it appears i am the starter of this thread, 5 years ago, but i have NO recollection of starting it. if this thread picks up steam, we will see many varying interpretations of the genre known as Ambient. many will, i suspect, try to throw various New Age titles on the pile, but that won't work. to be truly Ambient, music must not propose a specific emotion, but rather a mood, something entirely other than emotion. and again, there can't be anything specific, but rather a suggestion in the direction of mood, rather than the mood itself.
the recordings suggested by Mr Lin are good examples of this, perhaps among the best. there are many film soundtracks that fulfill this, and i'm gonna go deep here and propose 'The Whisperers' by John Barry, from 1967. Worth the search, it is a spare chamber type composition primarily for strings, with odd, suggestive silences and indications of eerie things going on just past the edge of perception. one of my favorites...
I was hoping you'd see this, I actually got pretty excited when I found it during a search as I have a massive collection of ambient and minimal "music," and I'd love to share it here. Just need to get some batteries for my camera so I can take pictures of some of these...
You're spot on about the nature of ambient music. The lines blur in a lot of cases, so if anyone's unsure, don't be afraid to post and see what others think about it.
The John Barry piece you refer to is not something I'm familiar with, but your description brings to mind one that I adore: Anton Webern's
Six Bagatelles For String Quartet Op.9, which is highly minimal (those words almost seem to contradict one another
), and makes brilliant use of silence, as shrinkboy mentioned - a cornerstone of the ambient/minimal genre.
I will definitely be looking into the John Barry thing you mentioned, sounds right up my alley. That's one of the nice things about these types of threads, discovering new artists and music.
And there are many artists who at a time delved into minimal and ambient music, but the rest of their catalog doesn't fit that description. I think the most well-known is probably Brian Eno - we all know the wonderful pop/rock albums he made early in his career, and then the seminal four part Ambient series (which I'll get into further at a later date), proceeded by countless ambient releases, many not really officially released (
Kite Stories anyone? I'll be impressed if anyone knows of that piece due to its obscurity).
Another such case, which has been recently discussed here in a thread I started, is Tangerine Dream. For example, their early album titled
Zeit is a masterpiece (IMO) of minimal ambient. However, as I type this I'm listening to the lp of their 1980 album
Tangram, which IMO does not fit into the category of ambient whatsoever, as it's too involved and, as shrinkboy pointed out, aims at invoking emotion over immersing one in atmosphere.
I don't think we can say that ambient by definition will not evoke emotion, but I feel that depends more upon the listener than the artist, who creates the atmosphere, the mood.
Regardless, I hope no one will be scared away from posting something on their play list that they unsure of. There's no penalty, you won't be banned from AK.
I have a feeling certain AK members (*cough* pmsummer) have substantial collections as well.
So, commence.
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