Ambient house, ambient techno and early IDM

[purlieu]

Spotify Playlist to accompany thread!

So I suppose as far as sub-genres and movements go, this is the era I know most about, what was broadly categorised as 'ambient' between 1990 and 1995. I've tried to pinpoint exactly what it is I like so much about this music, but I can't seem to get further than 'I got into it at a formative age'. Either the third or fourth proper 'album' I bought myself was FSOL's Lifeforms, when I was 12, and it had a huge impact on me, and I suppose I've just gone back to that sound time and time again over the years. I'm not quite the right age to be part of the core fanbase for this music, having gotten into it just as it died off, and at a young age, so it's possible I have some fascination with it as something that's connected to a time past. Since then, it's often been overlooked, with the development of IDM in the second half of the '90s snatching most of the limelight for non-dancefloor '90s material, a lot of people being introduced to Warp artists through their being namedropped by Radiohead at the turn of the century. The worst extremes of the era have also dated pretty badly and, until they come back into fashion again, can act as a bit of a barrier.

In recent years there has been some interest in the era, with a number of articles scattered about online remembering chill-out rooms and the like, and labels like Re:discovery and Music from Memory reissuing some albums on vinyl (which is both logical and bizarre, given the era's focus on CDs), but there doesn't seem to have been much momentum in terms of wider recognition, so it remains a bit of a niche in many ways.

Since developing long Covid, I've been listening to a lot of stuff like this. Right up until then I was in the middle of an indie period, but such music is categorised alongside 'people' and 'real life' in my head, and having to put my life on hold and spend my time stuck indoors means this stuff has really lost its appeal at the minute, so getting lost in the soundscapes of early '90s ambient has been a nice way to escape the tedium of the same four walls. Anyway, this has given me the idea to write a bit post about it here and hopefully get some discussion going, maybe find some music I've missed, and hopefully introduce some people to some music they might not know.

The era is best defined by labels, rather than artists, each of which tended to have a particular slant on the music and art, although there was a lot of cross-pollination, especially when it came to remixes and compilations; labels often reissued albums from others to give them international distribution unavailable to most of these largely DIY projects. That said, there are a few key artists who weren't really tied to any of these labels too.

At the start of 1990, ambient was something which had been defined by Eno in the late '70s; music inspired by him and the various Germans making electronic music at the same time continued to be put out, but mostly became tied to new age by the late '80s, especially with the arrival of FM synthesis and its somewhat crude presets. At the same time, the post-industrial scene was gradually moving towards quieter music and took on a 'tribal' approach, with 'ethnic' sounding percussion added to synth ambience and drone. Needless to say, none of this music was on the horizons of most music fans. And then one album changed that.

The KLF & The Orb
To anyone who hadn't attended one of Alex Paterson's DJ sets in VIP nightclub rooms in the late '80s, The KLF's Chill Out would be the first they'd hear of this new generation of ambient music. The album was accompanied by a press release declaring the arrival of a new genre - ambient house - written in Drummond and Cauty's usual mix of deadly serious and utterly absurd. The KLF only ever wrote about eight tracks, and almost everything here is basically their big singles stripped down to synth pads and sequences; it's the samples that kind of define it. From Elvis to Fleetwood Mac, radio evangelists to news reports, the collage approach gives the album an almost psychedelic feel, and it takes a fair few listens to fully appreciate what is going on. While nowhere near as fully developed as many later albums, it is nevertheless a classic, and one that would go on to define the direction of ambient house for the next few years. Sadly, the more commercially successful legacy would come from the album's title, and the numerous soulless 'Chillout' compilations released by the majors in the second half of the decade.

Alex Paterson was involved in the creation of the album, although quite how much remains undisclosed (a friend of a friend who knew Paterson in the early '90s claims the whole thing was created by him which, frankly, is bollocks). He also formed The Orb with Jimmy Cauty and created their debut single, 'A Huge Ever-Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld', which took the KLF approach even further, a 20 minute Tangerine Dream-inspired epic layered with samples from NASA to Minnie Riperton. Despite being incredibly popular, Cauty and Paterson split - the latter apparently not wanting to just be seen as part of a KLF side-project - and Cauty took his own material from the debut Orb album sessions and released it as Space. It's a lot starker than Chill Out, and its influence is more negligible, but the astral theme would go on to define at least part of the '90s ambient movement. Meanwhile, Paterson worked with a number of other musicians to create what would be The Orb's debut, The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, which has become a genuine classic. Closer to actual house music than The KLF's version of ambient house, it features drum machines and breakbeats on most tracks, albeit played much slower than most dance music. Again, the album is coated in samples, giving the impression of one of Paterson's DJ sets as much as a proper album.

One way or another, The Orb became the most popular act of the whole movement, with their second album, U.F.Orb managing to hit the top of the charts, and the 40 minute single 'Blue Room' getting a performance on Top of the Pops. U.F.Orb is a more streamlined album, with more stylistic consistency and better sample incorporation than their debut, leading to a more obviously atmospheric work. Despite five of the tracks featuring four-to-the-floor beats, it feels even less indebted to dance music than Adventures...

Paterson and friends - everyone from Gong's Steve Hillage to German techno head Thomas Fehlmann - went on to release a popular live album, a very experimental mini-album that sold surprisingly well, and their densest and most atmospheric record yet, the unusually earthy Orbus Terrarum, creating a wonderful body of work that stands the test of time. With the departure of Kris Weston, Paterson took The Orb in a less sprawling, ambient direction with 1997's Orblivion and then spent the next two decades trying to work out what the fuck he was doing.

The KLF, having successful invented ambient house, swiftly moved on to invent the hugely successful stadium house, and then retired.


