The Best Ambient Albums of the '90s
One word covered three different musics; these are the '90s ambient albums, ranked by whoever turns up. Beatless drone, chill-out room ambient techno and isolationist dark ambient share no sound; all three are kept. The composition unit decides: each is one sustained state cut into sections, and a record of self-contained pieces is not. First release 1990-1999, no lead vocal in verse-chorus form, no soundtracks, no various-artists compilations, no DJ mixes, no artist twice with aliases and side projects counted. Each printed year is the year of first release; a Spotify date never decides it. The link goes to the oldest edition Spotify carries of that record, chosen by edition and never by the date the page prints. Where the linked page shows a different year, the item says so. Tiers rest on three lists: Album of the Year's user and critic charts, two populations counted apart, plus Pitchfork's fifty ambient albums. Top tier is a record named twice or three times; the second takes the rest. Tiers are a count, not a ranking. Shuffle as you like.
Windy & Carl — Depths (1998) is #1 on “The Best Ambient Albums of the '90s”.
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Windy & Carl — Depths (1998)
Kranky, March 1998: seven tracks, seventy minutes, guitar and bass fed through delay until neither instrument is identifiable. Windy Weber and Carl Hultgren were married and working out of Dearborn, Michigan. All three of the reference lists name it. Nothing on the record keeps time. 'Surfacing' takes the last thirteen minutes and never quite resolves.
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Oval — 94diskont. (1995)
Oval's method was to paint the underside of a CD and record what the player made of the damage, so the clicking is a machine failing. No beat, just drone and clicking. Mille Plateaux issued five tracks in 1995; the American edition added two, and Spotify's copy is that seven-track one, its page dated 1996. 'Do While ⌘X' is the short reprise of a twenty-four-minute opener. Three for three on those lists.
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Aphex Twin — Selected Ambient Works Volume II (1994)
Warp released twenty-four untitled pieces in March 1994, so Spotify falls back on numbers and the closer is called '#24'. Not one of them works as a single, and that is what puts Richard D. James under ambient instead of dance music. Chill-out room techno at its least sociable. Present on all three sources.
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Global Communication — 76:14 (1994)
Tom Middleton and Mark Pritchard gave each track its own running time as a title and the album the total, so '12:18' means what it says and runs last of ten. Dedicated released it in June 1994. Ambient techno, with the tempo mostly declining to commit to a floor. Two sources out of three.
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Biosphere — Substrata (1997)
Geir Jenssen worked in Tromsø, north of the Arctic circle, and the field recordings carry the record. All Saints issued eleven tracks in June 1997; Spotify has Touch's 2001 remaster of the same eleven. Two lists have it, one does not. 'Poa Alpina' takes its name from an Arctic grass and moves at roughly the speed of one. Isolationist.
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Stars of the Lid — The Ballasted Orchestra (1997)
Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie built eight pieces in Austin out of processed guitar and tape, with no ensemble in the room at any point. Beatless start to finish, on Kranky in 1997. 'The Artificial Pine Arch Song' spends eighteen minutes going nowhere on purpose. Two of the sources name it; the third does not.
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Woob — Woob 1194 (1994)
Paul Frankland recorded as Woob for em:t, a label that titled its releases with catalogue numbers, which is how a record ends up called Woob 1194. One source names it; the other two do not. Six long tracks, 1994, and chill-out room stock in the most literal sense. 'Emperor' runs under six minutes on tuned percussion and a low drone.
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Lustmord — The Place Where the Black Stars Hang (1994)
Named by a single list of the three. Brian Williams came out of SPK and assembled five long tracks in 1994 from frequencies most speakers cannot really reproduce, so the low end does the composing. Dark ambient, no argument about it. 'Dog Star Descends' lasts under seven minutes and still feels geological.
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Brian Eno — Neroli (1993)
Fifty-seven minutes and fifty-six seconds, one track, and 'Neroli' is both the album and the only thing on it. Subtitled Thinking Music Part IV, built from a handful of notes that keep failing to arrive anywhere, beatless by construction. Eno named the genre in 1978 and was still working the seam fifteen years later. Named by one source.
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Thomas Köner — Permafrost (1993)
Gongs, struck and then processed until the attack has gone and only the room is left, are most of what Köner used on his early records. Six tracks and thirty-eight minutes, 1993, at the isolationist end. Spotify's copy is Type's, carrying the original date. 'Nival' opens on something like weather. No source of the three names it.
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Main — Motion Pool (1994)
Robert Hampson spent the late eighties in Loop playing repetitive psych rock, then took the guitar apart as a sound source. Absent from all three. Ten tracks, 1994, and by the end there is no rhythm section left standing, which puts the record at the dark end. 'Liquid Reflective' closes on four minutes of shivering tone.
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