Good Ambient/Electronic Music

[sighisora]

Hoping to compile a list of the best ambient albums out there.

Artists were listed earlier, but specifically what albums are the best, or at least high tier?

Working with the list from before...

A

Tangerine Dream -
Lord WInd - Atlantean Movement?
Kraftwerk -
Biosphere - Substrata
Fripp/Eno -
Beherit - Electric Doom Synthesis
Neptune Towers -
Steve Roach -
Maeror Tri - Myein?

B

Autechre -
Aphex Twin -
Vangelis -
Jean-Michel Jarre -
Lustmord -

Other ambient artist with reviews on the neoclassical music page...

Claustrum/Clasthome
Endura
Final
Hands To

[nothingnowhere]

Here's my take

A

Tangerine Dream - Phaedra, not familiar enough with the others except the first 3 albums which are interesting but not really A quality.

Lord Wind - Atlantean Monument, other albums don't matter that much

Kraftwerk - Trans Europe Express, not familiar enough their other albums to say.

Biosphere - Substrata

Beherit - EDS, H418ov21.C has cool ideas but is a bit of a mess.

Neptune Towers - both are good, but Caravans is better.

Steve Roach - Structures From Silence, Dreamtime Return, Midnight Moon, The Magnificent Void, other material is good but not as important.

Maeror Tri - Myein, other material is good but not as important. I would put The Beauty of Sadness in the B category.

Ildjarn-Nidhogg - Hardangervidda

Klaus Schulze - X

B+

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Volume II

Jean-Michel Jarre - Oxygene is solid, haven't heard anything else.

Endura - Everything, though Great God Pan is the jewel in the crown.

Tenhornedbeast - Hunts & Wars

Arktau Eos - Mirrorion, Ai Ma Ra

B and beyond (or rather below)

Myriads


I'm sure I missed something, but it seems like a decent list. if anyone wants me to go into greater detail on any particular albums, I will.

[Istaev]

Substrata. start there. best album.

Tangerine Dream? Phaedra is great. Actually everything through Stratosfear is great to varying degrees. I like Zeit a lot for some reason too. Klaus Schulze's Irrlicht is an interesting companion to that album.

I like Lustmord. It's the first and the best dark ambient. It's more expansive and evocative than just about anybody who tried to imitate him. Heresy and The Place Where the Black Stars Hang. other stuff is less interesting.

I really don't understand why Lord Wind and Beherit get all this unearned praise. Lord Wind is cheesey, amateurish, and derivative. He's been ripping off movie soundtracks (which are corny in and of themselves) and failing at it the whole time. It's just embarrassingly bad from a musical standpoint. Beherit's ambient stuff is good but nothing earthshattering and certainly isn't among the best this category of music has to offer nor does it match Drawing Down the Moon for that matter.

[Eleison]

Here's my take

A

Tangerine Dream - Phaedra, not familiar enough with the others except the first 3 albums which are interesting but not really A quality.

Lord Wind - Atlantean Monument, other albums don't matter that much

Kraftwerk - Trans Europe Express, not familiar enough their other albums to say.

Biosphere - Substrata

Beherit - EDS, H418ov21.C has cool ideas but is a bit of a mess.

Neptune Towers - both are good, but Caravans is better.

Steve Roach - Structures From Silence, Dreamtime Return, Midnight Moon, The Magnificent Void, other material is good but not as important.

Maeror Tri - Myein, other material is good but not as important. I would put The Beauty of Sadness in the B category.

Ildjarn-Nidhogg - Hardangervidda

Klaus Schulze - X

B+

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Volume II

Jean-Michel Jarre - Oxygene is solid, haven't heard anything else.

Endura - Everything, though Great God Pan is the jewel in the crown.

Tenhornedbeast - Hunts & Wars

Arktau Eos - Mirrorion, Ai Ma Ra

B and beyond (or rather below)

Myriads


I'm sure I missed something, but it seems like a decent list. if anyone wants me to go into greater detail on any particular albums, I will.

For Tangerine Dream add Atem and Rubycon.  The trilogy Atem - Phaedra  - Rubycon is one of the most incredible in existence, I recommend listening to all three consecutively.  

Kraftwerk - The Man-Machine

Klaus Schulze - Moondawn, possibly even better than X.

Other bands that could be added to the list are Raison D'etre, whose best material is at least in the B+ catergory, Ildjarn and Burzum should also be there, I think their ambient efforts probably exceed those of Lord Wind and Beherit in many ways.

Also, and this is a very important point, people should stop overlooking all of the original electronic composers, it seems that most people aren't even aware of the influences of most of these bands, many of which are as good as or better than anything which followed them.  Important works are...

Stockhausen - Kontakte, Gesang der Junglinge
Xenakis - La Legende d'Eer, Persepolis

These are the most important.  Kontakte is a voyage through sonic structures which makes stuff like Lustmord redundant.  La Legend d'Eer is an epic/narrative structured piece evoking the Platonic story of a journey into the underworld.

