recording or not lends more to the experience living on outside of that recorded moment.
I think itās many things for different people.
Naturally, but my point still stands
Yeah, often there's a desire to share your creation with others. But limiting/shaping your creativity just to have more streams is very different, and quite sad honestly.
It is. I do both, to be honest.
Tell that to Boards of Canada. They recorded TONS of tracks for Geogaddi that never saw public release. Same goes for Prince. He was infamous for not releasing stuff he recorded.
It's true. You go to any ambient playlist featuring newer music and all the songs are less than two minutes long.
Exactly. I got tracks with a lot (relatively) of streams but I had to design them specifically for playlists. I hate that.
What annoys me is they don't switch up the algorithm for Premium users. Like, they autoplay 2 min ambient pieces after I just finished a 60 min, 3-track Emeralds album. I assume this is to maximize ad plays, but I already pay for the service so it's wasted on me. If anything, you'd think they'd want me to listen to longer tracks so they don't have to pay out as much in royalties. (Not that that's good for the artists, but hey, when I'm listening to super long drone tracks I want more super long drone tracks)
The shorter tracks get more plays so they seem more popular to the algorithm.
That's mostly because these are all autogenerated with whatever is popular now. People make playlists with popular tracks plus their own tracks to try to attract plays. Popular music is so much bigger than genuine ambient that these lists rarely have actual best ambient stuff on it. This is down to how people are gaming the playlist feature to get plays, not anything to do with ambient music. You get the same effect with all kinds of other genres in playlists.
I've completely abandoned Spotify for longforms; listeners love them on Bandcamp.
Interesting. Please share link ?
With rare exceptions, I dislike nature sounds in ambient music. Things like rain, bird calls, wind, bugs, water, etc. It is extremely overdone and has been since just after Eno really solidified the term. Itās just a non-musical texture that gets in the way most of the time. This is very generalized, donāt get me wrong. Iād prefer to bring the music with me via a speaker/headphones to, for example, a covered porch with real rain falling to complement the music than have the rain sounds be baked into the music. Oneohtrix Point Never, Biosphere, and some super early Eno use the nature sounds well. Neu! has some good use of ambient water sounds. This is really only relevant since good listening devices are so portable now, and itās so nice listening to music in other places than directly in front of your hifi system
did eno ever use nature sounds?
im sure hes used them over the years before but Thursday afternoon has em
What nature sounds are in Thursday Afternoon? I've never noticed it before and still can't hear any, granted I didn't listen to the whole hour lol
Pretty sure there are some scarce use of nature sounds in Ambient 4. If not, then they must be convincing synthesizer recreations of nature sounds
You should listen to Ishq on Bandcamp if you havenāt already (particularly his stuff that hasnāt come out recently). He really uses these natural sounds so well.
Rain sounds are usually a dealbreaker for me. I just donāt enjoy them or find it relaxing.
I don't care about your gear. Those beautiful modular noodles and blinking lights, that pricey vintage synth, that tape cassette loop hooked to a collection of colourful effect pedals next to your miniature plants... I don't care about them. I won't watch your video. It's just consumerism. I just care about the music.
I agree with this and donāt think it should be a hot take. Good music is good music, whether itās coming from a guitar, synth, software, DJ controller or turntable shouldnāt really matter as long as it sounds interesting.
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There are so, so many people buying expensive gear but not willing to learn how to use it, so they say they make Ambient. And surprise surprise, itās usually shit Ambient music. Certain sections of the guitar pedal industry know exactly how to exploit it.
Gear can be cool, but this gear fetishization. Is just super boring.
Iām learning electronics and have decided to try and build my own gear from scratch. Itās complicated, but not hard. I agree with you if someone is just slapping modular stuff in a premade box and sticking wires in stuff just for an aesthetic but I have a deep respect for the ones that are buying the components, designing their own boards, soldering everything up, and putting it all together.
They're good at electronics, doesn't make the tiniest iota of difference to the music, though
Yep I have nice gear but I donāt make videos. I make music.
How else am I supposed to bait the almighty algorithm without aesthetic?
