Ambient

The Ambient is a kind and a musical tonality often associated with certain electronic musics.

The Ambient (term invented by Brian Eno) was defined at the beginning by its vocation to constitute, as its name indicates it, a background music or, more precisely, a music " basic " (Eno had precisely composed a first album of ambient entitled Music for airports ). Thereafter, it is more the prevalence of the tablecloths and the absence of happy which were used to define the kind.

Even if the term Ambient from now on is especially associated with the Techno and more precisely with the psychedelic Trance where Trance-Goa, the Ambient was a term directly resulting from the planing music of the Années 1970: Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Ash Ra Tempel, Heldon, Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Pink Floyd, but also of the classical music minimalist (Steve Reich, Philip Glass in particular, and even Erik Satie, David Aubrun)…

Although the sub-genera tend to be scrambled today, so much so that one speaks overall about downtempo or from Electronica, one can differentiate in ambient some about homogeneous movements among which:

the Illbient
the undue money-ambient (or dark-ambient , sombient , etc): Scorn, Sielwolf, In Slaughter Native, Biosphere, Lustmord, Divine…
the Heavenly voices (or fairy-like musics): Dead Edge Dance, Cocteau Twins
the ambient techno, represented by certain artists of the label Warp (Boards off Canada…), by the Ambient works of Aphex Twin
the ambient house, to bring closer according to the pieces of the Progressive: The Orb, Orbital, KLF…
the ambient with dominant bruitist, which can flirter with the techno minimalist (Blip-hop, IDM): Monolake, Autechre
a fringe planing Post-rock'n'roll: Labradford, Canadian Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Side-American
the Trip-hop and the Dub can be regarded as deeply marked by ambient: Massive File, Deadbeat, Attack, Portishead, Kid Loco…
the " pop ambient": immersion of sounds ambient in songs of the pop repertory of certain groups like The Cure, Depeche Mode, Mercury Rev…
the tribal one ambient: Mix tablecloths ambient with percussions coming from various ethnos groups (Steve Roach, max Corbacho, Kelly David, Robert Rich, Na-Koja-Abad, Alio Die)
ambient It minimalist: Tablecloths ambient with repetitive sequences (Certain works of Steve Roach, Vidna Obmana, Oophoi, Brian Eno)

General information

TranceProject : TranceProject is a Database Encyclopédique maintained by one commuauté of users appreciating the styles of music Transe/Ambient and the various forms of Psychédélisme.
Brokendolls: Brokendolls is a French-speaking Webzine specialized in particular in the dark ambient one (compare to dark-ambient). Excellent base of data for this type of music, the site also includes/understands a radio.
Midnight Coils…: The best of ambient in Podcast

Random links: