Gas
<groupname>Gas</groupname>
<realname>Wolfgang Voight</realname>
<biography>
Behind GAS, you find the artist WOLFGANG VOIGT, living and working
in Cologne, Germany for all his life, who is formerly and much better
known for his projects MIKE INK, LOVE INC. and STUDIO EINS.
</biography>
<label name="Mille Plateaux">
<date>
<month>12</month>
<day>03</day>
<year>1996</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to commentary:
<![CDATA[
http://www.phonoclub.de/artikel.php?nr=682
]]>
<excerpt>
It is clear that what is necessary to make sound travel, and
to travel around sound, is very pure and simple sound, an
emission or wave without harmonics. The more rarefied the
atmosphere, the more disparate the elements you will find.
Although GAS has all the the elements of minimal music like
TERRY RILEY the music is different. It is electronic music
with the elements of Techno. The monotonous 4/4 bass drum
gives a very special hypnotic touch, the music involves
forces like duration and intensity. The synthesis of disparate
elements is very strong.
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
</comments>
<rating score="1"/>
Zauberberg
<groupname>Gas</groupname>
<realname>Wolfgang Voight</realname>
<label name="Mille Plateaux">
<date>
<month>01</month>
<day>23</day>
<year>1998</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to commentary:
<![CDATA[
http://www.phonoclub.de/artikel.php?nr=695&lang=en
]]>
<excerpt>
Essentially reducing to violin and horn passages, he condenses
and modulates the sound waves and loops until they reach a
new - almost gaseous-state. There they encounter the last
remains of techno (groove), to follow the long march of the
bass drum which floating through the brittle beauty of gloomy
virtual sounds of nature - seems to begin nowhere, seems to
end nowhere. A dense forest of reflections, cleft mountains of
a very special musical imagination.
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
</comments>
<rating score="1"/>
Konigforst
<groupname>Gas</groupname>
<realname>Wolfgang Voight</realname>
<label name="Mille Plateaux">
<date>
<month>03</month>
<day>12</day>
<year>1999</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to commentary:
<![CDATA[
http://www.phonoclub.de/artikel.php?nr=8065
]]>
<excerpt>
...truly visionary music, with endless loops of strings and
horns, gaseous and nebulous, floating, mixing and drifting.
High as low, light as heavy. And the eternal bass drum is
marching like the heartbeat of life, knocking under the surface
like coming out of another room.
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
</comments>
<rating score="1"/>
Pop
<groupname>Gas</groupname>
<realname>Wolfgang Voight</realname>
<label name="Mille Plateaux">
<date>
<month>03</month>
<day>31</day>
<year>2000</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to commentary:
<![CDATA[
http://www.phonoclub.de/artikel.php?nr=8083
]]>
<excerpt>
...is lighter in sound and more transparent in structure
settled in your expectations graceful surfaces beautiful and
perfectly deformed tiled and looped like reality and the
surroundings around it this is pop.
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
</comments>
<rating score="2"/>
Raising Earthly Spirits
<groupname>Rapoon</groupname>
<realname>Robin Storey</realname>
<biography>
As Rapoon, ex-:zoviet*france: member Robin Storey specializes in
experimental atmospheres and post-industrial sound rendered with
gripping effectiveness. Unlike his former compatriots Storey's hypnotic
mantras aren't drawn from esoteric sound sources. It's obvious that
he makes extensive use of sampling, tape manipulation and looping,
but the music of Rapoon is more structured, less chaotic, even tribal,
in the way archaic cultures used repetition and 'minimalism' to broach
their message to deities unknown.
</biography>
<label name="Soleilmoon">
<date>
<month></month>
<day></day>
<year>1999</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to commentary:
<![CDATA[
http://pretentious.net/Rapoon/reviews/raising.htm
]]>
<excerpt>
Totally magical, awe-inspiring almost non-rhythmic trip through a
universe of spaces, brooding chasms, undulating and uplifting waves
of multi-layered, Eastern-influenced electronic, synth and deep bass
landscapes. You are uncontrollably drawn in to a huge ambient black
hole on a classic space musicepic with unique influences and roots.