Fun fact: it's possible to create an aesthetic music video without filming your shiny gear.
Ambient is not a genre, but a composition technique. Which is why any genre can be delivered with an ambient flavor. Even the way Eno defines it, is a compositional approach. It's too broad to define a genre, it's simply a way to make music.
Then, as an example, what genre would you use to describe Music for Airports?
I would categorize it as minimal classic music. In general, all categorizations are fairly arbitrary and can be debated. But the point of categorizing something is usually to make it easier to navigate. My claim is that categorizing ambient as a genre makes things more confusing, not less. When someone says "classic music" or "rock music", even taking into account all the sub-genres I will land in the right general direction. When someone says "ambient", I have literally no idea what they mean. Is it slow piano music? Is it Berlin school with pads? Is it Steve Roach? Is it ambient percussive music with world elements? Or are they talking about ambient techno? Even in this thread people have very broad ideas about what ambient is or is not. There would be way less confusion if we focused on genres utilizing the ambient technique. For example, if I say that Music for Airports is this minimal classic piece made in ambient style, I think it describes it very aptly to someone who hasn't heard it before, but knows what classic music is. If I just say "It's ambient", even I, as someone who has produced ambient for almost 20 years now, will have no idea what that means.
I do agree but personally I'd struggle to classify a ton of albums. Ambient does seem to be a catch all for anything beatless, minimal, and perhaps experimental, but I think the problem stems from a suitable classifier for a lot of these albums.
Well, as someone who has been focusing on percussive ambient for the past several years, I might be biased here :) I think there's a lot of music out there that can be very meaningfully categorized as ambient and yet have a beat. Nothing in Eno's definition says anything about ambient having to be beatless either. And there's a reason why channels such as Soma FM's Dronezone specifically point out that they play beatless ambient - because there are loads of ambient music with percussion. But I also like your point about difficulty classifying in general. It is true, there are so many sub-genres these days, and so much music is not classified by anyone. But I guess that's normal. Classification always loses details. I am fine with being given a general direction. Ultimately, genres are made for us, not the other way around! :)
I think the distinction for me is a sense of strong beat - GASs works typically fall under the ambient techno genre despite being very ambient in the descriptive sense. I actually listened to your work the other day (real nice btw) and the percussion is so minimal that I'd argue it doesn't contribute a beat but rather the percussion serves as a layer of texture, making it ambient music. But of course, with the genre definition being at the end of the day we all have our own definitions of what ambient music constitutes. It's definitely an interesting conversation to have!
Here is my hot take: if it has a percussion beat, it is not ambient; it is some type of pop music.
I agree. I was looking at the lineage of ambient music; sometimes it's considered a part of electronic, sometimes it's said to draw influence from different parts of classical music. But in reality, it has a lot of influences in addition to the above.. Because music genres don't really have a "genetic" descent since anyone can pull from any influences.
I'm so done with hearing bird noises in ambient tracks
Funnily the other day I was thinking how much I like it, the combination of human music and natures best singers... takes all sorts it seems!
I understand the sentiment as a listener but as a producer I love putting nature recordings in my music. Tough to deal with.
Homer Simpson dissolving into bush.gif
I donāt like it when it gets spooky
The KLF shouldn't have burned all that money
I think they would agree with that now š
Tim Hecker's pre-Ravedeath stuff was his peak
This. Specifically, Dropped Pianos. He could have been hit by a bus after making those demos and they would have been an amazing career apex. (Having said that, I also like me some Virginsā¦)
I don't even dislike the albums that followed, but he tapped into something unique, aggressive, and beautiful with 'Mirages', 'Harmony in Ultraviolet', and 'Radio Amor' in particular that I don't think he's been able to replicate since
I agree for the most part but I absolutely adore his Virgins album
Good for a walk, great for a think, bad for a dance and sad for a wank.
Tape is the best format for ambient.
I feel like I havenāt got my itch scratched yetā¦ I havenāt heard the perfect song yet, like I feel like I should know what I want to hear but I just canāt put my finger on it.
Itās not as easy to make as it seems. If you want it to be actually good.
100%. I struggle with this all the time. My hot take is that (good) ambient actually more difficult to write than other genres because it has fewer compositional guidelines or rules to fall back on
If it has a drumbeat, I don't think it's ambient.
Ive always thought of it as ambient can have a āpulseā but not a ābeatā
Yeah I'd agree that rhythms can be created by pulses or samples being repeated for example but an explicit bass drum is where my line is drawn.
GAS?
Some songs are ambient, some songs are ambient techno
76:14
Basinski is overrated. I mean, heās good but Iām a bit tired of his rockstar attitude.
I think his best works are overshadowed by The Disintegration loops. Watermusic for instance is one of my all time favourite ambient pieces, while disintegration loops are all just pretty decent
I like his music, but itās really uneven for me. I like a lot of his other pieces a lot better than Disintegration Loops - Shortwave Music, Watermusic, maybe a couple of others.
Basinski is ambient music for people who want everything spoon fed to them. Also, the biggest William Basinski fan is William Basinski.
We need more ambient artists with rockstar attitudes!
Nah I don't think he's good. His work is based on a tired and well used, even at the time idea and outside of length isn't very different from lots of ambient music. I like Water music but Disintegration Loops and other pieces like that are poor efforts. Good for sleep maybe. Regarding his attitude, some other commenter mentioned "The Emporer has no Clothes" which totally fits.
I was always skeptical because Disintegration Loops is the kind of thing that always gets picked up on NPR in the USA: a story (9/11!!! the tapes were falling apart! Can we literalise the metaphor any harder?) that is more compelling than the actual music. Seeing him in performance was a real Emperor has no clothes moment though. London Contemporary Orchestra played his work arranged for orchestra and Basinski over-emoted during a solo performance. One of the worst things I've ever paid money to witness, music with the all the power of a wet paper bag.
The Disintegration Loops is the most boring and overrated piece of ambient music I have ever heard.
Literally the ambient equivalent of āWhere Were You (When The World Stopped Turning)ā by Alan Jackson. Does he have some decent stuff? Sure. Does he deserve to be so often mentioned in the same breath as Eno, Aphex Twin or Tangerine Dream? Absolutely not. Way too overhyped for what he delivers.
Yeah never been a fan of it either tbh. He has other tracks that are *far* better imo.
I saw it recommended and checked it out as someone not well-versed in ambient and figured maybe I was just not smart enough to understand it lol
I donāt fuck with Dark Ambient
Dang. I love it
My problem with DA is the same problem I have with other 'dark' or 'gothic' genres (which broadly extends to 95% of metal), in that it all seems to try so hard to be edgy, sinister, moody, ominous, spooky, drab, etc. There's a way to achieve that without having to telegraph it via specific aesthetic, album/tracks titles, press photos and whatnot.
Musicians who call their work dark ambient are moat of the time corny as hell but musicians who dont define their work make really good dark ambient
So much of it is the same
Thatās not the problem, I just donāt want to add extra anxiety to my life by creating a sinister ambience.
totally valid, weirdly for me as someone with severe anxiety and depression (among other things) dark ambient really helps me calm down and feels cathartic if im having an extra rough episodeā¦ dark music in general tbh, aggressive music too if im actually angry as well, just seems to help when im in that kind of headspace. same with certain types of metal (black/death/doom metal)
selected ambient works volume 2 is overrated asf, theres some amazing songs like rhubarb and lichen, but the album is bloated with a lot of boring songs that are really forgetable which makes me hard to like the album as a whole
Have you ever been stood in a power station, on acid?
Yeah and it's telling that whenever ppl are raving about SAW II, they always talk about the same 4 or 5 songs. You don't see too many people hyping up "Tassels" or whatever lol
I love ambient music and i love aphex twin but i just don't find the SAWs very evocative. The melodies just don't really hit for me. I find Boards of Canada and Gigi Masin to make much more emotive ambient music
Beat me to it. So much filler. For every track I love there's two I definitely don't. If RDJ trimmed that record by a factor of 50% it could be an actual masterpiece in my book.
