# Musicians that make good ambient music?



## supersonic68 (Dec 25, 2019)

Hello, 

I am collecting musicians that make good ambient music. For example Buckethead, Max Richter etc. 
If you want you can share your personal favourites with me.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

William Basinski, Tim Hecker, Wolfgang Voigt/Gas, Brian Eno, Stars of the Lid, Ryuichi Sakamoto & Alva Noto. I loved ambient music long before I ever got into classical music.


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## Granate (Jun 25, 2016)

A Winged Victory For the Sullen, Nils Frahm, How to Disappear Completely, Boards of Canada, Hammock (some better than others, I find the latest 'Loss' album trilogy rather uninspired), Symphocat, Retablo, Siavash Amini or 36.

I have also listened to the artists mentioned by flamenco and they are all geniuses. Well done! I usually listen more to drone than pure ambient music. And without the _Atomos_ by A Winged Victory for the Sullen I wouldn't have gotten into Classical music again.






















And welcome to Talk Classical, supersonic68.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Here's my list:

God (or whatever you replace her with).


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Harold Budd has been a favorite of mine ever since I heard _Lovely Thunder_ back in the 80s.


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## supersonic68 (Dec 25, 2019)

God is a very good composer. I am looking for music more abstract than the music from god but thank you very much.


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## supersonic68 (Dec 25, 2019)

Here is my list: 

Buckethead 
Ludovico Einaudi 
Rene Aubry
Yann Tiersen 
Chilly Gonzales 
Craig Armstrong 
Ahsram 
Szymon Brzoska


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## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

Does this belong to Classical Music discussion?
If we are limited to classical/neoclassical composers/musicians then I should probably mention trombonist Stuart Dempster and composer Alan Hovhaness. Definitely Harold Budd mentioned above.
If we are to expand into electronic music then the list would be so extensive... Steve Roach, Thom Brennan, Vidna Obmana, Alio Die, Mathias Grassow just to name a few.


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## supersonic68 (Dec 25, 2019)

Which genres did you listen to before you explored classical music?


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## supersonic68 (Dec 25, 2019)

> Does this belong to Classical Music discussion?


In core I am searching for good post-minimalsitc music that I don´t already know.


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## supersonic68 (Dec 25, 2019)

Anybody here that has more composers like Max Richter, Ludovico Einaudi, Olafur Arnalds etc.


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## Granate (Jun 25, 2016)

^^

Wait, wasn't that what you wanted? Or you wanted thoughts about those favourite composers of yours?

If it were to me, Arnalds should become a widely famous film composer rivaling Hans Zimmer. His Broadchurch series, the Decca Album and the Icelandic ep (not the latest blue album with a mechanic instrument) were fantastic in my ears. I'm a fan of Max Richter too although Ad Astra was a bit of a let down, so far slowly liking it more.

Einaudi is quite nice for me but there are a good bunch of haters of his marketing in this forum, so I wouldn't praise him too loud here.



> Buckethead
> Ludovico Einaudi
> Rene Aubry
> Yann Tiersen
> ...


Only have heard Einaudi. Can you post "introductory" pieces of the rest so I know what they are best at in the world of Ambient? Burial has dope Ambient tracks but it's not his main genre.

[HR][/HR]
I'm going to request the mods to move this to Non Classical Music, supersonic. I hope you can understand because it's not up to you.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

supersonic68 said:


> Which genres did you listen to before you explored classical music?


If this question is for me, then... a lot. Rock ('60s and '70s stuff mostly), metal, jazz, and hip-hop are my favorites as far as non-classical music. Ambient music as well is big for me. And then stuff like soul, funk, reggae, D&B, techno, house, etc. etc. But classical music has really come to dominate my listening and change my life over this past year. These days 90% of my listening time is classical music. I feel like I have so much to catch up on after a lifetime of not caring about classical music at all.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Brian Eno 
Harold Budd
Steve Roach 
Robert Rich 
Michael Stearns
Jonn Serrie 
Vidna Obmana
Vir Unis
Max Corbacho
Telomere
Pete Namlook 
Tetsu Inoue 
Oöphoi
Mathias Grassow
Lustmord 
Raison d'Etre 
Blood Box/Yen Pox
David Helpling & Jon Jenkins


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## philoctetes (Jun 15, 2017)

Buckethead is a guitar rocker with a Col Sanders bucket on his head, literally - I saw him live in Petaluma - and Colma is a fairly smooth album named after a shopping mall town. Is that what y'all mean by ambient?

