Ambient Island

Full album-name: "Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks". This album was originally recorded as a soundtrack for the documentary Apollo (For all mankind) in 1983. Songs of this album were later used in lots of other movies (Trainspotting) and tv-series. Brian Eno, Roger Eno and Daniel Lanois produced the album.

The release of Iron marks the sixth anniversary of Yann Novak relaunching Dragon’s Eye Recordings, the record label originally created by his father Paul Novak in 1989. In previous years, this anniversary compilation has been a chance to look forward to the coming year of artists and releases. With Iron, we will be looking backward at the previous 6 years.

This is a free download (2.5 hours of music!):
http://www.dragonseyerecordings.com/catalogue/de6010.html

More than 4 hours of great music!

Maybe not strictly an ambient album, but who cares about labels if the music is stunningly beautiful!
This is the only solo-album from former Talk Talk frontman Mark Hollis, released in 1998. It’s inspired by 20th-century classical music and jazz from the late 1950s and 1960s.

The acoustic music is quite minimal, every note is there for a reason and full of emotion.

Did I mention that it's beautiful? ;-)

http://itunes.apple.com/album/mark-hollis/id14978331

The Dead Texan is an audio-visual musical duo comprising of Adam Wiltzie and video artist Christina Vantzou. Adam Wiltzie is known as one half of the ambient project Stars of the Lid (probably one of their albums will be covered in another Ambient Spotlight).

The music on this self-titled album is a combination of acoustic music (piano, guitar, strings) and electronic sounds and drones. It’s actually a CD/DVD package with visuals on the DVD.




Here’s a clip of one of the songs:
http://www.brainwashed.com/common/video/mov/the_dead_texan-aegina_airlines.mov

http://itunes.apple.com/album/the-dead-texan/id21770684

Mieke van der Poll makes (3D) video-art and poems. For her last project (video-art with poems) she used my music as well. To finish the project, she made an experimental animation with the song ‘Silence’:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VcKPyTwJ94

Enjoy!

German composer Pete Namlook (real name: Peter Kuhlmann) released a lot of ambient and electronic music albums on his FAX label. Besides solo-albums, he collaborated with a lot of artists, like Biosphere (Geir Jenssen), Richie Hawtin, Dr Atmo and Bill Laswell.

Among the many albums, he created the ‘Silence’ series (5 albums). The first Silence album was released in 1992 and this was the first release on his FAX label.

I especially like Silence III, which creates a beautiful atmosphere. Top ambient:
http://itunes.apple.com/album/silence-iii/id43569476

“Widesky is the moniker of Seth Chrisman, experimental musician and multimedia artist from New Mexico.  Extended techniques, field recordings, found sound and radio static are employed as source material, woven together through improvisation with DSP chains and looping software to create subtly undulating and centrifugal compositions.”

More info and download (for free):
http://ruralcolours.co.uk/news/?page_id=136%22

Boards of Canada are a Scottish electronic music duo consisting of brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin. Their music has a warm, analog feel and often processed vocal samples are used in combination with beats.

Geogaddi is one of my favourite Boards of Canada albums. There are tracks with beautiful warm and light melodies and sometimes it’s seriously dark with driving beats.

http://itunes.apple.com/nl/album/geogaddi/id281208446

In 2010 my album ‘Good to see you’ got an update in iTunes with new album art and a remastered version of ‘The Forrest’. You can find it here:

http://itunes.apple.com/nl/album/good-to-see-you/id152337880

Enjoy!

“Burning of Wine’ is the debut album of Washington, D.C. based musician and composer Benjamin Dauer. The album is both spacious and subdued, and this is contrasted with moments of dense sonic intensity. 


Benjamin combines digital sounds with occasional processed field recordings and subtle swells from the bass guitar, his main instrument, creating a well balanced contrast between organic and inorganic textures. The deep sub bass pulses, digital drones and high frequency melodic turns already present throughout the album have all been given further emphasis by the mastering treatment carried out by James Plotkin, whose previous clients have included: Sunn 0))), Earth, Nadja and Fennesz. Headphone listening especially recommended.”