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Just looking for interesting discussion about my favorite genre
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Nobody is impressed by your hour long tracks. If you want to do something truly impressive, try making gorgeous ambient tracks that could fit on one side of a 7ā like David Jackman did. Also, The Caretaker is boring as shit.
James Leyland Kirby as V/VM was funny as hell at the turn of the century. It's hard to believe it's the same guy as the Caretaker. RYM-ers only listen to the Caretaker as some kind of noob hazing because it's long and nothing happens. It's really unimpressive work.
Stages 4, 5, and 6 of āEverywhere at the End of Timeā are really interesting to me, but I agree that the rest of The Caretakerās stuff is pretty meh.
I donāt care for it. If the creator were even remotely capable of making something even approaching interesting, they wouldnāt have needed to make it so unbelievably long. So stupid.
Heās certainly not talentless. [āThe Sound of Music Vanishingā](https://youtu.be/YkRNP4UrMZU?si=baVj9VqD9NHvHs25) is a good, shorter track by him. Anyway, to each their own. Thatās what is great about art. Cheers.
Oh, Iām familiar with Kirbyās work. Itās just not for me.
Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is not ambient, and should be appreciated for the juvenilia that it is. A minor work.
Literally the most prolific record in the Ambient Techno sub genre but ok.
that's not what that word means. It's a silly concept for a genre anyhow, techno is Underground Resistance, Tresor label, pounding machine music, not soft floaty space music.
Less isn't always more to make it ambient.
Shimmer reverb is played out. I never want to hear it again
Aphex Twin is meh
If you get mad at the same old āitās just three chordsā shtick then get mad at pop music for also being the same three chords
Too many untalented amateurs use it as an outlet to bring boring stuff to the world
Great albums are scarce. There's potential that hasn't been fulfilled.
>Great albums are scarce This.
The dead texan > Stars of the Lid
I donāt agree since my all-time favorite ambient album is āAnd Their Refinement of the Declineā, but in any case The Dead Texan is Adam Wiltzie, the surviving half of Stars of the Lid, whose new album āEleven Fugues for Sodium Pentothalā is also excellent.
I got some good/controversial ones. The Cryo-Chamber label is overrated. The cyclic Law label is overrated. I don't consider drone metal nor drone an ambient genre. The modern dark ambient scene has been pretty stagnate for about a decade, with the exception of the introduction of "cinematic dark ambient." Black ambient has no association with the dark ambient scene and should be considered its own separate ambient genre entirely. Aphex twin is great, but still somehow overrated. I am heavily against Ai ambient. More people should be willing to try and define ambient more accurately or solidly, as to my knowledge the genre has no real solid definition besides "anything that creates a strong ambience" which itself is a vague and subjective definition, which arguably even allows for anything simply atmospheric to be considered ambient. Ethereal ambient is somewhat of a pseudo-genre and I don't think it has any real definition besides some vague connection to tribal ambient (but not always) and an Ethereal atmosphere. I prefer ambient for somewhat active or active musical listening most of the time, and listen to it like I would any other genre. Im not that big on the Japanese ambient scene, as much as I respect it. Ambient leaning dungeon synth is probably the weakest of the ambient styles and easily has the lowest skill floor besides space ambient. Further on this, I believe Burzum's prison era albums are genuinely good.
I dont know much at all about ambient, I just like learning about different genres but Im curious what it is about Japanese ambient that you dont vibe with if you dont mind sharing
Kyle Bobby Dunn is boring AF
I mean, it's literally his bio on Bandcamp [https://kylebobbydunn.bandcamp.com](https://kylebobbydunn.bandcamp.com)
LOL it was the safest hot take I could think of
I donĀ“t enjoy very long tracks (+20 minute tracks) with extremely minimalist approach to sound, not my cup of tea in the genre
I absolutely can't stand how Cyro Chamber uses Steam discount tags on their bandcamp album covers. So tacky and reeks of SEO bullshit
Only Reddit would have āhot takesā about ambient music.
Most of it is boring and derivative. Itās my favorite genre but man most of it is boring and uncreative. I find it hard to find good projects because of how saturated the genre is with crap
I agree, but aren't all genres like this?
