Music for staring into the void

[alan nagsworth]

Recently I've been finding myself increasingly bowled over by Oneohtrix Point Never. His music is stunning, everything from having unwittingly pioneered the whole vapourwave thing and nothing quite as good as him ever having come after his "Eccojams vol. 1" tape, to singlehandedly being able to create vast digital landscapes with such a keen eye for sound that is always different but inescapably Lopatin. "R Plus Seven" sounds like a 90s 3D-rendered futurist vision, bewildering and still completely foreign despite having lived through its supposed expectations. I'm in constant awe of his use of harsh, textured noise that is somehow sculpted into something so perplexing yet unalarming and not at all grating or frustrating.

I'm also a big fan of Sleep Research Facility, who makes music specifically to be played at an unintrusive volume, and whose albums are intended, unsurprisingly, as sleeping aids, and are individually themed around different environments. The six songs on "Nostromo" are designed to replicate the sounds of each individual deck on the spaceship of the same name from the film "Alien". Something that I really love about this one is that deep in the midst of it all, at one point there's a very distant sound of boots walking on a metal surface, and immersing myself in this record, at that point I truly felt like I was there.

My favourite SRF record is "Stealth":

As a project commissioned for Cold Spring, "Stealth" presents itself as an exploration of sounds neither here nor there, textures camouflaged against their own background noise, and the distant crackling telemetric code-speak of a vague humanity hidden behind a cloak of deadly high-technology. Comprising of five deeply-layered extended tracks, mixed and edited from re-sampled location recordings originally captured inside the hanger environs of a Northrop-Grumman B-2 Stealth Bomber, during a period of downtime maintenance at a U.S. Air Force base in Cambridgeshire, England. Original field recordings and texture preparations by FOURM/Si_Comm.

It's exactly as you'd imagine it to sound, and it's bloody brilliant. I find that it's the perfect reading music. Often if I'm alone I'll put it on and occasionally find myself having slowly drifted away from whatever I was doing, staring listlessly at absolutely nothing, just completely lost in it.

I'm looking for more music like this, which either applies repetition or waves of static/tape/field noise to create this void around you. Like a fucking weird embryo of VHS distortion descending down on some alien terrain, serene, unknown, beautiful.

Hit me up, yo.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Anything produced by Jack Nitzsche.

[slavestate]

Some of these may be obvious but...

Lull - Cold Summer, Collected, Dreamt About Dreaming
Lustmord - The Place where the Black Stars Hang, Metavoid
Anything by the above really

Somnambulant Corpse was / is a very decent Dark Ambient label.  I have a few decent compilations - notable is the 12 Caesars release
Cold Meat Industry has some releases that you might also want to check out amongst all their noisier output.

[Petey Pate]

Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting In A Room.

I am sitting in a room (1969) is one of composer Alvin Lucier's best known works, featuring Lucier recording himself narrating a text, and then playing the recording back into the room, re-recording it. The new recording is then played back and re-recorded, and this process is repeated. Since all rooms have characteristic resonance or formant frequencies (e.g. different between a large hall and a small room), the effect is that certain frequencies are emphasized as they resonate in the room, until eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the pure resonant harmonies and tones of the room itself. The recited text describes this process in action—it begins "I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice," and the rationale, concluding, "I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have," referring to his own stuttering.

[Kane Jones]

Demdike Stare

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3DLFhM8KNw

Any of the Glacial Movement stuff; Netherworld, Skare, Oophoi, Lull (as mentioned by slavestate).

[Petey Pate]

Ennio Morricone's soundtrack to The Thing.  Listening to it feels like being in Antarctica.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meU2gAU7Xss

[BlodwynPig]

Bvdub - Tried So Hard

Bvdub - Descent to the End

BlodwynPig - Staring Into the Void

[BlodwynPig]

Anything from Biosphere's Microgravity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW9ohHincAw

Opik's Travelling Without Moving, one of my favourite things

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ73MerX-c0

[Kane Jones]

Bvdub is a great call from Blodders.

Similar (but not as good) is Dirty Beaches 'Stateless' album from last year.

[Colin Sanction]

I'm looking for more music like this, which either applies repetition or waves of static/tape/field noise to create this void around you. Like a fucking weird embryo of VHS distortion descending down on some alien terrain, serene, unknown, beautiful.

Hit me up, yo.

Are you aware of the label 12k and Taylor Deupree? http://www.12k.com/ Beautiful music and artwork to match

1am - https://youtu.be/BqUhPT_w3XY

Snow (Dusk, Dawn) - https://youtu.be/hdh1ETUZgYs

Snow/Sand - https://youtu.be/hjmXfI3KHzw

Taylor Deupree + Marcus Fischer - In a Place of Such Graceful Shapes - https://youtu.be/evXAEwZt4Gw

Stephan Mathieu + Taylor Deupree - Largo - https://youtu.be/vl-16ti8fBg

[Johnny Yesno]

Kid606 - Dandy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxIqGWFwnY4

04 Philip Jeck - Pax [Touch]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_RMM_5yUIc

Oval: Textuell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj3OFvrcoQA

[jobotic]

Agree with what you say about R Plus 7. I think Replica is just as good too.

Lots of great recommendations too.

This to me sounds like the sounds of a space station being ripped apart by something or other and then floating away, devoid of any life. Which, considering the title is hardly perceptive of me.

Nurse With Wound - Space Music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPQITD7MdTQ

[Brundle-Fly]

Assertive Discipline by Premature Ejaculation (1988)

The whole brilliant album is up there but I have Googled for you so those don't have to tread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WO5GNPuDt0&list=PLAF_TXnSfGd-rYDnCAhX_7iSWg53_Icfm&index=8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX0lidGUE8w&list=PLAF_TXnSfGd-rYDnCAhX_7iSWg53_Icfm&index=3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X-CKcP8fg4&list=PLAF_TXnSfGd-rYDnCAhX_7iSWg53_Icfm&index=9

[jobotic]

Petey Pate has posted a great one too. Sounds really dry in the description but I find the way his voice becomes machine like and is then lost in the sound really moving.

[Shaky]

Kevin Drumm's Imperial Distortion album probably fits the bill. Much different from his usual ear-shredding noisery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8NL7r56yuA

And, just because I fucking love it, In a Lonely Place by Tape Loop Orchestra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zaDbsoeLb8

[Brundle-Fly]

Positive staring into a void?  For Chrissakes??? COME ON!!

Getting Nowhere - Roy Budd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c8ARiH3UVE

[Sam]

Has to be the sublime Lux Aeterna by Ligeti, written in a morphine haze and probably best listened to in one:

http://youtu.be/-iVYu5lyX5M

[DukeDeMondo]

This is probably far too on the nose, and overwhelmingly emo, but fuck it. Hit The Switch by Bright Eyes.

"I'm starin out into that vacuum again..."

Aye alright Conor, alright.

https://youtu.be/KXJxi1Odfjk

[Fabian Thomsett]

Trippiness from Delia Derbyshire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCF_mHKBH3k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyUkmxy5VMI

[Johnny Yesno]

Trippiness from Delia Derbyshire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCF_mHKBH3k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyUkmxy5VMI

From the second track's related content:

Islas resonantes, Eliane Radigue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RrsiGmLp_E

Yoshi Wada - Earth Horns With Electronic Drone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MIkRfAxx8U

Pandit Pran Nath - 21 VIII 76 NYC Raga Malkauns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esuia43tJUI

Of the three, I'd only heard of Pandit Pran Nath. Christ! There was so much going on in the 70s that hardly ever gets mentioned.

[Phil_A]

I started listening to The 17 Sons Of Abraxas when they were linked to the free music pages on archive.org years ago. All their stuff is on Soundcloud now and I think it's all still free.

https://the17sonsofabraxas.bandcamp.com/album/first

There was also a related netlabel, 17 Sons Records. I have to admit I haven't gone very deep into this, but it seems like there's a lot of stuff to investigate here.

http://www.17sons.com

[prwc]

Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting In A Room.

My favourite Lucier piece is Bird & Person Dyning, which manages to be both ear wreckingly harsh and serene simultaneously.

La Legende D'éer by Xenakis is a masterpiece, might fit the bill for this thread.

Bernard Parmegiani's De Natura Sonorum also, an astonishing album.

[Famous Mortimer]

I'd pop on a bit of "Homotopy To Marie" by Nurse With Wound for any future abyss-staring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyosA92m5AI

[SpiderChrist]

Thanks to this thread I have a new musical world in which to immerse myself, and my wife thinks I've gone batshit.

Keep up the good work.

[steveh]

This off the forthcoming Roly Porter album is awesome and probably fits: https://soundcloud.com/tri_angle_records/roly-porter-4101

His Life Cycle of a Massive Star a couple of years back I really liked too.

[One off man mental]

Most of Fripp & Eno and Grouper's stuff fits this