Electronic and Ambient Music Catch-All

I've listened to the Tim Hecker just once or twice so far, need to give it some more time. Everything he does is some level of good to great, and so far this doesn't sound like it will change that.

*Legion* wrote:

I've listened to the Tim Hecker just once or twice so far, need to give it some more time.

Totes. My feeling is that first thru fifth impressions of an album are worthless, and should be ignored.

Jonman wrote:

Totes. My feeling is that first thru fifth impressions of an album are worthless, and should be ignored.

I swear for me it's like 10 repeats at least before I start to like something. I'm that way with everything though. Most of my favorite games, TV shows, etc, I had a rather lengthy period of time at the start where I was undecided on if I even liked them or not. And often, the more that I end up liking something, the more that thing had to struggle to capture my interest at the beginning.

*Legion* wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Totes. My feeling is that first thru fifth impressions of an album are worthless, and should be ignored.

I swear for me it's like 10 repeats at least before I start to like something. I'm that way with everything though. Most of my favorite games, TV shows, etc, I had a rather lengthy period of time at the start where I was undecided on if I even liked them or not. And often, the more that I end up liking something, the more that thing had to struggle to capture my interest at the beginning.

Yup. Autechre are my all-time favorite artists (and to a certain extent poster-boys for having to listen to a bunch of times before "getting it"). The first album of theirs I had sat on my shelf gathering dust for the first couple of years I owned it because I'd written it off as un-listenable garbage on the first couple of listens. Then one day I put it on and was all like "WTF? How did I miss how amazing this is?"

My highest recommendation for the new Ital Tek album, Hollowed:

This is a put-on-your-headphones-and-get-lost-in-space album. I wish I had a better term than "ambient" because it's not that Brian Eno aural wallpaper kind of ambient music, but it's not that beat-driven industrial dubstep Ital Tek has done (fabulously) on previous releases.

Whatever you call it, this album has chiseled itself onto my Best of 2016 list in stone.

Also, a strong recommendation for all of Ital Tek's previous albums. I'm pretty sure his debut album, Cyclical, was in one of my old best-of-list posts.

I like it. I like it a lot.

I found this one featured in The Wire Magazine this month. This is Scottish duo Boobs of Doom. They are "ambient noisy doom drone", and though they're not metal, they seem to draw inspiration from a lot of doom metal (they tag themselves doom metal in Bandcamp, and follow doom metal bands like Lycus on Instagram).

They're also more beat oriented than someone like Nadja, which uses that glacially slow, Earth-like drumming. Boobs of Doom's beats are a little swifter, reminding me a bit of Dead Cities Future Sound of London.

They're a "masked" duo, male and female, who apparently are Warcraft obsessed (the band name is supposedly an inside joke from WOW guild chat).

Their albums are all on Bandcamp for name-your-price. They have a new album releasing at the end of this month (called "WOW is Dead"), which is what the second video is from (and the video appears to be distorted WOW gameplay). Highly recommend at least dropping a buck (or even $0 if you must) and grabbing WHITE NOISE, their most recent until the new one drops.

Do you like music inspired by '80s synth film scores? Or even actual '80s synth film scores? You f*ckin better.

Two releases from this year demand your attention.

First, the new reissue of The Terminator soundtrack by Brad Fiedel, which really does hold up as an album to listen to:

Secondly, the new album from S U R V I V E, a quartet from whom two members scored the soundtrack to the Netflix show "Stranger Things". They recently signed with and released their latest album through metal label Relapse Records, of all places.

Arise, electronic music thread!

Bandcamp link to full album.

I really like having mixes like these while I'm cooking, cleaning around the house, etc.

I recently found out that there was a track on the Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works 2 album that was only on the vinyl and not the CD version. And it's pure bliss:

Renji wrote:

Arise, electronic music thread!

Bandcamp link to full album.

Me likey.

Wish it was a "full" song.

Tscott wrote:

I recently found out that there was a track on the Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works 2 album that was only on the vinyl and not the CD version. And it's pure bliss:

Still kicking myself for selling my copy of that when I was slimming down my record collection to emigrate. I HAD THE BROWN VINYL!

Better news - new Sylvan Esso album is out!

Yeah the tracks on that Resting State album are pretty short, but the album as a whole flows together nicely.

Gravey wrote:

If synthwave falls under this banner, then thanks also to the cyberpunk music thread for turning me on to that, and darkwave in particular. Pertubator may be the best, but I'm also wearing out GosT and Dan Terminus:

Two years later, but as someone finally getting up to speed on darkwave, yes, yes, and yes.

I find Dance with the Dead and Carpenter Brut to also be quite delicious.