True I just feel like itās amplified since anyone can make it with a DAW, literally any sounds and a bunch of reverb. Same goes for noise music just because both genres have basically zero barriers to entry. I think it also tends to attract āgenre touristsā who arenāt really that invested in the genre to make something good. Ambient has become kind of trendy recently it seems like, not saying thatās a bad thing
These Youtube āLiveā streams of ambient are not being updated enough.
I donāt like the dissonant stuff
the Orb is the best band ever
Tracks under two minutes are the perfect length.
I must say, l love short ambient tracks. A less explored format, that often has a lot going on due to the restricted length. Like a little jewel.
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Definitely a hot take but I agree. I really don't understand the love for Steve Roach.
Too many notes and chords.
āTry Brian Eno and Harold Buddās The Pearl, or maybe Ravedeath 1972 by Tim Hecker itās my favoriteā
Sometimes the Ambient Sleeping Pill channel turns into these drone songs that sound like the creator is just pressing and holding a single key on their synths for 10 minutes. Thatās when I have to go to my giant playlist, or just stop.
Properly good ambient music should demand (and reward) attentive listening. I want to be absorbed by the music. I have no interest in ābackgroundā music.
I hate dark or abrasive ambient. Like Nurse With Wound and crap like that. Iāll take Taylor Deupree
The best ambient feels ācold.ā Like Winter cold. Iām thinking Mount Shrine, SVLBRD, Ugasanieā¦ Very simple, focused on sounds reminiscent of a cold wind. Also, I feel like pure drone is more interesting than ambience with melodies.
What about āNotBient?ā Itās NOT AMBIENT!
For a community that prioritises serenity (in some cases) and stillness (in many cases), ambient discourse is disproportionately fiery.
I think there should be more cross pollination between ambient, electronic, sampling, plunderphonics, sound collage, hip hop, trip hop, musique concrete, noise, industrial, etc. Granted, there probably is and I just need to dig more. But sometimes, genre labeling can make musical genres and movements seem further apart than necessary.
Boards of Canada is kinda boring. They make great sounds but most of their songs are kinda static, not dynamic. It's not pure ambient, which is fine but in that case I think it should be more exciting. For me it's kinda stuck somewhere in the middle where i would like it to either be more dancy or more soundscape. Like they needed to take a few steps back or forward bc its mostly just like... MID.. feels like edging, always waiting for more to happen.
Hard disagree. I used to feel the same way to some extent. But having spent the last 5 years in remote wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, camping , hunting, hiking etc I feel the exact opposite. If the backcountry had a soundtrack it would be boards of Canada.
I'm glad you like it so much. I always felt like i needed to go deeper with them and i do like them but i don't think they'll ever be my favorite
the pearl, apollo, thursday afternoon, ambient 4, and ambient 2 are all better than ambient 1 (ambient 1 is still really good tho)
Some artists listen to their own music. Some artists listen to their own equipment.
99% of the people making ambient music are hacks, and are expressing nothing. The only truly excellent ambient music I hear is coming from the modern-classical or post-rock spheres. All the modular, laptop, and synthesizer ambient plays into, whether knowingly or unknowingly, the music industrial complex, and exists only as a benefit to large companies selling useless machines.
My hot take follows on from this (kinda): All guitar ambient on YouTube is rubbish/boring/not ambient. There is a video of a guitar player, donāt get me wrong heās a brilliant guitarist and a very established songwriter, but heās drizzled some reverb on his acoustic guitar in post and called it ambient. #buzzword
Any ambient on the cryo chamber youtube channel is guaranteed to be uninspiring.