This great album can be downloaded for free here:
http://distancerecordings.com/dist018

A truly amazing ambient mix by Peter van Cooten from Ambientblog: Invisible ink

http://www.vancooten.com/blog/?e=321

Some (very) good ambient music which can be downloaded for free:

“Hope’s not lost” by various artists:
http://www.ambientmusicblog.com/2010/07/22/hopes-not-lost-by-various-artists/

Some good ambient drone music:
http://www.ambientmusicblog.com/2010/07/22/music-for-bathyscaphes/

Nobuto Suda from Tokyo, Japan made a nice 20-minute ambient track. It can be downloaded for free here: http://ruralcolours.co.uk/news/?page_id=44%22

Hibernate Recordings released the Hibernate Sampler 2. You can download it for free after entering your e-mail address or you can donate something here:
http://hibernaterecordings.bandcamp.com/album/hibernate-sampler-volume-2


Enjoy!

This album is one of the reasons for me to get interested in ambient music and to start making ambient music myself. I heard it at the end of a party when my friend TC was playing this album in the room where I and some other people slept over. The track ‘Prospero’ did it for me, but also tracks like ‘Moist Moss’ and ‘Still’ have an atmosphere that I really like.

I’m talking about the album ‘Weathered Well’ from Locust alias Mark van Hoen. It was released in 1994 on Apollo records (sub-label of R&S records). Another great Locust album is ‘Morning light’ which is quite different. The songs have a more poppy, acoustic feel (including vocals) with an electronic edge.

Weathered Well:
http://itunes.apple.com/nl/album/weathered-well/id372794362

Morning Light:
http://itunes.apple.com/nl/album/morning-light-bonus-track/id334663996

Ambient Spotlight wouldn’t be complete with at least one album from the ‘godfather’ of Ambient music, Brian Eno, who is generally known for introducing the term ‘Ambient Music’ back in the 1970s.

His first complete ambient album was Ambient 1: Music for airports, which was released in 1978 on his own Ambient label. This album was one of a series of 4 ambient albums, labeled Ambient 1 to Ambient 4, all having a quite different atmosphere.

Eno’s inspiration for making Ambient 1 came after being stuck at Cologne Bonn Airport in Germany in the mid 70s. He had to spend several hours there and was extremely annoyed by the uninspired sound atmosphere. Eno’s definition of ambient music: "music that can be actively listened to with attention or as easily ignored, depending on the choice of the listener", and that exists on the "cusp between melody and texture."

Enjoy!

http://itunes.apple.com/nl/album/ambient-1-music-for-airports/id29468379

One of my all-time favorite ambient albums is Substrata (1997) from Biosphere (Geir Jenssen), which was (and is) a big inspiration for my own music.
This was his first completely beat-less ambient album.

The compositions and sounds are deep and beautiful sometimes containing samples, most notably from the tv-series Twin Peaks.

If you were to get only one ambient album for your music collection, Substrata has to be it.

http://www.biosphere.no/shop.html

The movie Blade Runner was released in 1982 and is one of my favorite movies, also because of the great soundtrack made by Vangelis. The atmosphere of the music fits the movie perfectly or actually enhances the atmosphere of the movie in my opinion. The soundtrack itself contains some famous monologues and dialogues from the movie (“have you ever retired a human by mistake?”).

The link below is pointing to the Blade Runner Trilogy, which was released in 2007 as a 25th anniversary box set. It contains more music and also some sketches from Vangelis that didn’t make it to the final version of the soundtrack.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/blade-runner-trilogy-music/id274024314

Going through my ambient music collections, I found this great album from the year 1994 by Global Communication, called ’76:14’, which is the total playing time of the album. All tracks are named after their songlength. Global Communication consists of Tom Middleton and Mark Pritchard. It’s a classic ambient album with nice downtempo grooves and beatless ambient.

http://itunes.apple.com/nl/album/76-14/id256182912

In Ambient Spotlight I’d like to inform you about great ambient albums that I either recently discovered or that I’d like to share with you for no particular reason.

This time the spotlight is on Cliff Martinez with his album ‘Solaris’ which is a soundtrack for the science fiction movie (you guessed it) Solaris from 2002. It’s a beautiful album with sometimes dreamy, sometimes dramatic orchestral pieces.

You can get a preview of this album via iTunes where you can buy it as well.