Biosphere
Norwegian Gier Jenssen's Biosphere project released the only other notable album from the period in 1991, his debut Microgravity. Distinctly more techno-oriented than The Orb's approach, Microgravity is a cold, dark record that blends techno's machine language with chilly beatless sections, creating a spacey environment indelibly linked with Norway's arctic temperatures. His second album, Patashnik, features heavier use of breakbeats and voice samples, but retains a similar atmosphere. Although not especially ambient in itself, the single 'Novelty Waves' became one of the most played tracks of the era due to its appearance on a Levis advert in 1994. Undoubtedly an influence on the isolationist approach to ambient that came about later in the decade, Jenssen's slow release rate means only these two records really fall under the purview of this thread, and it's probably his slightly later work released on Touch, starting with 1997's chilly masterpiece Substrata, that has made his reputation, but these albums are nevertheless touchstones of the era, especially given the early release date of the debut.


The Future Sound of London
The second most commercially successful group of the era, and one I'm sure a few people on the board are tired of me talking about. Brian Dougans and Garry Cobain met in Manchester in the mid '80s, and following the success of Dougans's top 20 single 'Stakker Humanoid', moved to London and churned out a steady stream of house, hardcore, techno and breaks 12"s for independent labels. While their debut Accelerator features arguably the most complex production found on dance music of its time, it's not really until 1993 that their music becomes fully associated with ambient. Having hinted at the direction with 1991's 'Papua New Guinea', they then took a year off to create three hour, sample-laden, increasingly ambient radio shows for Kiss FM. The first group of their kind to sign to a major label, their first ambient work was released under the name Amorphous Androgynous, 1993's Tales of Ephidrina which, despite some techno beats being present, is a heavily atmospheric trip of an album, the highlight being the stunning guitar-led 'Mountain Goat'.

Later in 1993 they released the 35 minute single 'Cascade', with gentle breakbeats, flutes, a winding koto melody and some deep atmospheric variations on the b-side. Legal issues kept second single, the Liz Fraser collaboration 'Lifeforms', from being released until the following summer which, in turn, delayed the album of the same name. Nevertheless, Lifeforms did incredibly well for such a weird album, reaching number 6 in the album charts. Almost entirely sample-based, its 90 minute mix of analogue synth gurgles, odd beats, field recordings and film dialogue snippets feel like the logical conclusion of the ambient house collage approach; it's sometimes accused of being too self-indulgent, which I can sort of understand, although as my favourite album of all time I won't really hear a bad word against it.

1994 ended with their third album in 18 months, the pseudo-live ISDN. Instead of touring conventionally, Brian and Garry realised that their kind of music wouldn't work on stage and is much more suited to home listening, preferably alone, so they played live to radio stations via ISDN cables, with accompanying imagery available to view from their website. Genuinely ahead of the game, they basically invented webcast gigs in 1994, and also hold the world record for the first ever internet release, a download version of the 'Lifeforms' single later that year. The ISDN album consists of tracks culled from several of these broadcasts, and while half of the album is like a slightly darker version of Lifeforms, the other half focuses on more heavily beat-based material, incorporating elements of trip-hop and jazz, creating a much more suffocating and difficult soundscape. Initially a limited edition, it would be reissued as a standard album in 1995; the band would then disappear until late '96, with the even more beat-forward Dead Cities. It would then be ten more years before the next FSOL record.


Global Communication / Reload
Tom Middleton was a friend of Richard D. James and his early work as Link and Reload is in a similarly harsh acid vein as Aphex's early singles. As his friend Mark Pritchard became gradually more involved with Reload, the sound began to mellow, eventually moving towards an ambient techno and early IDM sound. The resulting album, A Collection of Short Stories, is one of those cult records that's incredibly well-loved by those in the know, but often totally ignored elsewhere. A mix of harsher techno and gorgeous downtempo ambient pieces, it is accompanied by a book of science fiction tales, one of the few times the era's sci-fi leanings feel truly earned.

Reload has since been eclipsed by their next project, Global Communication. Initially just a name on a couple of remixes and a 1992's wonderful Keongaku EP, it became their defacto alias after reworking an entire Chapterhouse record into a gorgeous five part ambient suite Pentamerous Metamorphosis in 1993. It is 1994's 76 14 that they'll be most remembered for, however, and rightly so: it's one of the most well loved ambient records of the era, and ever. Probably the most richly melodic album of the period, helped in no small part by Middleton's classical training, it alternates between beatless epics and chugging downtempo tracks, including the classic '14 31' and the Tangerine Dream homage '8 07' / '5 23', also released as a single as 'Maiden Voyage'.

After an excellent remix collection, Remotion, Middleton and Pritchard released a couple of Deep House tracks under the GC alias, before moving on to new pastures as Secret Ingredients and Jedi Knights, before forging successful solo careers in the new millennium.


FAX +49-69/450464 / Pete Namlook
The late Pete Namlook's FAX label is a proper curate's egg, an intimidatingly vast catalogue of music arranged by sub-label depending on the artist, artwork given distinct colours depending on the musical style, and classic albums slotted alongside utter shite. Namlook was a jazz guitarist before discovering electronic music, and his love of improvisation stayed with him to the end; many, many albums on the label are single-take improvisations, some recorded without the collaborating artists' knowledge at the time. Many people told him that they should be edited down to shorter tracks to make conventional albums, and frankly these people were usually right - the numerous excellent compilations on the label are much more easily listenable than many of Namlook's solo records - but I respect him for sticking to his guns and standing by his belief that music is what happens in the moment and shouldn't be messed with afterwards.