[aquarius]

Tangerine Dream - peaked with phaedra/rubycon then began to decline.

Klaus Schulze - peaked with timewind, moondawn is good but also the beginning of the decline. Irrlicht and cyborg are ambient/drone.

Neptune Towers - KS worship however more jaggered, noisy and abstract. Doesn't build momentum quite as well.

Ash Ra Tempel - Neuzeit der erde (a good companion to the above artists A-/B+).

Kraftwerk - trans europa express, computerwelt and tour de france soundtracks all are A+ however never struck me as typically ambient

Lord Wind - Heralds of Fight is on par with Atlantean monument

When - Death in the blue lake pt1/ The black death

The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud - like an expanded version of Ildjarn in a way; short songs form a succession of textures within the album (?B+)

Ildjarn/Nidhogg - Hardangervidda is godly. Essentially an inverse blueprint of Richard Strauss's great tone poem Eine Alpensinfonie

Beherit - A+ for ideas and ambition

Mortal Constraint - Legend of deformation  (dark immersive structures in an electo-industrial style)

[sighisora]

Any recommendations for Fripp/Eno?  Looking at their discographies it's difficult to pinpoint what years his/their best work came from.

[Sepulchral Voice]

Any recommendations for Fripp/Eno?  Looking at their discographies it's difficult to pinpoint what years his/their best work came from.

Start with Evening Star, if you like that get No Pussyfooting and The Equatorial Stars.

[Saif al-Malik]

Im also looking for some very vocal heavy ambient in the vein of DCD preferably with the same ancient, ecclesiastical kind of atmosphere.

May I suggest Isihia?  It is not complex nor may it even compare to the better acts here, but the use of chanting leads to a reverent atmosphere as if entering an aural version of Orthodox Christianity.

Isihia - Klyuch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS5hmStjmBk

[nothingnowhere]

Im also looking for some very vocal heavy ambient in the vein of DCD preferably with the same ancient, ecclesiastical kind of atmosphere.

May I suggest Isihia?  It is not complex nor may it even compare to the better acts here, but the use of chanting leads to a reverent atmosphere as if entering an aural version of Orthodox Christianity.

Isihia - Klyuch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS5hmStjmBk

Any chance of putting this album in the audiofile? It would be appreciated.

[Conservationist]

Tangerine Dream - Phaedra, not familiar enough with the others except the first 3 albums which are interesting but not really A quality.

Stratosfear and Rubycon at a minimum, Atem is also good as another person mentioned, and moments on their later work is good but no albums have that "whole" feel.

[istaros]

Hoping to compile a list of the best ambient albums out there.

Artists were listed earlier, but specifically what albums are the best, or at least high tier?

Working with the list from before...

Kraftwerk
Autechre

Kraftwerk: Die Mensch-Maschine is Kraftwerk's strongest statement on an artistic level, but Autobahn and Trans Europa Express are excellent as well. Radio-Aktivität seems a relatively weak spot to me, but that's largely due to its being chronologically surrounded by those two latter albums. I also have a soft spot for Computerwelt, personally. Stuff after that point is passable at best, and I haven't heard the two self-titled albums yet.

Autechre: Absolutely does not belong in a B category. Before recommending anything it should be noted that each of the group's LPs vastly differs from the rest, so even if one doesn't strike you there's a good chance another will. Tri Repetae and LP5 are the highest points. I like Amber, Chiastic Slide, and maybe Oversteps just as much as those two, but they're not nearly as unbelievably inventive. On the other hand, Quaristice and Confield are just as adventurous as those two, but far less pleasant on an immediate level.

[Eleison]

http://www.ubu.com/sound/electronic.html

Here is a massive collection of electronic music from composers within academic institutions over the last 100 years.  There's some awesome stuff here from those willing to look through it.  Also ignore the comment from the liberal faggots who posted this.

[nastrond]

What composers out of that collection would you recommend?  I didn't want to scan through the whole list so I just took it as an opportunity to listen to John Cage; he's like an ancestor of modern horror movie trailers in that he substitutes overall substance and resolve with a patchwork of discordant imagery.  Naked City and the Boredoms also do that, but I enjoy both of those bands in a novel sort of way.

[average]

All of the suggestions are good ones, but you gotta include Lycia. I thought their first three albums were incredibly emotive. They are a great example because each album seems to me, to be an emotional journey. Definitely takes you directly to the pathos and back out again. It has a bittersweet quality that I really enjoy.

[Faszysta]

Welcome. What do you think about the newer aproach on electronic music?

Svarte Greiner - Knive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2vmXZKlnuM

Staruha Mha - O.G.N.I. (or Fires)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m_kymtlmOs

Diagnose: lebensgefahr - Transformalin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA3dePWvJNY

Vindensång - Terminus: Rebirth in Eight Parts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCfAIhYGEgc