25 influencial albums to Ambient Music

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   1 Brian Eno 

Ambient 1: Music for Airports

(Editions EG)

It's no surprise that this 1978 recording topped the 

list. As the first of Eno's four Ambient albums, this 

record staked out a new frontier, declaring new land 

open for exploration. And it's lovely music too. 

Inspired by earlier tape-loop constructions such as 

"Discrete Music" and "The Heavenly Music 

Corporation," the four compositions on Airports are 

long, slow, cycling patterns of sparse piano and 

wordless voices. Loops of different lengths combine 

in unpredictable ways, creating lushly layered clouds 

of sound, punctuated by poignant silences. John 

Cage's ideas of indeterminacy loom large, as well 

as the tenets of minimalism, as the patterns recur 

but don't quite repeat, creating a flowing pool of 

sound that is consistently self-similar, yet never quite 

standing still. The first edition of the LP also 

presented Eno's manifesto on ambient music, the 

first formal use of the term. "An ambience is defined 

as an atmosphere or a surrounding influence: a tint" 

the notes read, continuing "ambient music must be 

able to accommodate many levels of listening 

attention without enforcing one in particular: it must 

be as ignorable as it is interesting." These 

compositions, identified only as1/1, 1/2, 2/1 and 2/2, 

denoting their positions on a vinyl LP, stand as 

almost ideal examples of this aesthetic, engaging 

yet aloof, simple without being simplistic. Although 

never a commercial success, the record has been 

popular among musicians, and perhaps by virtue of 

its status as the first record overtly titled "ambient," 

there's little doubt that Music for Airports deserves its 

position here as the most influential ambient album 

of all time. 

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2 Steve Roach

Dreamtime Return

(Fortuna)

This 1988 double-disk masterpiece, inspired by 

Roach's visits to the Australian outback and his 

experience with its wilderness and Aboriginal culture 

(and his work with didgeridoo master David 

Hudson), is likely Roach's most popular work to 

date. This journey into Aboriginal mythology (the 

Dreamtime was an Eden-like period of natural 

harmony presaged by the arrival of extraterrestrial 

ancestors) remains an ambient trademark and truly 

original work. Dreamtime combines tribal 

percussion, synths, and location recordings of 

Aboriginal sounds throughout the 14 tracks, 

brilliantly bringing into focus what the ancient 

dreamtime period in Australian prehistory may have 

been like, based on both legend and geological 

data. This poll brought to our attention an interesting 

and passionate division that separates Roach fans 

as to which of his albums is his finest: Dreamtime 

Return or Structures from Silence (see No. 4). 

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3 Wendy Carlos

Sonic Seasonings

(East Side Digital)

This 1972 recording predated the categories of 

ambient or new age music, but using only her Moog 

Synthesizer and recorded environmental sounds, 

Carlos created the prototype for ambient recordings 

on the double LP Sonic Seasonings. In the format of 

Vivaldi's baroque classic "Four Seasons," Sonic 

Seasonings remains an aural experience 

unmatched musically and unsurpassed in 

originality. "Spring" provides a rainstorm; "Summer" 

conveys relentless heat; "Fall" visits an oceanside 

campfire; and "Winter" conveys the bitter coldness of 

that season's brutal wind. Carlos re-mastered the 

recent reissue that also contains a previously 

unreleased 40-minute two-part suite from 1986 titled 

"Land of the Midnight Sun." 

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4 Steve Roach

Structures from Silence

One of the pioneers of the American spacemusic 

scene, initially inspired by German synthesists such 

as Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, Roach has 

explored styles from quiet contemplation to raging 

sequencer storms, from organic tribal grooves to 

twitchy electronic rhythms, frequently pointing the 

way for others to follow. One of his most influential 

works is the 1984 release Structures from Silence. 

This recording is a soothing, enveloping 

soundscape, ideal for quieting the mind and calming 

the body. The gentle ebb and flow of warm 

synthesizer textures are based on the rhythm of 

breathing, and entrains the listeners' own respiration 

to its serene pace. It's useful: for setting a tone in a 

room, for aiding in meditation, for easing the 

transition to sleep, but it's also sensually pleasing. 

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5 Michael Stearns

Planetary Unfolding

(Continuum Montage)

As suggested by the title, this album, first released in 

1980, is often thought of as a classic of spacemusic, 

portraying the sound of the cosmos itself. But the 

slowly-evolving swirls of electronic arpeggiations 

serve equally well as an enveloping atmosphere, 

setting the tone for journeys in internal space. 

Stearns's earlier works Ancient Leaves and 

Sustaining Cylinders were even more ambient, but 

as some of the first independent spacemusic 

releases, they were not easily found. In addition to 

releasing several more CDs that incorporate 

electronic, acoustic and ambient sound, Stearns has 

gone on to create many soundtracks for IMAX films 

and other large-scale cinematic presentations. That 

same sense of grandeur is heard here, as is the 

music's ability to amplify images, either on the 

screen or in the mind. 

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6 Brian Eno

Ambient 4: On Land

(Editions EG)

Number four in Eno's ambient series, On Land 

sounds most like what most people would think of 

as ambient music, incorporating natural sounds, or 

natural-sounding electronic effects, that evoke 

tangible environments. Eno's original inspiration for 

his ambient series came from natural sounds 

intruding on composed music, but Music for Airports, 

The Plateaux of Mirror and Day of Radiance had not 

included these elements. On Land suggests terrain, 

landscape, the ambience of a place. Even the song 

titles: "Unfamiliar Wind (Leek's Hills)," "Dunwich 

Beach Autumn 1960," or "A Clearing" seem to 

suggest documentation of real or imagined 

locations, field recordings from an unknown land. 

Dark, murky thuds and hums, organic whirrs and 

chirps blend with electronic and acoustic 

instrumentation to create an engaging, slightly 

ominous soundworld. Despite perceptions of the 

style, the first three albums of Eno's Ambient series 

were not synthesizer-based, instead starting with 

acoustic instruments, albeit transformed, looped 

and altered by studio processing. On Land included 

more electronic timbres, although often 

indistinguishable from the processed acoustic 

sounds and effects. This combination of quiet 

atmospheres and natural sounds best exemplifies 

the central aesthetic of ambient music to follow. 

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7 Jonn Serrie

And the Stars Go With You

(Miramar)

Jonn Serrie's name is synonymous with 

spacemusic. The composer is renowned for his 

numerous works commissioned by planetariums 

around the world, and Serrie's 1986 debut album 

And the Stars Go With You reshaped and redefined 

ambient spacemusic. Serrie was working on the 

Teacher in Space Project for NASA in '86, and 

composed musical material for the event. The 

Challenger disaster affected him deeply, and Serrie 

expressed his feelings musically-the results 

becoming his first album. In '88, the album was 

used in the opening production ceremony of the 

Christa McAulliffe Planetarium in Concord, New 

Hampshire, and the music is dedicated to her 

memory. Although Stars is more often associated 

with "spacemusic" as opposed to "ambient," the line 

separating the two subcategories is a blurry one, 

and many listeners use this album as an 

atmospheric backdrop, rather than a soundtrack for 

their own space journeys. 

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8 Terry Riley

A Rainbow in Curved Air

(Sony)

Rainbow is a gentle, melodic, flowing piece, which 

swirls like a psychedelic dance. It features the use of 

Riley's "time Lag accumulator," a two-tape deck 

delay system. Rainbow features delayed electric 

organ, harpsichord, and the rocksichord with 

dumbek providing a sparse rhythmic section. This 

intoxicating and seeming unending repetition of this 

music became somewhat of a cult favorite with the 

'60's counter-culture. His composition In C is often 

credited with launching the minimalist movement, 

and Rainbow, meant to simulate his all-night 

improvised concerts, underscores the similarities 

between minimalism, psychedelia, and 

spacemusic. The repeating cycles of minimalism 

are reflected in Eno's tape loops, Tangerine Dream's 

sequencers and even Mike Oldfield's cycling 

structures. This hypnotic piece is a good introduction 

to Terry Riley's work which integrates repetition, 

improvisation, drones, classical Indian ragas, 

alternate tunings and electronics. 

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9 Harold Budd/Brian Eno

The Pearl

(Editions EG)

Four years after the release of The Plateaux of Mirror, 

Budd and Eno returned to that earlier format and 

created another subtle gem, beautiful and 

melancholy at the same time. Again exploring the 

interaction of sparse, Satie-like piano figures with 

electronic processing that blurred and smeared the 

edges of the sound, Budd and Eno created songs 

with infinite layers to be explored, despite their 

minimalist structure. The poetic titles such as "A 

Stream with Bright Fish" and "Against the Sky" reveal 

Budd's love of language, and suggest the imagistic, 

dreamy world the music portrays. Like a pearl, these 

tunes are simple, yet textured at closer inspection; 

symmetrical from a distance, yet irregular in unique 

ways; polished, yet organic. 

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10 Steve Hillage

Rainbow Dome Musick

(Caroline)

An electric guitarist who first came to prominence 

with the cosmic hippie psychedelic rock band Gong, 

Steve Hillage has gone on to be an enduring 

influence in ambient music. Hillage is a master of 

the "glissando guitar," a technique that incorporates 

rubbing the strings along the neck of the guitar with a 

piece of steel, creating a sustained, fluid, voice-like 

tone. His 1979 release Rainbow Dome Musick 

features this plaintive sound, floating amidst 

shimmering electronic atmospheres. The two long 

pieces, "Garden of Paradise" and "Four Ever 

Rainbow" are idyllic tone poems, almost static, with 

subtle variations moving the music forward at an 

imperceptible pace. Hillage has always considered 

this music an expression of surrealism, and one can 

hear that imagistic dream logic on this recording. 

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11 Paul Horn

Inside the Taj Mahal

(Sony)

A pioneering figure in world music since the '60s, 

Horn's repertoire ranges from contemporary jazz to 

ambient. On the flutist's ground-breaking 1969 

recording Inside the Taj Mahal, Horn performs his 

meditative flute in the natural acoustic space of the 

building's central dome. It's an interesting twist on 

the ambient concept that the unique character of this 

recording is based on the specific aural environment 

of the location, rather than the music alone creating 

the ambience. It was recorded unconventionally, with 

one microphone close to the flute and another 

placed at a distance, deeper in the structure. This 

resulted in an exaggerated stereo image, one that 

didn't give an "accurate" picture of the space, but an 

evocative one. Horn later made recordings inside 

other sonically unique buildings, such as the Great 

Pryamid, cathedrals, temples and canyons. 

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12 Tangerine Dream

Rubycon

(Virgin)

Along with Phaedra, this 1975 recording best 

displays Tangerine Dream's classic sound, 

reflecting the dark and claustrophobic environment 

of walled-in Cold War Berlin, while evoking the 

mysteries of outer space. The mixture of repetitive 

sequencer cycles and spacey effects that mark this 

period of the band's work inspired innumerable 

energetic synthesizer excursions, and perhaps as 

many quiet explorations of the ambiences of the 

spaces between. 

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13 Harold Budd/Brian Eno

Ambient Two: The Plateaux of Mirror

(Editions EG)

This album, along with The Pearl inspired a 

thousand piano album imitators. But few ever 

achieved the poignancy and quiet melancholy of the 

originals. The serene piano performances were 

processed by Brian Eno in real-time, so Budd could 

respond to the altered sound as he played. His 

subtle gradations of touch sent notes cascading into 

dark echoes, ripples on the smooth plateau of 

sound. Budd claims to have wanted to make 

unabashedly pretty music, removed from the 

cerebral abstractions of the avant-garde, but there's 

a veil of melancholy shrouding the Plateaux that 

keeps the music from becoming too sweet. 

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14 Klaus Schulze

Mirage

(Thunderbolt)

Upon this album's release in 1977, "Crystal Lake," 

became one of the best-known pieces in all of 

spacemusic. Symmetrical cascades of sparkling 

crystalline notes, met with a majestic bassline, 

resulted in some of the most enthralling electronic 

music ever recorded. Despite occasional bombast, 

Schulze's compositions have a restrained, cool, 

detached feel that allows them to work equally well 

as quiet atmospheres in the background, or as 

big-screen feature films for the ears. He described 

his music as "the background to a mental picture" 

leaving half of the experience to the listener. 

Originally a drummer, and at different times a 

member of both Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra 

Tempel, Schulze is one of the titans of electronic 

music, his groundbreaking work influencing styles 

from ambient to techno. 

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15 Aphex Twin

Selected Ambient Works Volume 2

(Sire/Warner)

Richard D. James, the man behind Aphex Twin, 

emerged from the British chillout scene. An 

iconoclastic musical experimenter who built his own 

synthesizers and claimed to create many of his 

tunes through lucid dreaming, much of his work was 

built around dancey beats and grating textures. But 

this CD from 1994 features quiet, mysterious tone 

poems, shadowy outlines seen from down a foggy 

street. This is classic ambience in the Eno mold, 

updated for the rave generation. 

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16 Klaus Schulze

Timewind

(Universal)

Another classic from one of the pioneers of the 

Berlin School of spacemusic, infused with washes 

of white noise, twittering electronic sound effects and 

the steady pulse of cycling sequencers. This 1975 

recording is dedicated to Richard Wagner, and 

Schulze aspires to that classical grandeur, even 

providing a reproduction of his "score" for one of the 

two side-long compositions. It's a multi-layered chart 

mapping the positions and structures of leitmotifs 

and harmonies, alongside diagrams of noise and 

sample-and-hold filter modulations. His use of 

decidedly electronic sounds gives Schulze's music 

an otherworldly feel, and the slowly-building, linear 

progressions of his compositions are hypnotic and 

involving, pulling the listener into this imagined 

space. This was the first of Schulze's albums widely 

available in America and immediately became a 

favorite of many in the electronic music scene. 

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17 Tangerine Dream

Phaedra

(Virgin)

Released in 1974, this is the prototypical "Berlin 

School" space music record, with churning 

sequencers, lush electronic pads and warbling 

Mellotron melodies. But there are also long 

stretches of deep space journeys: collages of timbre 

and texture. This period of Tangerine Dream's work 

inspired legions of synthesizer knob-twisters, and 

pointed the way for countless explorations of tone, 

freed from the constraints of melody, harmony and 

rhythm. 

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18 Steve Reich

Music for 18 Musicians

(ECM)

Music for 18 Musicians features, you guessed it, 18 

musicians on pianos, woodwinds, female vocals 

and various mallet instruments. This 1974 work 

features a repeated insistent staccato, subtle shifts 

in the cycles allowing a careful listener to discover 

new patterns in the matrix of sound. Inspired by the 

richness of African and Indonesian 

percussion-based music, and hearing parallels 

between those cycling forms and his own 

explorations of repetition through tape music, Reich 

composed many percussive pieces, most notably 

1970's Drumming. 18 Musicians examines some of 

the same techniques, especially the motif of shifting 

phase between layers of repeated patterns, but the 

expanded instrumentation allows this to build to an 

intoxicating lushness. Similar repeated patterns can 

be heard in sequencer-based spacemusic, in fact 

Tangerine Dream's "Love on a Real Train" bears an 

alarming similarity to this work, although created on 

very different instruments. 

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19 Mike Oldfield

Tubular Bells

(Virgin)

After stints in rock bands and playing folk music with 

his sister Sally, Mike Oldfield set out on his own in 

1972 with a tape of a long, ambitious instrumental 

composition he had been working on for several 

years in his home studio. Though most labels 

rejected it, up-and-coming entrepreneur Richard 

Branson chose Oldfield's work to be the first release 

on his new label:Virgin Records. The resulting 

album was Tubular Bells, an original blend of 

symphonic-style rock, classical, folk and world 

music elements, featuring Oldfield playing over 25 

instruments. The album's repetitious structure, with 

instruments entering and exiting in a smoothly 

shifting flow, shows a kinship with minimalism and 

sequencer-based music, converging on the same 

musical niche from an unexpected direction. Made 

more famous as the soundtrack to the film The 

Exorcist, Tubular Bells became one the of greatest 

commercial success stories in contemporary music, 

having sold over 20 million copies worldwide, 

making it the greatest selling contemporary 

instrumental album ever. 

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20 Miles Davis

In a Silent Way

(Sony)

Ten years after the classic and cool Kind of Blue, In a 

Silent Way is pure jazz ambience at its finest, 

providing stimulating, yet calm soundscapes. On two 

lengthy tracks, Miles, Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, 

Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, 

Dave Holland, and Tony Williams provide 

atmospheric solos and magical interaction. This 

was almost completely unstructured music, with 

Miles painting spontaneously with the broad palette 

of talented musicians he assembled. These 

sessions were sculpted further by Teo Macero, who 

edited the raw sessions into concise, focused 

dreamscapes. Four decades has not diminished the 

importance of this groundbreaking recording. 