This is space music, it's not melodic, it's not tuneful but it
doesn't just drift. Where it is rhythmic, it's quite dense and
richly textured, There is an occasional Mid eastern feel BUT what
makes this such an amazing album are the soundscapes that are created,
the variation, the constantly shifting textures, the layers,
the sounds and the production, all of which combine throughout the
album to hold your attention and delight you with some seriously
brilliant and full sounding real space music that's not what you
think-it's better.
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
The first track is a bit overbearing for me, but the rest is mesmerizing.
Originally released in 1993.
</comments>
<rating score="3"/>
Darker By Light
<groupname>Rapoon</groupname>
<realname>Robin Storey</realname>
<label name="Soleilmoon">
<date>
<month>07</month>
<day>01</day>
<year>1996</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to commentary:
<![CDATA[
http://pretentious.net/Rapoon/reviews/darker.htm
]]>
<excerpt>
From harsh industrial beats to faint murmurs of cadence, percussion
fills Darker by Light. The first track's synthesized arrhythmic pulse
is unsettling even while it tries to soothe. The rest of the release
exudes similar impressions of displacements and distended time, a
challenge fully met by disc's end. While too acerbic to fulfill most
definitions of ambient music, Rapoon creates fields of intangible
solace within its pulsating machinations.
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
My second very close favorite to "Easterly 6 Or 7". Listen to it almost
every night.
</comments>
<rating score="1"/>
Easterly 6 Or 7
<groupname>Rapoon</groupname>
<realname>Robin Storey</realname>
<label name="Soleilmoon">
<date>
<month>04</month>
<day></day>
<year>1997</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to commentary:
<![CDATA[
http://pretentious.net/Rapoon/reviews/easterly.htm
]]>
<excerpt>
"Easterly 6 or 7" has a total movement/journey/landscape sort of
thing going on. Each piece feels like your are either looking out
into the distance of some unknown direction, or that you are
traveling into a new place at all times. The cycling, primitive
percussion hidden under airy drones and trances has rhythmic feel
to it, like footsteps, the gallop of a horse, the click-clack of a
train on its tracks. You don't meet even a single person on this
journey, every place is singular and desolate, the shadows of
strange faces that were in this place are all that's left.
Listening to Rapoon is like remembering things that never happened
and people you never met.
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
My absolute favorite. I listen to it almost every night.
</comments>
<rating score="1"/>
Nunatuk Gongamur
<groupname>Thomas Koner</groupname>
<realname>Thomas Koner</realname>
<biography>
Thomas Koner, born 1965, attended the Music college in Dortmund and
studied electronic music at the CEM-Studio in Arnhem. While studying,
he dedicated himself to intensive sound research in the recording studio.
His first impulse consisted in avoiding rhythm and melody and focusing
instead on the phenomenon of sound colour...
</biography>
<label name="Barooni">
<date>
<month></month>
<day></day>
<year>1990</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to biography:
<![CDATA[
http://www.koener.de/biography.html#biography
]]>
<excerpt>
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
My introduction to isolationist ambient.