Of Namlook's own projects, the first two Air albums are superb, a mixture of acoustic instruments, Tangerine Dream-style synth pulses and downtempo beats; they're also composed of several individual tracks, making them far more accessible than the 70 minute improvisations. The first two Silence albums, recorded with Dr. Atmo are other high points, the former being an early entry to the era, released in 1992. Two Biosphere collaborations as The Fires of Ork are noteworthy. His many collaborations with Tetsu Inoue are superb droning space music, with the 2350 Broadway series a particular highlight. Inoue himself provided a number of excellent releases to the label, including a great collaboration with Jonah Sharp as Electro Harmonix; the pair also released a superb early IDM album as Reaganz for another label. And Sharp's classic album as Spacetime Continuum, Sea Biscuit, was initially released on FAX before picking up wider distribution from Astralwerks. A great record of rich melodies and crisp, IDM-esque beats, it's one of the era's highlights.

Namlook is also responsible for bringing Klaus Schulze out of the mire of preset-based new age pap that almost all the 1970s artists were churning out in the '90s, by inviting him to work on the Dark Side of the Moog series and showing him how much better going back to analogue synths would be than pressing that 'Pan Pipe' button again.

FAX was probably the label that outlasted all the others in terms of continuing with the early '90s sound, although it was slowly phased out, with a focus on tech house and dub techno by the '00s. Namlook died horribly young in 2012, leaving behind an incomprehensible legacy like no other. Thankfully, huge swathes of the FAX catalogue have been picked up by other labels, including Namlook's own catalogue, which is now distributed by Silent State Recordings; that said, he was vocal about absolutely hating vinyl and never planning on using it again, so that label's decision to only do vinyl reissues bothers me a little.


Rising High
Caspar Pound's legendary UK dance label was around for a few years before it caught the ambient bug, but when it did, it caught it hard. Mixmaster Morris was one of the earliest names in the ambient house scene, DJing alongside Alex Paterson in the late '80s, and his debut album as The Irresistible Force, Flying High, came out on Rising High in 1992. A fittingly airy affair, its six lengthy synth-and-sample tracks are often considered classics of the era. After this, Rising High sought out more ambient music, first reissuing a number of FAX releases, including the Namlook/Morris collab Dreamfish, before going on to sign new artists. While these occasionally incorporated the dancier elements of the label's single releases, such as those by Air Liquide, they put out some of the finest pure ambient of the era, including three oft-forgotten minor masterpieces. James Bernard's Atmospherics suits its title brilliantly, 70 minutes of beautiful atmospheric synth work with subtle sample usage, creating a new type of space music. Syzygy's Morphic Resonance is the work of two library musicians (Dominic Glynn having created the Doctor Who Trial of a Timelord series theme) who had put out a couple of trance 12"s before, which makes it a particularly remarkable achievement. Incorporating a handful of 'ethnic' samples and field recordings, it's a mixture of pure ambient and vaguely rhythmic material that creates a startling sonic work, and an album comparable with the likes of Lifeforms and 76 14. Neutron 9000's Lady Burning Sky is an album by Dominic Woosey, a man of numerous aliases. The Neutron 9000 name had previously been used for house music, but here Woosey brings six epic synth pieces, five of which are led by utterly stunning melodies. There's a very bizarre piece with spoken word and percussion in the middle that never works for me, but otherwise a flawless record.

The label is also responsible for releasing the first couple of albums by Luke Vibert's Wagon Christ project, the first an uncharacteristically ambient-IDM-leaning work that sounds like nothing else in his catalogue. After 1996, Rising High went back to being a single-oriented label, before Pound died in 2004 at the horrific age of 33.


em:t
An offshoot of Time Recordings, em:t was a strangely idiosyncratic label focused on non-club-related electronic music. Each release had cover art of an exotic animal, and was titled after its catalogue number: 0094 for the first release of 1994, 1194 for the second, and so on. The most stylistically diverse of all the labels from this period, em:t put out everything from trip-hop to world fusion, dark ambient drone and spoken word. The compilations on the label are all worth a listen, but the imprint is best remembered for being the home of Woob's 1194, a world-music sampling sprawl of epic proportions, spawning the 30 minute 'On Earth' and the stunning atmospherics of 'Wuub'. Also of note is 0095 by Mat Jarvis's Gas project (unrelated to the Wolfgang Voigt Gas), which seamlessly blends detroit techno with spacey atmospherics and snippets of experimental sound design, and one of the most uplifting sounding records of the period. International People's Gang's 3395 is a bit cluttered, but the closest the era ever came to pure plunderphonics, and is a lot of fun.

The label lasted until 1997, and was briefly resurrected in the '00s by friends of the original owners. Its slow release rate makes it one of the easiest to explore, although the lack of streaming representation for most of the albums means piracy is the only way to discover them.


Beyond / Waveform
The first real ambient dub label, UK imprint Beyond, and its US counterpart Waveform, are most well known for their Ambient Dub series of compilations, all of which are great examples of the sound. Beyond also has a few noteworthy album in its own right, particularly Another Fine Day's superb Life Beyond Land. The project of occasional Orb collaborator Tom Green, the album blends mellow ambient dub with acoustic instrumentation that lends the music an incredibly rural, almost rustic feel that falls closer to the cover art of Chill Out than any other album of the time; Green has since gone on to further this sound, bringing in acoustic jazz elements. Higher Intelligence Agency, the ambient dub project of Bobby Bird, released its two albums on Beyond, the former, Colourform, sounding like a perfect blend of Orbital and The Orb, and the latter, Freefloater, adopting a darker, more IDM bent with more than a touch of Autechre. Bird would also collaborate with Biosphere, Pete Namlook and Deep Space Network on a series of excellent albums.

Beyond also branched out away from the chillout room scene, releasing albums by tribal ambient artists Tuu and Stillpoint, a rare alias excursion from Paul Schütze, and even a couple of records by Richard H. Kirk's Electronic Eye project, before closing its doors in 1996, after which its US distributor, Waveform, continued in the dub direction, becoming a home for many of the new generation of psydub producers.