More to the original intent of the thread, I think my all-time favorite electronic album is Not for Threes by Plaid, from back in '97:
IMAGE(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fd/Notforthrees.jpg/220px-Notforthrees.jpg)

Boards of Canada and Early-ish Autechre are right up there, too.

Boards of Canada has already been determined by fiat consensus to be the absolute pinnacle of electronic music.

*Legion* wrote:

Boards of Canada has already been determined by consensus to be the absolute pinnacle of electronic music bare minimum of cultural touchstones for the genre .

Jonman wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

Boards of Canada has already been determined by consensus to be the absolute pinnacle of electronic music bare minimum of cultural touchstones for the genre best music website of 2001.

Arise, thread!

Just saw this linked, and really enjoyed it:

This isn't from the PC game Unreal (what I originally thought it was), but from a demo called Unreal on the Amiga, years before.

If you play it on Youtube, it leads to this track:

... which is epic. I never heard this one, back in the day. Man, it would have been so amazing to listen to floppies gronking away for awhile, and for the computer to then suddenly light up and start doing that. Jeeze, that would have been exciting.

It's maybe not that impressive to modern people, because nowadays, of course computers can duplicate any music you can imagine. It hasn't always been that way. Back in the late 80s/early 90s, having the slab of plastic sitting on your desk start putting out sound like that would have been toe-tingling.

Malor wrote:

a demo called Unreal on the Amiga, years before.

If you play it on Youtube, it leads to this track:

... which is epic.

Ah, so that's the source of this Rochard track:

Connection made; mind blown.

Malor wrote:

This isn't from the PC game Unreal (what I originally thought it was), but from a demo called Unreal on the Amiga, years before.

Considering Unreal (and the original version of the Unreal Engine) used a tracker based music system I wouldn't be half surprised if there's some connection. Plus, most of the musicians who worked on the game got their start in the C64 and Amiga demo scenes.

Ted wrote:
Malor wrote:

a demo called Unreal on the Amiga, years before.

If you play it on Youtube, it leads to this track:

... which is epic.

Ah, so that's the source of this Rochard track:

Connection made; mind blown.

I can't believe anyone just made a reference to Rochard.

76:14 by Global Communication

How the heck have I not heard about this album until now? (It's even featured in the image that tops this thread). This beautiful album from 1994 gets its title from its length and each of the tracks is also similarly titled. Everything I read about it talks about how it's one of the best, a must listen to ambient album, greatest of all time. As someone who has everything they can find by Aphex Twin, and Brian Eno and gone down a few other alleys in search of good ambient, I'm shocked that I missed this. I almost feel like there must be some aspect of the Mandela Effect at work here- where I came from an alternate dimension where this album didn't exist to this wonderful dimension where it does. I'm making up for missing out of on this for 20+ years, because I've been listening to it at least twice a day since I found out about it a few days ago.

Tracks and Traces by Brian Eno and Harmonia '76

This has recently turned into a go-to ambient album for me. I don't even recall when or where I picked this up. Most likely bought with several other of Eno's work when I was working on expanding my knowledge of Brian Eno, and somehow was overlooked in favor of other more well known Eno works. Recently, one late night I put this on and everything clicked and I'm regularly putting this on at night when I'm browsing the internet instead of sleeping (like now).

Tscott wrote:

How the heck have I not heard about this album until now? (It's even featured in the image that tops this thread).

Yeah, it's only one of the greatest ambient albums ever.

That album is one of the ones that got me into electronic music in general. I went from my big prog rock phase into post-rock, and post-rock (especially in the '90s) often blurred into ambient electronic, and that's where I found The Orb and Global Communication, and that led to '90s Warp Records stuff, and it was on from there.

Yeah. My current thought process is that the name "Global Communication" seems so generic to my brain that any mention I may have seen about it in the past was glossed over in favor of cooler sounding names like Aphex Twin, Orbital, Orb, Moby, etc.

I also dipped into post-rock for my ambient fix too in the 90s. The most memorable for me was Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die. Especially the opening 20 min long track Djed which is quite a head trip:

Tortoise was definitely one of the first groups that attracted my attention in the post-rock sphere. I listened to Millions... and TNT SO much, along with a bunch of other stuff from the Thrill Jockey label at that time. I miss that late '90s/early '00s era of this stuff.

Hey all, I'm looking for recommendations for new stuff to listen to at work. When I'm not in the mood for video game OSTs, I primarily do downtempo/trip-hop (Kruder & Dorfmeister, Bonobo, dZihan & Kamien, Funki Porcini) with the occasional side of big beat (Crystal Method, Chemical Brothers, Fluke) and synthwave (Perturbator, Protector 101, Action Jackson). Any suggestions of other acts or albums I should seek out?

maverickz wrote:

Album bought. Great work & chill music.

I've had it on repeat for days at work.