</comments>
<rating score="1"/>
Teimo
<groupname>Thomas Koner</groupname>
<realname>Thomas Koner</realname>
<label name="Barooni">
<date>
<month></month>
<day></day>
<year>1992</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to discography:
<![CDATA[
http://www.koener.de/discography.html
]]>
<excerpt>
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
</comments>
<rating score="1"/>
Permafrost
<groupname>Thomas Koner</groupname>
<realname>Thomas Koner</realname>
<label name="Barooni">
<date>
<month></month>
<day></day>
<year>1993</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to discography:
<![CDATA[
http://www.koener.de/discography.html
]]>
<excerpt>
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
</comments>
<rating score="1"/>
Aubrite
<groupname>Thomas Koner</groupname>
<realname>Thomas Koner</realname>
<label name="Barooni">
<date>
<month></month>
<day></day>
<year>1995</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>
<![CDATA[
]]>
<excerpt>
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
</comments>
<rating score="1"/>
Kaamos
<groupname>Thomas Koner</groupname>
<realname>Thomas Koner</realname>
<label name="Mille Plateaux">
<date>
<month></month>
<day></day>
<year>1998</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Press releases:
<![CDATA[
http://www.koener.de/press.html
]]>
<excerpt>
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
</comments>
<rating score="1"/>
Daikon
<groupname>Thomas Koner</groupname>
<realname>Thomas Koner</realname>
<label name="Mille Plateaux">
<date>
<month></month>
<day></day>
<year>2002</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>
<![CDATA[
]]>
<excerpt>
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
</comments>
<rating score="1"/>
Neroli
<groupname>Brian Eno</groupname>
<realname>Brian Eno</realname>
<biography>
b. Brian Peter George St. Baptiste de la Salle Eno, 15 May 1948,
Woodbridge, Suffolk, England. While studying at art schools in Ipswich
and Winchester, Eno fell under the influence of avant garde composers
Cornelius Cardew and John Cage. For The Shutov Assembly (1992), Eno
returned to the ambient style he first introduced in 1975 with
Discreet Music, and which was echoed 10 years later on his Thursday
Afternoon. The album was conceived for Moscow painter Sergei Shutov,
who had been in the habit of working to the accompaniment of Eno's
previous music. Neroli was another hour's worth of similar atmospheric
seclusion.
</biography>
<label name="Gyroscope">
<date>
<month>07</month>
<day>16</day>
<year>1993</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to biography:
<![CDATA[
http://www.theiceberg.com/artist/10356/brian_eno.html
]]>
<excerpt>
Subtitled Thinking Music Part IV. Mid-price reissue of 1993 ambient
masterpiece. As beautiful and sparse as anything produced to date,
Eno sets a mood of quiet contemplation that, as he himself states in
the liner notes, is a piece to 'reward attention, but not (be) so
strict as to demand it.' From amazon.com.
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
</comments>
<rating score="1"/>
music has the right to children
<groupname>boards of canada</groupname>
<realname>Michael Sandison</realname>
<realname>Marcus Eoin</realname>
<biography>
The origins of Boards of Canada date from around 1976 when Michael and
Marcus were young children. They both learned to play various instruments
while moving and relocating between northern Scotland, southern England
and Alberta in Canada. Around 1980 on the north-east coast of Scotland
the first version of the band was formed, not yet including Marcus
Eoin in the line-up. For the next few years Mike and his friends
created experimental music using borrowed synths, drums and tape machines.
</biography>
<label name="skam/warp">
<date>
<month>08</month>
<day>20</day>
<year>1998</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Links to discography and biography:
<![CDATA[
http://www.davidac.fsworld.co.uk/boc_discog.htm
http://www.matadorrecords.com/boards_of_canada/biography.html
]]>
<excerpt>
On the title of this album, and of some of its tracks, BoC said in
an interview: "Our titles are always cryptic references which the
listener might understand or might not. Some of them are personal,
so the listener is unlikely to know what it refers to.
"Music Has The Right To Children" is a statement of our intention
to affect the audience using sound. "The Color Of The Fire" was a
reference to a friend's psychedelic experience. "Kaini Industries"
is a company that was set up in Canada (by coincidence in the
month Mike was born), to create employment for a settlement of
Cree Indians. "Olson" is the surname of a family we know, and
"Smokes Quantity" is the nickname of a friend of ours."
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
one of the top ambient cds ever.
</comments>
<rating score="1"/>
Flowerhead
<groupname>Datacide</groupname>
<realname>Tetsu Inoue</realname>
<realname>Atom Heart</realname>
<label name="Asphodel">
<date>
<month></month>
<day></day>
<year>1996</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to commentary:
<![CDATA[
http://www.asphodel.com/cat/asp_0964.html
]]>
<excerpt>
Those who subscribe to the view that all Ambient compositions are
nebulous, formless dross should listen to this record, which
provides ample evidence to the contrary. --The Wire
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
</comments>
<rating score="2"/>
Dots
<groupname>Atom Heart</groupname>
<realname>Atom Heart</realname>
<label name="Rather Interesting">
<date>
<month></month>
<day></day>
<year>1995</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to commentary:
<![CDATA[
http://www.sleepbot.com/ambience/page/atmheart.html
]]>
<excerpt>
A very tender, plucky sort of an album, and I'm not just pulling
these adjectives out of a hat here. It describes itself as being
"elevator music", but that isn't giving it the credit it deserves.