Silent
A label with origins in the industrial scene, Kim Cascone's Silent was the only one to make the leap from the tribal ambient sound to ambient house. Sensing more than a little similarities in the sensibilities of both movement, Cascone embraced the new sound fully, and although occasional more experimental works were still released, the 1993-1996 output of the label is almost entirely within the chill out world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its home in San Fransisco, it's by far the most hippyish of the main ambient labels of the time, with a DIY, almost lo-fi feel to things at times: if the worst excesses of the era are off putting to you, then it's a label to avoid. The music here feels informal, like jams created for people's own parties, with some of the most garish artwork of the time. There are great records to be found, though, if the small scale feel isn't an issue. Trancendental Anarchists' Cluster Zone is a great melange of elements thrown together. Cascone's own albums as Heavenly Music Corporation are all recommended, especially the beautiful Consciousness III, the Ambient Temple of Imagination albums feel like improvisations at an ambient house ritual, and the From Here to Tranquility compilation series is excellent. The Deep Space Network Earth to Infinity project received a belated US reissue here in 1994. Just avoid the John C. Lilly dolphin album at all costs.

Cascone sold the label in 1996, and it was used to release some dance music for a couple of years before being quietly put to bed. He then went on to experiment with pure sound using computers, becoming part of the experimental sound art world for many years, before eventually relaunching Silent as a digital label in 2016. Most of the artists on the label probably work in banks now.


Apollo
The ambient offshoot of the respected Belgian dance label R&S, Apollo was founded purely to release Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92, a momentous moment in itself. Probably the most IDM-leaning of all the '90s ambient labels, Apollo has probably the most consistently listenable catalogue too. Alongside reissuing albums from FAX, Rising High and Biosphere, the label also released some incredible albums of its own: Robert Leiner's Visions of the Past, with one foot in ambient and the other in techno, sums up the era better than almost any other album; Tournesol's Kokotsu combines ambient house sampling with Warp-like IDM in a seamless manner, and features some of the most haunting melodies of the time; Sun Electric's live album 30.7.94 is, to my mind, the best live electronic album ever released; Subsurfing's Frozen Ants is a top drawer slice of ambient dub from friends of The Orb. Albums by Cabaret Voltaire and Locust also feel remarkably prescient, released in early 1994 and pointing towards the darker, harsher sounds of the coming years at the point when albums like Lifeforms and 76 14 were still being released. While I can't say I love them all, I can confidently say that there's not a single bad album in the label's 1992-1995 run.

After some floundering with new styles in the late '90s - the Thomas Fehlmann records are probably the only really good releases after '96 - the sublabel folded; since it reappeared in 2012, releases have mostly had little to do with ambient.


Instinct Ambient
New York's premier dance label released a couple of ambient-leaning records in 1993: Moby's - frankly rubbish - Ambient, and Hyaline by Human Mesh Dance. The success of these, and the increasing appeal of ambient in general, led to an offshoot label, Instinct Ambient. With Human Mesh Dance's Taylor Deupree in charge of artistic direction, it began issuing a run of solid records, including the debut by Terre Thaemlitz, a second Human Mesh Dance album, the excellent Mindflower, Acrocosm by Omicron, a blend of dark ambient, minimal techno and IDM, and a great collaboration between Omicron and Human Mesh Dance under the name SETI. The music here is a long way from the hedonistic world of ambient house, with these artists all putting out minimal, darkly atmospheric and frequently experimental works, plus the uncharacteristically fun Big Rooms, the US release of Deep Space Network's classic ambient house record.

1995 saw the release of 10 albums as the Instinct Ambient Monthly Series, with matching artwork. These included a superbly bleak SETI album Pharaos, and the darkly 'ethnic' sound of Adham Shaikh's epic Journey to the Sun. The releases generally fitting the isolationist drone/experimental arm of ambient that was emerging at this point, and Deupree's superb artwork makes the releases very collectable. The label hobbled on through to 1997, although, other than a Tetsu Inoue, the later releases are largely forgettable forays into trip-hop and jazzy dub. Deupree got frustrated with the label's move away from ambient and ended up releasing his final Human Mesh Dance, Thesecretnumbertwelve, as the debut release on his 12k label; 12k would become a cornerstone of the minimal/glitch scene in the following years.


Warp Records / Artificial Intelligence
Probably the label that needs the least introduction, Warp was responsible for one of the few 1992 releases that fit this thread: the first Artificial Intelligence compilation. Described as Electronic Listening Music, this compilation features music that's rooted in techno and house, but has a deeper melodic edge that is more suited to home listening, including tracks from Aphex Twin, Autechre, Black Dog, B12, Richie Hawtin, Speedy J and The Orb (although often under different names, for various reasons). This led to a run of albums by all of these artists other than The Orb, all released under the Artificial Intelligence banner. Among these are Autechre's delicately melodic Incunabula which is the finest display of their oft-ignored tunefulness, albeit in a less forward-thinking format than their later work, Richard D. James's eerily atmospheric Polygon Window album Surfing On Sine Waves and B12's gorgeous Detroit-influenced Electro-Soma.

This sound would be abandoned by the label's always forward-thinking artists, with Autechre's chilly Amber - always one of my favourites, despite this board's seeming dislike of it - a rare example of a 1994 release in a similar vein. That year, Aphex Twin released Selected Ambient Works Vol II, a largely beatless work of ambience that is a world away from the chill out rooms of the time: its paranoid sounds would instead help influence both the isolationist drone scene, as well as future IDM producers. The Artificial Intelligence series's biggest legacy is helping name one of the most misunderstood genres. The Hyperreal IDM online discussion list was so named as a joke: if these compilations were about artificial intelligence, then maybe the music itself had some kind of intelligence; hence Intelligent Dance Music. Of course, the easier reading of this term is that it's music for, and by, 'intelligent' people, and the name has gone on to be loathed by just about everybody ever since.


