Ambient Recs

"Whereas the extant canned music companies proceed from the basis of regularizing environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncrasies, Ambient Music is intended to enhance these. Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to "brighten" the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and leveling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms) Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think. Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting."

-Brian Eno, Liner Notes for Ambient 1: Music for Airports

c418 - Minecraft
Steve Roach - Structures From Silence
Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports
Hiroshi Yoshimura - Green
The KLF - Chill Out
Suzanne Ciani - Seven Waves
Popol Vuh - Hosianna Mantra
Grouper - Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill
William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops (Remastered)
Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid

These are ten of the most important starter albums for anyone who wants to dip their toes into ambient. This list is based both on what drew me to the genre when I was still not fully convinced I liked it and trying to get a good sampler for the different sounds and disciplines of ambient.

subgenres / adjacent genres

i am aware that there is no tribal ambient here, which is a well discussed discipline. The problems were: 1.) Topsters3 only has 12 rows 2.) I am not at all well versed in tribal ambient, I have basically only spent time with Steve Roach's forrays into the sound.