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21 Ashra

New Age of Earth

(Caroline)

Guitarist Manuel Gottsching founded Ash Ra Tempel 

in 1970 with synth pioneer Klaus Schulze and 

Harmut Enke. Schulze left a year later, but on his 

own, Gottsching continued plying the spaceways 

with synthesizers and his signature echoed electric 

guitar. In 1976, the name shortened to just Ashra, he 

released New Age of Earth, well in advance of a New 

Age category existing in record store bins. Tunes 

such as "Sunrain" are driven by energetic rhythmic 

sequences, but epic pieces like "Ocean of 

Tenderness" and "Deep Distance" are slow floats 

through puffy clouds of electronics. 

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22 Global Communication

76:14

(Dedicated)

Revisiting the classic mid-70s sound of Tangerine 

Dream on this 1997 album, Tom Middleton and Mark 

Pritchard inserted just enough contemporary 

touches to make this a favorite of the hipsters of the 

1990's dance scene as well as nostalgic space 

fans. Ticking clocks and sonar pings, filter sweeps 

and thick drones duck in and out of unabashedly 

electronic timbres and cycling patterns that would 

have seemed familiar two decades earlier, but freed 

from the excesses of swaggering solos. The tracks 

and album itself are named simply for the music's 

durations, a surprisingly abstract statement for this 

evocative music. 

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23 The Orb

The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld

(Island Red)

One of the 1980s British dance scene's most 

eclectic characters, Alex Patterson had a love for 

punk, dub, world music, progressive rock and 

spacemusic and had listened extensively to Eno's 

Ambient records as well. As a DJ in chillout rooms in 

London clubs, he would integrate older spacemusic 

with contemporary dance tunes. This 1991 release 

displays a DJ's sense of collage and layering, 

combining unlikely samples into surreal 

soundscapes. This was a new type of ambient 

music, incorporating dance rhythms and absurd 

humor, yet ultimately creating the same effect as Eno 

and Satie had described: useful music, in this case 

designed for chillout rooms where ravers would 

relax, talk, sleep or dance, experiencing the music 

on several levels. This double album yielded two of 

the enduring anthems of the rave/ambient scene: 

"Little Fluffy Clouds" built around a sample from a 

Rickie Lee Jones interview, and "A Huge Ever 

Growing Pulsating Brain that Rules from the Center 

of the Ultraworld," featuring the plaintive voice of 

Minnie Ripperton, sampled from her hit "Loving You." 

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24 Constance Demby

Novus Magnificat

(Hearts of Space)

This 1986 otherworldly opus from Demby has 

become a true classic in the new age and 

spacemusic frontier appealing to a wide variety of 

music lovers. Rooted in worship music in the 

western tradition, it's what the liner notes call 

"Contemporary Classical Space Music." Imagine a 

huge orchestra and choral work as interpreted by a 

digital sythesizer. Like Serrie's And the Stars Go With 

You, Novus is considered to be a high watermark in 

the subgenre of spacemusic. 

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25 Peter Gabriel

Passion

(Real World)

After his departure from the rock group Genesis in 

the early 1970s, Peter Gabriel began exploring more 

cerebral music and incorporating electronic, 

avant-garde, and world music into his style. 

Throughout the '80s, he also explored other interests 

including soundtracks, multimedia projects, and 

running his own label, Real World. Passion is the 

soundtrack to the Martin Scoresese film The Last 

Temptation of Christ, though due to legal 

complications, it does not share its title. This 

powerful album resulted from Gabriel's fascination 

with world and Middle Eastern, Indian and African 

sounds. These diverse elements are mixed together 

into untraditional atmospheric collages that 

somehow sound as if they were always meant to be 

combined that way. It would be hard to find someone 

working in the organic electronic field who does not 

consider Passion one of the greatest achievements 

in this genre. Despite scores if imitations, Passion 

remains one of the best albums of 

ethno-ambient/world fusion music ever made.