Recycle or Die
An oft-forgotten little group of records released on a sub-label of Eye Q Records, Recycle or Die's brief time featured a range of interesting releases, including label owner Stevie Be-Zet's epic, melancholic synth work Archaic Modulation, which is one of the most unfairly forgotten albums of the era, and two albums by Baked Beans, a downtempo group whose repetitive, percussive music feels like an ambient house equivalent of Steve Reich's brand of minimalism. The label was also one of few to branch out and release an album by Solitaire, a tribal ambient project featuring Steve Roach, finding shared ground with artists not even tangentially related to club music.


Other stuff
A bit of a sweeping statement, perhaps, but the vast majority of good music from the era was released on those labels. There are a lot of other albums from the time which are amateur crap, cash-in rubbish (especially found from mid-'95 onwards), dance artists with a few slower tracks and so on. There are a few albums I have found that I enjoy, though. The Infinity Project's Mystical Experience is generally the start of the 'psy' movement, and is probably better than any of the albums that followed it. Epic atmospherics, psychedelic synth sequences, spoken samples and dubby beats, it's an excessive example of the style, but the excellent compositions keep it together. Neotropic's 15 Levels of Magnification is a paranoid portrait of London in the mid '90s, dubby trip-hop beats blended with field recording soundscapes and melodic ambient pieces; Riz Maslen was dating Brian Dougans of FSOL at the time, and apparently learned a lot of her production chops from the band. It shows, and some tracks feel reminiscent of FSOL in a way that works really well for me. Glide's Space Age Freakout is a live album by Echo and the Bunnymen's Will Sergeant that is basically a very fun take on the early sample-based ambient house approach. Had it been released shortly after its performance, it would probably have gone down as a minor classic; by the time it came out in 1997, it was hideously dated, and it's only with a lot of hindsight that it can be appreciated properly. Transambient Communication's Praze-An-Beeble is a charmingly lo-fi collection of shoegaze-tinged ambient house that could only ever have come out of experimentation during this era. Mystical Sun's Primordial Atmospheres is surprisingly excellent, given its appalling cover and self-released nature, with a great ear for melody and tasteful incorporation of world music elements. Trans-4M's Sublunar Oracles isn't a classic, but is notable for its release in 1992, when very few other artists were creating this music, especially given its broad stylistic range.


What happened next
While the ambient house and ambient techno scenes took some time to take off, once they reached their peak, the albums came thick and fast. 1993 is probably the most consistently creative year, with 1994 feeling like a turning point. By 1995, while plenty of excellent albums were released, many of the best were looking to new pastures, while there were an increasing number of cash-in records and second-rate albums by comparatively talentless producers.

Remarkably, by 1996, the scene had almost completely died. I can't claim to have listened to every single ambient album of the '90s, but I've only found a tiny handful released in 1996 that in any way resemble the peak of the era. Between the darker, more mechanical approach of Apollo artists like Locust and Biosphere, and then the incorporation of jungle into IDM by Aphex, mu-ziq and Luke Vibert in late '95/early '96, non-dancefloor electronica had found a new direction to move after the ambient scene had become stale. Those who didn't embrace IDM moved into other territories: The Orb's final two albums for Island are informed by big beat and trip-hop more than ambient, before embracing dub techno on the Kompakt label; Global Communication's Jedi Knights material found them working in funky breaks; Biosphere spent a long time working with much more abstract sounds; ambient dub gradually dropped the ambient, the psy scene embracing heavy, bassy beats; Taylor Deupree's 12k provided an American outlet for a scene begun in Europe by the likes of Mille Plateaux and Raster-Noton, working in minimal, glitchy areas that developed into clicks & cuts and, eventually, more acoustic-led ambience; Spacetime Continuum followed Pete Namlook into jazzy house; FSOL were set to make a Chemical Brothers-esque psych rock-tinged big beat album before Garry decided to go full-on hippy and transform it into the psychedelic/prog reinvention of Amorphous Androgynous, going on to work with Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller. FAX was the only label to really survive the decade.

Very few artists went near the ambient-with-beats sound for a long time. Psy label Ultimae produced a few records in the style, particularly those of Carbon Based Lifeforms, whose debut Hydroponic Garden feels like the natural successor to the likes of 76 14 and Atmospherics. While dealing more with digital laptop ambience and synth drone, Dutch label Databloem formed in 2002 and gradually began to include more ambient techno and ambient IDM artists over its first decade, gradually building up a small scene. With the untimely death of Pete Namlook in 2012, FAX's US distributor, Ear/Rational Records, set up a new label to put out music that was intended for release on FAX; this label, Carpe Sonum, has gone on to continue Namlook's legacy, although perhaps unsurprisingly, there has been a slight reversion to what is considered the 'classic' FAX sound of spacey, epic ambient. A small but lively scene has since evolved from artists on Databloem and Carpe Sonum to encompass labels like ...txt, Fantasy Enhancing, Neotantra, Before & After Silence, Virtual, Moatun 7, Intellitronic Bubble, Touched Music and Anodize. A lot of good music is released on these labels, although it has to be said that it's all very nostalgic and retro now. I made a thread a couple of years back covering some of these labels and artists, although special mention must be made to Beta Consciousness's Synaesthesia, which came out last year and is probably the most authentic (and brilliant) in the style that I've heard to date. Listen to that here.

Of the original generation of artists, many have reappeared with Bandcamp. Some have just put old albums up, while others like Mystical Sun and Higher Intelligence Agency seem to be putting new music out again. As everything that goes around comes around again, many artists have noticed an upturn in interest and fortunes recently, with the last decade of Orb music generally being considered their best since the early '90s (questionable), Global Communication briefly reforming, Biosphere reappearing after time away to put out a new album each year on his own label, FSOL making a very gradual reappearance from the shadow of Amorphous Androgynous, initially through archived material and finally a new run of albums since Environments 4. Both Biosphere's and FSOL's recent material contains nods to their classic eras, but is thankfully not especially backwards-looking, with the former focusing on albums based around specific equipment each time, and FSOL's modern albums effortlessly blending Amorphous-tinged instrumental psychedelia with complex IDM. Anyone seeking something that sounds like their classic era should probably look elsewhere. Which is as it should be, I reckon.

I've made a Spotify playlist to accompany the thread, which can be found at the top of the post, and also here. And obviously would love to hear what everyone else has to say!

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Don't have anything useful to add just now other than I fucking love all this stuff, it's class.

Enjoyed this piece about U.F.Orb:
https://thequietus.com/articles/31748-the-orb-uforb-uf

[purlieu]

Enjoyed this piece about U.F.Orb:
https://thequietus.com/articles/31748-the-orb-uforb-uf

Ooh ta, that's an excellent read!

[Head Gardener]

[Crenners]

Absolutely outstanding OP and the best post I've read on here in a long time. Thank you, plenty of new names for me to explore.

[checkoutgirl]

although as my favourite album of all time

Lifeforms is also my favourite album ever and forced a major swerve in the stuff I was listening to at the time. Around 1995/96 a casual friend called John Madden (not that one) called over to my house with the CD and we listened to it on my all in one moulded Goldstar hi-fi. Didn't know what to make of it at first but there was enough there to intrigue me into a re-listen the next day and that was it. It was never the same again.

I was never 100% dedicated to ambient as there was so much other stuff to listen to at the time but I did buy Orb's Terrarum on cassette, Auntie Aubrey's on CD and of course the first 4 FSOL albums. They never really got to the heights of Lifeforms again but Dead Cities is its own thing and not far off it.

Good times.

[Sebastian Cobb]

No writing but a few years ago Worldwide FM had Minou (involved in Boiler Room and Stamp the Wax) do 4 monthly shows each exploring the origins of a genre, the IDM one was basically a perfect job.

https://www.mixcloud.com/worldwidefm/minou-08-01-18/

Beaumont Hannant - Utuba [GPR]
LFO - Track 4 [Warp Records]
Autechre - Crystel [Warp Records]
Speedy J - R2D2 [Plus 8 Records]
Aphex Twin - Analog Bubblebath [Mighty Force Records]
Boards Of Canada - Roygbiv [Warp Records]
Plaid - Last Remembered thing [Warp Records]
Abfahrt Hinwil - Tech 7 [Toytronic]
B12 - Magnetic Fields [Disques Dreyfus]
A1 People - Do It (Metamatics Remix) [Hydrogen Dukebox]
Aphex Twin - XMAS_EVET10 (Thanaton3 Mix) [Warp Records]
Objekt - Ganzfeld [Leisure System]
Plaid - Clock [Warp Records]
Lanark Artefax - Touch Absence [Whities]
Trypheme - Labyintique [Central Processing Unit]

The whole series is good, the other parts were Electro, Euphoria (Trance, Dub Techno, Breaks and Drum Workouts) and Acid.
https://worldwidefm.net/tags/minou-2


The two AI compilations from warp are of course magnificent as well.

[The Crumb]

Lovely write up, makes me want to go on a Warp Binge. I'd struggle to name much from the time you haven't covered, but I like Acid Mt. Fuji from 94, which I think fits quite well despite being made on the other side of the world.

My favourite modernish bit of ambient techno is the Voices From the Lake album Donato Dozzy. So beautifully organic, a lovely album to drift with.

I've also been enjoying the clean Teutonic stylings of Driftmachine lately

[Midas]

Autechre - Warp Tapes 89-93 is decent if you like their early Incunabula-flavoured IntelligentDunceMusic

[purlieu]

Absolutely outstanding OP and the best post I've read on here in a long time. Thank you, plenty of new names for me to explore.

Ta! Glad people enjoyed it.

I was never 100% dedicated to ambient as there was so much other stuff to listen to at the time but I did buy Orb's Terrarum on cassette, Auntie Aubrey's on CD and of course the first 4 FSOL albums. They never really got to the heights of Lifeforms again but Dead Cities is its own thing and not far off it.

Yeah, some people seem to have been into just about everything I wrote about back in the '90s and I wonder how in God's name they kept up with it whilst doing anything else with their lives at all. My knowledge has been accrued through numerous obsessive periods where I'd spend months researching and listening to nothing else, but I always need something else to move on to afterwards.

No writing but a few years ago Worldwide FM had Minou (involved in Boiler Room and Stamp the Wax) do 4 monthly shows each exploring the origins of a genre, the IDM one was basically a perfect job.

Great to see Beaumont Hannant in there, someone who should really have been in my first post, and seemingly a casualty of the awfulness of the music industry, according to this tremendous article. (Very thankful to archive.org for that link, as Mike took Ambient Music Guide offline for good this summer. A real tragedy that, it was a fantastic resource and I can't work out why it couldn't have been left online, even if it wasn't updated.)

Lovely write up, makes me want to go on a Warp Binge. I'd struggle to name much from the time you haven't covered, but I like Acid Mt. Fuji from 94, which I think fits quite well despite being made on the other side of the world.

Oh, this is one I've seen mentioned many times and never gotten around to listening to, cheers for the reminder!

Autechre - Warp Tapes 89-93

I love this set, the way it ranges from Incunabula-style stuff to their early hardcore material. It used to be available as a free high res wav download from their official store but the link seems to have disappeared now, sadly.

[monkfromhavana]

Jesus, Wayne Archbold seems like a massive cunt. I would have assumed that even under the worst contract, the hold over you would have expired when the label closed as a business entity in 2003, but that it persists to the present day is ludicrous.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

This thread made me dig out my old cassette copy of The Orb's Live 93 which... doesn't appear to be in print anymore? I love it though. They could really do no wrong for a spell.

[Auntie Beryl]

What a remarkable and informative OP. I've dabbled in bits and pieces of this area for the last 30 years - 76:14 has long been a top ten album for me - now I have more pointers as to where else to go. Thanks @purlieu!

[purlieu]

Jesus, Wayne Archbold seems like a massive cunt. I would have assumed that even under the worst contract, the hold over you would have expired when the label closed as a business entity in 2003, but that it persists to the present day is ludicrous.

Yeah, that article is grim reading. Depressing that there are great albums out there that have no chance of ever being reissued.

This thread made me dig out my old cassette copy of The Orb's Live 93 which... doesn't appear to be in print anymore? I love it though. They could really do no wrong for a spell.

It's weird how it was not only totally overlooked in 2008's deluxe reissue campaign and the new vinyl presses since, but doesn't seem to have been re-pressed in any format in years.

It's an era ripe for reissues, really. Some of the early Warp albums are out of print too, which must be down to different artists having different contracts. B12's two Warp albums recently received excellent expanded reissue treatment, while FUSE's Dimension Intrusion is fairly pricey on the second hand market. Autechre's back catalogue is gradually being reissued on vinyl, albeit torturously slowly, while the main back catalogues of the likes of them and Aphex, as well as FSOL on Universal, have remained in print on CD since release. FSOL stuff is gradually being reissued on vinyl as well, although they're taking a novel approach to Record Store Day by re-recording old singles and backing them up with entire mini albums of new interpretations and mixes, which always strikes me as a decent way of doing RSD - they're not 'major' albums so can be ignored by more casual fans, but collectors get new music rather than just a coke bottle green vinyl reissue or something. Aside for a handful of albums on reissue labels, there still remains a huge amount of this material that's totally out of print, not even available on streaming, Bandcamp, iTunes or anywhere. Syzygy's Morphic Resonance and the Baked Beans albums are great examples of albums impossible to get outside of piracy or pricey second hand copies. If I had the money I'd start a label to get as many of these back on the market as possible, even if just digitally to start with.

What a remarkable and informative OP. I've dabbled in bits and pieces of this area for the last 30 years - 76:14 has long been a top ten album for me - now I have more pointers as to where else to go. Thanks @purlieu!

Hope you find something you like!

[Famous Mortimer]

Jesus, Wayne Archbold seems like a massive cunt. I would have assumed that even under the worst contract, the hold over you would have expired when the label closed as a business entity in 2003, but that it persists to the present day is ludicrous.

I feel like all it would take would be to get a half-decent lawyer. No judge would enforce a contract for a company which hasn't been in business for 20 years and whose owner isn't in music any more. Especially if it's Hannant's real name we're talking about.

[monkfromhavana]

Having found WA on Facebook, I'd say that, without anything overt, he's probably still a bit of a dick.

[shoulders]

What a remarkable and informative OP. I've dabbled in bits and pieces of this area for the last 30 years - 76:14 has long been a top ten album for me - now I have more pointers as to where else to go. Thanks @purlieu!

Yes, an excellent reference point,  gathering together and contextualising of a particular era. Should be on a website somewhere.

This era is also one I am really interested in, although a lot of Namlook stuff I have tried to get into personally leaves me non-plussed.

What's perhaps most fascinating is how the scene is joined mainly by particular club trends and wider cultural progression, perhaps similar workflow and use of new technology.

Outside of that, there's everything between jaunty reggae influenced whimsy to angular ice cold procedural, mathematic music. They're all exploring new combinations and dipping into the culture of the time to find pop references and particular sceney moods in their own way, but sometimes couldn't be more different sounding.

How you can get this
https://youtu.be/IPOw-VeHZgQ

And this
https://youtu.be/kB8ZynMU2Tc

In the same mix without either feeling out of place is the beauty of that particular moment in time.

[greencalx]

Great OP - hope to find time to say more later but the Spotify link didn't work for me.

This one did tho: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5JakJ3jddBRS69Cf8ECIDh

[greencalx]

[As luck would have it, FSOL's Papua New Guinea has just come on the Radio 6 90's comedown Now Playing show...]

Despite my username (due mostly to Morris' use of ambient and similar styles in his works), I am much less of an ambient aficionado as purlieu, but I am reasonably well-acquainted with the KLF/Orb, FSOL and Richard D James axes of this universe. Reading the OP (great company on a train journey!) and some of the articles linked to, I am amazed that U.F.Orb topped the UK album charts. This got me thinking though about how I (a mid-teen in a rural area) got into the genre, and I guess it comes down to its crossover appeal.

The KLF's Stadium House hits constituted the gateway drug, and other contemporary dance hits sometimes had a more chilled or abstract edge to them, which I always enjoyed. But it was through my brother's mates, who were a bit older and had prog rock leanings, that introduced me to the Orb (I'm assuming through the connection to Gong). If memory serves, Perpetual Dawn had made it onto the Radio 1 playlist (or, at least, something that was sampled for it had - I was never sure), as I recognised it from the background music to my art lessons. So you've got ways in from both the dance and rock crowds. Also, thanks to the connection to the Serious Western Art Music Minimalists, your Serious Music Critics could get interested...