Each track is very leisurely and inviting; beat-oriented but very...
tender. The sound is 100% synthetic, very round and sensuous in tone
and pattern, calm and sort of... plucky. For what it's worth, it
made excellent interlude music while waiting in lines at
DisneyWorld's TommorrowLand. I managed to get this copy about a
year after it was released, so more are bound to be out there
somewhere. If you're into this sort of stuff, Mr. Inoue does it
all the time.
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
</comments>
<rating score="2"/>
"beauty reports"
<groupname>Media Form</groupname>
<realname>Douglas Benford</realname>
<label name="suburbs of hell records">
<date>
<month></month>
<day></day>
<year>1994</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to commentary:
<![CDATA[
http://www.sleepbot.com/ambience/page/benford.html
]]>
<excerpt>
Damn, this album is nice. EEG has already declared it a classic,
as have I (you'll see it in there after it drops from the Sack).
Sound-wise, it's somewhere between Brian Eno and MLO Productions,
combining the best of them both. It's got 70+ minutes worth of music,
and most of the tracks are 8+ minutes, but the neat thing about the
album is that you forget you're listening to it!! The first couple
of times I heard it, I'd look up from my work and say "What
happened?", then look at the clock and say "Shit!". If you want
to smile a lot and lose track of time, it's the album for you.
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
</comments>
<rating score="2"/>
Firmament II
<groupname>Main</groupname>
<realname>Robert Hampson</realname>
<realname>Scott Dowson</realname>
<biography>
This experimental UK band was formed in 1991 by guitarists Robert
Hampson and Scott Dawson, formerly of trance rock outfit Loop.
Taking the repetitive motifs from that band, Main refined the formula
to accentuate the aesthetics of post-rave chill-out ambient music.
Drawing heavily on environmental sounds on which they dubbed guitars,
synths and electronically generated effects.
</biography>
<label name="Beggars Banquet">
<date>
<month>11</month>
<day>28</day>
<year>1994</year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Links to commentary and biography:
<![CDATA[
http://www.alliedchemical.com/blackops/discos/main2.html
http://www.theiceberg.com/artist/24282/main.html
]]>
<excerpt>
"...Pop elements are exorcised almost completely, and this is not
music which is likely to appeal to the rave crowd...because it does
not have the melodic attractions of an Orb or Future Sound of
London..." Alternative Press (3/95, p.61) - "...Delay and echo pedals
electronically manipulate the tempo, creating eddies that swell then
retract. The music continually progresses....it accrues girth and
depth like a holograph....Main are the intrepid guides for this
present mechanical age, musicians able to draw passion from
stone-cold electronics..."
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
</comments>
<rating score="2"/>
Silver Sound 60
<groupname>Atom Heart</groupname>
<realname>Atom Heart</realname>
<label name="Rather Interesting">
<date>
<month></month>
<day></day>
<year></year>
</date>
</label>
<description>
<link>Link to commentary:
<![CDATA[
http://www.usatt.org/rseguine/ri/ri031.html
]]>
<excerpt>
Listening to this, one immediately recognizes some new influences
and stylistic experiments. The feel of jazz (whatever that means
these days) and the cocktail lounge are more readily heard in the
increasingly complex sequences found in many of the songs. And
where complexity isn't really an issue, a more natural and casual
freestyle-slanted approach can be heard. Silver Sound is a fun disc.
Movie samples, muted and funkified shouts, and general unpredictable
mayhem is all sprinkled throughout the length of the album for your
Listening Enjoyment. Don't take anything too seriously, the music
seems to suggest.
</excerpt>
</link>
</description>
<comments>
fun listening.
</comments>
<rating score="2"/>