February Collective Collaborative Blog: Ambient Starter Pack

To expand on our starter packs from our summer 2019 zine, this month's collab blog is all about essential ambient albums. Whether you're looking to introduce yourself to the genre or just looking for some new recommendations, this starter pack is filled with a variety of ambient styles to dig into.

​Noe's Picks

Ambient is easy to dismiss as background noise. The absence of identifiable melodies or beats can make it challenging to engage this type of music directly. This is why I think it is useful to approach it in a different way. Instead of expecting what I normally do from songs (a catchy hook, a satisfying crescendo, etc…), I like to see ambient pieces as sonic paintings or movies.

With the absence of melody there is an increased attention to texture. The purpose of this is to envelop the listener and evoke a sense of place. If you have trouble focusing in these aspects, I recommend using over ear headphones or a loud sound system, dimming the lights, and other things that you think will enhance your physical space.

Given that I think of ambient pieces this way, I’d like to speak of my recommendations as physical spaces, describing what I picture and imagine when enveloping myself in these works.
​

Album: Pop (2000)
Artist: Gas
Label: Mille Plateaux
Imagine laying down in the middle of the forest, closing your eyes, and paying close attention. You start hearing the ants making their way around you, the wind moving the leaves of the trees, and the flow of a nearby river. Pop is the sound of the forest, brimming with life and golden, soothing colors. When in ease at nature, one can’t help but feel a wonderful sense of peace.

Album: Substrata (1997)
Artist: Biosphere
Label: All Saints Records
Substrata is a sub zero record. It feels like being dropped on the middle of Antarctica. A deep sense of loneliness, of vastness, and ultimately of beauty show up in the glaciers and the barren layers of ice. Some of its samples occasionally portray drips of water, distant animals, and sounds of objects that could very well be tools or lumber for a fireplace. Being it such an icy landscape can be scary, but wonder will overshadow everything in the end.

Album: Ravedeath, 1972 (2011)
Artist: Tim Hecker
Label: Kranky
What does the apocalypse sound like? Tim Hecker seems to know, because he brought to us Ravedeath, 1972. With its droning and hazy sounds, the album places us amidst thick fog and ruined buildings. There is no semblance of life around. It is an overwhelming reality that can easily take hold of all of our emotions. But grappling with that intensity can reveal a stunning landscape that is fascinating in its desolation.

Album: An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2007)
Artist: The Caretaker
Label: Boomkat
When listening to The Caretaker, I feel like everything around me is covered in dust and spiderwebs; lost in the past and forgotten. This is the music that the former residents of The Shining’s Overlook Hotel are listening to while Jack Torrence orders a drink at the bar, dancing perpetually while stuck in time.

left

Album: Oracle (2007)
Artist: Sunn O)))
Label: Southern Lord Records
Seances often look a bit ridiculous from the outside. But what if we could feel that deep spiritual connection, as well as the dripping fear that the attendees feel? Oracle feels like partaking in such a ritual. You can hear specters whispering at your ear and stressful inner turmoil. But the incantation doesn’t stop, flowing through these passages of terror. The dread might come face to face with you, but as long as you don’t break the circle of hands, everything will eventually end. At that point, there is no other option but to look into the abyss.

​

Kurt B.'s Pick

Album: From Gardens Where We Feel Secure (1983)
Artist: Virginia Astley
Label: Happy Valley/Rough Trade
In 1917, ambient forefather Erik Satie minted the term “furniture music” (musique d'ameublement) to describe brief pieces of background music. At the height of post-punk, Virignia Astley took the action outside; surely some wag at New Music Express or Melody Maker called From Gardens Where We Feel Secure “lawn furniture music.” Split into Morning and Afternoon sides, this nine-song set of neoclassical instrumentals blends ambient sounds of the English countryside (bleating sheep, church bells, a rusty garden gate) with a small chamber ensemble of piano, woodwind, and strings. Simple arrangements, minimalist repetition, and fragments of melody that haunt you like the lullaby from Rosemary’s Baby (“Sleep Safe and Warm”) form the bedrock of Ashley’s garden-to-go, with judiciously applied studio FX adding a soft focus filter. To paraphrase the US Postal Service, neither snow nor rain nor heat nor dead of night can best this album’s ability to sooth and refresh a weary soul. 

​

Parisa's Picks

Documentary: Sculptress of Sound: The Lost Works of Delia Derbyshire
Created by: BBC Radio 4 (2010)
For those seeking knowledge on the origins of ambient sounds, I highly recommend this BBC audio documentary on composer and electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire. This doc is a fascinating introduction to electronic music techniques pre-synths and computers, but more so shines light on a woman who only recently is being recognized for the innovator that she is. It's safe to say that all ambient composers (and any electronic artists, for that matter) wouldn't be where they are today without her ingenuity and perseverance.  You may have already heard her work as she was the creator of the original Doctor Who soundtrack, but here are my two favorite Derbyshire projects:

"The Dreams" (1964) - a 5-piece sound collage poem in collaboration with Barry Bermange. They recorded interviewees to discuss their dreams, and later spliced and collaged in accordance to a theme: "Running", "Falling", "Land", "Sea" and "Colour".​ The overall composition feels like a guided ambient journey, you're falling between vast sonic soundscapes and dreamy narrations of people's most vulnerable subconscious moments.

"Love Without Sound" (1969) - from the band White Noise - an English experimental group formed after bass player/physicist/electronic engineer David Vorhaus attended one of Delia Derbyshire's BBC Radiophonic Workshops on sound science.  Delia was in another music project with fellow BBC producer Brian Hodgson called Unit Delta Plus, and both then formed this new group with Vorhaus. This first album, An Electric Storm, was a groundbreaking development for what would become electronic music. This album employed novel tape manipulation techniques and utilized the first British synthesizer (the EMS Synthi VCS3). This track is my particular favorite because it's so freakishly bizarre and remains so ahead of its time. Derbyshire created this song by speeding up tape edits of Vorhaus playing double bass to create violin and cello sounds. Mind you - this was in 1969. There was absolutely nothing at this time, and to this day there's still nothing quite like it. This album never reached commercial success, but most ambient and experimental artists (i.e. The Orb, Secret Chiefs 3) cite this album as one of their most influential records.
​

Mix: Ambient Mix Live at The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors
Artist: Tipper
Label: Orchard Music (2015)
This mix is a great musical companion for sitting alone in darkness with your eyes closed and attempting to travel to the outer edges of the universe. If you're new to ambient music, this set won't necessarily show you the typical ambient sound you might want to start off with, but serves as a great example of the experimental styles that have evolved within the genre over time. UK breakbeat/glitch-hop producer Tipper fills the space that usually rests within ambient music with psychedelic frequencies and wet, glitchy sound imprints. The result is an extremely cerebral, introspective sound journey that's alien and space-age yet remarkably human.

Album: Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (1992)
Artist: Aphex Twin
Label: Apollo Records
This is an indisputable classic for the ambient and IDM genre, and arguably the greatest ambient work ever made. It's an ethereal and mysterious marriage of acid house and club basslines with lush atmospheric textures. This album forever changed the way I understand music and the way sound can affect me overall as a person. There's too much to be said about this album that I could condense into one paragraph (you can always check out the Wiki page for a more in-depth collection of reviews of this album over the past two decades) - but if you're new to this album, just dedicate a night to listening to this album in its entirety and see what kind of journey it takes you on. 

---

Check out more of our starter packs in our Summer 2019 zinehere.