It was mostly thanks to Select magazine that I got introduced to the wider scene, notably FSOL and Aphex Twin and their various aliases. (It was also through Select that I was introduced to Chris Morris, so I suppose we can also hold them responsible for my joining this forum). Through a combination of reviews and sample tracks on cover tapes/CDs, I got pointers towards other acts. Off the top of my head, I can think of albums by Bandulu, System 7 and Sven Väth entering my collection this way. Not sure how many of these fall within the scope of the thread. Certainly the last falls somewhere between trance and prog rock, and not necessarily in a good way.

FSOL was always a banker. Lifeforms came out while I was doing my A Levels: I think I rated it as my album of the year, which is pretty impressive given strong competition that year. I was however utterly perplexed by ISDN, not because of the music (except the way the album finishes, which leaves me wondering to this day if it's supposed to be like that, or there was something wrong with my pressing). It was that I had no concept of how music could be (what we would now describe as) streamed digitally in real time. At this time, next to no-one had the internet at home and it would be two years later that I would hear the phrase 'MP3' for the first time. (This was uttered by a very cute architecture student I met on my year abroad, if you must know. She was also responsible for introducing me to the then mindblowing concept of sending images by email, and also for my being caught without a radio license by the relevant authorities.)

What I didn't appreciate until reading purlieu's post at the top of the thread was the mayfly-like transience of the scene. With Portishead and Massive Attack each releasing Dummy and Protection as I moved to Bristol, and Tricky's debut coming not long after that, I got sucked into the trip hop orbit, which continued to service my downtempo needs.  (Indeed, right as I type this, Now Playing has moved onto Roads.) It hadn't crossed my mind that I exited the scene just as it ended. This is not characteristic behaviour for me, as I tend to cling onto things long past their moment of relevance or utility.

As you will have spotted by now, I don't have interesting to post musically, but this thread resonated because the ambient era was a major part of my teenage musical journey.

[chutnut]

Really enjoyed this thanks! Familiar with a lot of it already, but nowhere near all. Always good to have new stuff to add to the list to check out

Also sorry for being a pedant but wasn't it Move D rather than Pete Namlook in Reagenz? Their later house stuff was really good too

[BlodwynPig]

Rudonculous OP. Touched all the obvious benchmarks but glad you mentioned some of the off the beaten path albums too - Praze An Beeble!

Did you mention Dreamfish? Mixmaster Morris & Pete Namlook's deep DEEP sea ambient collab. I remember hearing that even before i went to Uni in 1994 and discovered 76:14.

Some of the ambient techno tracks on Sensurreal's Never to Tell a Soul are sublime, and of course Kirk Degiorgio's As One early albums fit the bill.

The compilation, Amberdelic Space, which is one of those mad bumper packages mixing established acts (FSOL), chin strokers (The Black Dog) and no hit (but interestingly odd) wonders, is worth tracking down

https://www.discogs.com/release/21691-Various-Amberdelic-Space

[Twit 2]

Discovered Susumu Yokota off the back of one of these threads a long time ago on this forum and been listening to him since. I particularly love the album Sakura:

Kirk Degiorgio

Bit different in style, but have you heard his project "The Beauty Room"?

[BlodwynPig]

Yes, hoovered up anything and everything by him over the years. Even got to meet him in Glasgow and sincerely thank him for this:

[purlieu]

What I didn't appreciate until reading purlieu's post at the top of the thread was the mayfly-like transience of the scene.

Indeed. Other than a few outliers at the start, the bulk of it was around from late '92 to mid '94, by which time IDM, dark ambient and trip-hop all began to take over.

As you will have spotted by now, I don't have interesting to post musically, but this thread resonated because the ambient era was a major part of my teenage musical journey.

A very enjoyable read it was too!

Also sorry for being a pedant but wasn't it Move D rather than Pete Namlook in Reagenz? Their later house stuff was really good too

I suggested it was Tetsu Inoue and Jonah Sharp, but you're right, it was Jonah and Move D. I was getting it mixed up with the Inoue/Sharp collab Instant Replay which is a much weirder record.

Did you mention Dreamfish?

Briefly in context of its Rising High reissue with an abomination of a cover, but yes, it's definitely a key release, although I always found the third and fourth tracks underwhelming after the amazing opening pair.

The compilation, Amberdelic Space, which is one of those mad bumper packages mixing established acts (FSOL), chin strokers (The Black Dog) and no hit (but interestingly odd) wonders, is worth tracking down

https://www.discogs.com/release/21691-Various-Amberdelic-Space

Ah there are so many compilations from the era that are worth a shot, that's practically a thread in its own right! I've had my eye on this one for a while, although I'm still getting around to getting copies of the em:t, Chill Out or Die, From Here to Tranquility, Ambient Systems and Excursions in Ambience series.

[BlodwynPig]

I'd quite happily bestow my entire collection of ambient trance/house/techno compilations to you upon my demise.

[Brundle-Fly]

Any love for this 1993 album?

[purlieu]

I much prefer the weird IDM approach of Found Sound, one of a few albums that I really should have mentioned in my opening post. They are, like Locust, an act who are very unfairly forgotten in the development of IDM from 'slightly weirder techno' to 'weird dark clattery stuff'.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Opened this thread to see if Acid Mt Fuji was mentioned because its me fav, and it is.

What's less well known stuff to listen to if I like that and Spanners by the Black Dog?

[Better Midlands]

What's less well known stuff to listen to if I like that and Spanners by the Black Dog?

From the same period and mentioned in the OP this is a masterpiece

[Brundle-Fly]

From the same period and mentioned in the OP this is a masterpiece



You and purlieu are the only other people I've heard of who even know of this obscure gem.