Anyway, groups like CoB and Autechre interested me for awhile but were never able to displace my preference for modern jazz and CM. I think that should be self-explanatory to anybody seeking the latter out now. I'm not against electronics and experimentation but I want the music to be on the same level as Messiaen or Schoenberg ha ha.

After avoiding "international" jazz on ECM for decades I've really enjoyed some of their ambient issues lately. Guitarist Jakob Bro is making albums that might interest anybody who likes Colma. The 2CD set called Atmospheres is played by a supergroup of young stars who I now follow as individual artists. Ambient trumpeters Arne Henriksen, Wadada Leo Smith, Nils Petter Molvaer and Jon Hassell are all working the Silent Way and stirring up new recipes of Bitches Brew with great results.

And while I often think of ambient as being drummer-less, along comes drummer Tyshawn Sorey who has the chops to produce 60-minute compositions of avant-garde jazz that incorporates a lot of silence and timbre and distributes the music through a variety of instruments.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Some of what I list may be a little more actively engaging than pure ambient, but it may be similar to what you are looking for.

Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays - As Falls Wichita so Falls Wichita Falls (no other release by either of these 2 musicians fits the category, but this one is great)

Much of the 70's German 'Berlin' school of electronic music might fit. Although, they may be more spacey than what you are looking for. There is an article by New Yorker some time back that is titled something like, "The Invention of Ambient Music" that refers to many of the 70's German electronic artists from the 70's.

Tangerine Dream - Phaedra, Rubicon
Klaus Schulze - Timewind, Moondawn 
Cluster and Eno - S/T, a collaboration between German ambient musicians and Brian Eno
Eno/Moebius/Roedelius - After the Heat, another collaboration
Eberhard Schoener – Meditation 
Deuter – Silence is the Answer, Sound of Invisible Waters (some nice acoustic guitar in these)
Ashra - New Age Of Earth
Fuhrs and Frohling - Ammerland is close to brilliant! (they came from a prog band called SFF doing much more intense and complex music, and definitely not ambient) 

Steve Hillage (known more as a prog-rocker / fusion guitarist, later got more into ambient) - Rainbow Dome Music, is a great ambient album. Even a bit later he created System 7, which is quoted by many early techno and EDM artists as a big influence. 

Vangelis - Albedo 0.39 (some of his stuff, like the album 'Heaven and Hell', is a bit more intense and proggy to be considered ambient). Did the soundtrack to Blade Runner, which is pretty ambient. 

Kit Watkins - another ex-prog musician (with monster keyboard chops!) who later made plenty of great ambient releases. 
Patrick O'Hearn - bass player who once played on Frank Zappa's most technically demanding music, later released quite a few ambient albums. 
David Sylvian - borders between dark ambient and art rock. One of the only artists on my list with vocals. Really brilliant stuff. Most of his albums have quite a bit that can be considered ambient, 'Secrets of the Beehive' for sure, He also did plenty of collaborations with other musicians that are obviously ambient: Ryuichi Sakamoto, Holger Czukay (Flux & Mutability), and Robert Fripp (Damage). 

Others of note:

Daniel Lanois, Jon Hassell, Steve Tibbits.


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## Faville (Sep 15, 2012)

Leans more towards drone, but I have been periodically enjoying Solas by Claire M. Singer quite a bit the last couple of years.


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## rbacce (Nov 3, 2018)

Hiroshi Yoshimura


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## Guest (Dec 31, 2019)

Simon Moon said:


> Some of what I list may be a *little more actively engaging *than pure ambient,


Just a small point re your opening comment. Eno's own definition and use of the word 'ambient' has, I've recently noticed, sometimes been used in truncated form to imply that ambient music shouldn't actively engage - that it should be ignorable. This is not the case. What he said was,



> Ambient Music must be able to accomodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.


http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/MFA-txt.html

Of course, one is still left to wonder how far a composition may actively engage without becoming _un_ignorable. And one is also left to wonder to what extent Eno was having a laugh at our expense!


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

_For those who like space music/ambient_, I can really recommend Max Corbacho, who I included in my previous post. 
He isn't as well known as some of the others, but he's on the level of the best of them.
This kind of ambient is too boring for many, but some develop an ear for it. I guess it's an "acquired taste".
You can check out his music on Bandcamp. My favorite albums include Splendid Labyrinths, Arte Magnetica, Echo of Longing.
Maybe it's wallpaper music, maybe it's not, who cares, it's damn good at what it is.

Lights out...
https://maxcorbacho.bandcamp.com/track/echo-of-longing


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