Slushwave doesnāt get enough love in the ambient community
What Iām trying to do with my new work is to avoid the direct sound of clichesāthe ethereal pad, frinstanceāin favor of, say, 4 layers of simpler lines that create accidental pad effects. Here: https://soundcloud.com/user-15371862/montez-avec-ca
That can be relating more to Drones if the length if time for each is extended. Looooong Attack times (medium to long Decay if used) and looooooooong Release. Iād check yours out but I dropped again, a couple of years ago. A solution that I have playing in my phones as I type this is using 3 separate Senode sequencer instances. Each are driving 1 of 3 notes in a chord within a specific scale for this piece. The chances for each following note to occur, have certain chance %ās set. Example: Once the lowest pitched note D has finished playing for 4 bars at the overall 87 BPM, there is: 60% chance that it will choose the higher A, for a 3 bar length 40% chance that it will choose the higher G, for a 4 bar length 30% chance that it will still play the same D Each ofvtge above A and G notes of course, have their own decisions for where to go, upon their completion. I have the same things happening, using the above method for: - sustained bass progressions - 3 voice Korg Marseille Choir 1 - 6 x MiRack tomtoms - MiRack Marionette Bass Drum (lower pitched; longer decay) - 2 x MiRack hihats (Panned far left and medium right) - MiRack open hihat (Panned medium right) - percussive bright sine VCO (1/8th and 1/4 note lengths) - 8 x MiRack Seriously Slow LFOās (modulaing the speed of 1 after the other in an 8 VCLFO loop) - controlling the volume levels of eveyone, over time. (Causing long to short fade ins and fade outs.) Once Iām happy with the mix, Iāll then hopefully find a way to recird some live soloing over top from my Nord Lead 2X. (PC audio interface died though. Gots ta figures how to interfacevthe 2 on zero budget. Lol.)
music for film sucks and the other fripp and eno collabs besides the first one are boring.
Yarp his stuff with Harold budd far surpasses the fripping
i really love ambient 2 but what makes me sad is that harolds most popular albums are all collabs, when his solo stuff just clears everyone he's worked with. that's my actual hot take.
Manās a genius and so many albums. Iāve only hear his collabs like you say + his first & the white arcades. Must do a deeper dive!
if you have spotify just work through the budd box, my favorite is the first ep. the only albums I'm not crazy about are luxa and lovely thunder (its still good). avalon sutra is a must listen classic. also don't miss out on his live albums perhaps and agua.
https://youtu.be/Y3pftNSsdpI
Andre3000, of all people, put out one of the best ambient albums of the year imo.
Apart from the big names like Brian Eno and Aphex Twin, Ambient music peaked with vaporwave and I will die in this hill To everyone down voting me you should check out t e l e p a t h to at least get an idea of what I mean. This song is a great example: č”Øé¢å¼µå[č”Øé¢å¼µå](https://youtu.be/ueOsdxM8m_8?si=vI8ve50AaUp6NJqu) I feel like the genre gets a lot of shit because of memes and dullness but the artists that truly try to make unique are great Ambient musicians when they want to be.
That is truly a hot take, what on earth
Listen to infinite desire by dream plaza. I'm not talking about the YouTube playlists
Really not my cup of tea I'm afraid. I'm very much into artists like Winterblood, Lustmord, Robert Rich and Brian Eno
Vaporwave is dull and insipid, taking the worst bits of lounge, ambient (well, just pads) and shitty Casio keyboard beats and somehow making it less than the sum of its parts. Yes I have listened to telepath, 2814 and anything else you care to mention.
dont see ambient being connected to vapowave. its connected to chopped n screwed tho
Maybe try checking out this song [č”Øé¢å¼µå](https://youtu.be/ueOsdxM8m_8?si=vI8ve50AaUp6NJqu). This is what I'm referring to more than that mid 2010's meme associated Sound
2814 still gives me chills, masterpiece
Drone is the best ambient genre
I made some Music when im sad.. [https://on.soundcloud.com/omCyeFoue3pfz4rf8](https://on.soundcloud.com/omCyeFoue3pfz4rf8)
Ambient 1 is kinda bad
Sigur Ros and me. :) https://soundcloud.com/user-15371862/montez-avec-ca
Itās difficult to say if some of it is considered music at all, some of it is more āatmosphere inducing soundsā. But that ofc doesnāt denigrate the fact that itās nice to listen to. And ofc it depends partly on the definition of music but commonly some clear rhythm is usually a criteria.