AMBIENT MUSIC

List of Ambient Music Genres and Subgenres

​There are many variations of ambient music, at FeeLIT Records we strive to and carefully select the latest up-to-date popular and hard to find titles on vinyl & CD releases

 

Ambient Dub​

Ambient dub is a fusion of ambient music with dub. The term was first coined by Birmingham's now defunct label "Beyond Records" in early 1990s. The label released series of albums Ambient Dub Volume 1 to 4 that inspired many artists, including Bill Laswell, who used the same phrase in his music project Divination, where he collaborated with other artists in the genre. Ambient dub adopts dub styles made famous by King Tubby and other Jamaican sound artists from the 1960s to the early 1970s, using DJ-inspired ambient electronica, complete with all the inherent drop-outs, echo, equalization and psychedelic electronic effects. It often features layering techniques and incorporates elements of world music, deep bass lines and harmonic sounds. According to David Toop, "Dub music is like a long echo delay, looping through time...turning the rational order of musical sequences into an ocean of sensation." Notable artists within the genre include Dreadzone, Higher Intelligence Agency, the Orb, Gaudi, Ott, Loop Guru, Woob and Transglobal Underground as well as Banco de Gaia and Leyland Kirby

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Ambient House​

Ambient house is a musical category founded in the late 1980s that is used to describe acid house featuring ambient music elements and atmospheres. Tracks in the ambient house genre typically feature four-on-the-floor beats, synth pads, and vocal samples integrated in an atmospheric style. Ambient house tracks generally lack a diatonic center and feature much atonality along with synthesized chords. The Dutch Brainvoyager is an example of this genre. Illbient is another form of ambient house music.

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Ambient Techno​

Ambient techno is a music category emerging in the late 1980s that is used to describe ambient music atmospheres with the rhythmic and melodic elements of techno. Notable artists include Aphex Twin, B12, Autechre, and the Black Dog.

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Ambient Industrial​

Ambient industrial is a hybrid genre of industrial and ambient music. A "typical" ambient industrial work (if there is such a thing) might consist of evolving dissonant harmonies of metallic drones and resonances, extreme low frequency rumbles and machine noises, perhaps supplemented by gongs, percussive rhythms, bullroarers, distorted voices or anything else the artist might care to sample (often processed to the point where the original sample is no longer recognizable). Entire works may be based on radio telescope recordings, the babbling of newborn babies, or sounds recorded through contact microphones on telegraph wires. 

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Ambient Pop​

Ambient pop is a style that developed in the 1980s and 1990s contemporaneously with post-rock; it has also been regarded as an extension of the dream pop movement and the atmospheric style of shoegaze. It incorporates structures that are common to indie music, but extensively explores "electronic textures and atmospheres that mirror the hypnotic, meditative qualities of ambient music", which is also central to indie electronic music. Ambient pop utilizes the musical experimentation of psychedelia and the repetitive traits of minimalism, krautrock and techno as prevalent influences. Despite being an extension of dream pop, it is distinguished by its adoption of "contemporary electronic idioms, including sampling, although for the most part live instruments continue to define the sound."  David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy with ambient music pioneer Brian Eno, both of whom were inspired during the production of the albums in the trilogy by German kosmische Musik bands and minimalist composers, was regarded as influential on ambient pop. The track "Red Sails" from the trilogy's third album, Lodger (1979), was retroactively described as a "piece of ambient-pop" by the music journalist David Buckley in David Bowie: The Music and The Changes, as it prominently incorporates a motorik drum rhythm, electronically processed guitars and a simplistic melody.  Dream pop band Slowdive's 1995 album Pygmalion was a major departure from the band's usual sound, heavily incorporating elements of ambient electronica and psychedelia with hypnotic, repetitive rhythms, influencing many ambient pop bands and subsequently being regarded as a landmark album in the genre Pitchfork critic Nitsuh Abebe described the album's songs as "ambient pop dreams that have more in common with post-rock [bands] like Disco Inferno than shoegazers like Ride". The genre continued to stylistically progress in the 2000s with bands including Sweet Trip, Múm, Broadcast, Dntel and his project the Postal Service.

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Dark Ambient​

Brian Eno's original vision of ambient music as unobtrusive musical wallpaper, later fused with warm house rhythms and given playful qualities by the Orb in the 1990s, found its opposite in the style known as dark ambient. Populated by a wide assortment of personalities—ranging from older industrial and metal experimentalists (Scorn's Mick Harris, Current 93's David Tibet, Nurse with Wound's Steven Stapleton) to electronic boffins (Kim Cascone/PGR, Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia), Japanese noise artists (K.K. Null, Merzbow), and latter-day indie rockers (Main, Bark Psychosis) – dark ambient features toned-down or entirely missing beats with unsettling passages of keyboards, eerie samples, and treated guitar effects. Like most styles related in some way to electronic/dance music of the '90s, it's a very nebulous term; many artists enter or leave the style with each successive release. Related styles include ambient industrial (see below) and isolationist ambient.

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Space Music​

Example of a self-described ambient music song fused with experimental and post rock elements

Space music, also spelled "Spacemusic", includes music from the ambient genre as well as a broad range of other genres with certain characteristics in common to create the experience of contemplative spaciousness.

Space music ranges from simple to complex sonic textures sometimes lacking conventional melodic, rhythmic, or vocal components, generally evoking a sense of "continuum of spatial imagery and emotion",  beneficial introspection, deep listening and sensations of floating, cruising or flying.

Space music is used by individuals for both background enhancement and foreground listening, often with headphones, to stimulate relaxation, contemplation, inspiration and generally peaceful expansive moods and soundscapes. Space music is also a component of many film soundtracks and is commonly used in planetariums, as a relaxation aid and for meditation. ​​