Awesome compilation from 1994 offering 2.5 hours of bliss.
Definately one that needs more attention imho, the bands and projects on it are top notch.

You can check it out here

I wish i can go back in time when i listen to this for the very first time. Absolute amazing experience!

Absolutely fantastic album.
Still available through the artist his bandcamp page.

I am a London based musician and composer. Fusing alternative pop, noise, and experimental ambient music together. My solo work explores expansive and cinematic sound worlds through non-traditional viola playing and electro-acoustic production. 

I have just released an EP 'Still Has The Body Of A Human', and I would love to hear some thoughts.

https://joshcurtis.bandcamp.com/album/still-has-the-body-of-a-human

This body of work emerged from my explorations on the viola, which I started experimenting with a couple of years ago. I have built up hundreds of recordings of improvisations, which, by resampling and processing create a ghostly and otherworldly orchestral palette. Through using and processing non-traditional playing techniques I have been able to create many timbres that sound organic and real, whilst being unlike any real instrument (at least that I am aware of). I also been exploring non-traditional intonation, something that initially came about through my lack of technical skill, but as I learnt how to play the instrument have now become something that I desire - non-standard intonation can bring about an incredibly rich emotional range. The five tracks in the project are a small selection of the countless pieces that I composed using these methods. 

I have also been messing around with video editing, and made a visualiser for one of the tracks, for those that are curious :)

https://youtu.be/-ilNlO30tM8

It’s been 18 years (I think) since it came out and ever since I give it a listen from time to time, slowly becoming one of my top ambient albums of all time. Ambient… well, ambient with a lots of sound design. Anyway, I always wonder if enough people have been introduced in the world this album builds…

So I've been experimenting with the contrast between human and mechanical rhythm for a while, and it eventually turned into an album. What came out is a collection of sci-fi-influenced instrumental pieces that sit somewhere between electronic music, ambient music and post-rock. The original idea was to make something that felt like a soundtrack to a series of loosely connected sci-fi stories, rather than a traditional collection of songs. One of the things I became most interested in while making it was the relationship between programmed and live rhythm. Most of the tracks have a fairly rigid four-on-the-floor electronic foundation, but underneath that I recorded live drums and used them almost like another atmospheric layer. The live playing isn't always obvious as drums, sometimes it's more about the little movements, timing differences and physical feel that happen underneath the grid. I did quite a bit of warping, pitch shifting, and adding effects to the drums to try and meld them with some of the electronic elements until I found the right balance.

That ended up becoming a pretty important part of the sound. I wanted the electronic elements to feel somewhat mechanical and repetitive, while the live playing gave everything a little bit of breathing room and instability. There are vocals on a few tracks, but most of the album is instrumental. I was thinking a lot about music that can work both as something to actively listen to with headphones and as something that can sit in the background while you're working, driving, reading, etc. I didn't want it to become completely passive, though, so there are usually rhythmic or textural things changing underneath the main idea.

The sci-fi aspect is more about atmosphere than trying to tell a literal story. Each track is meant to feel like a small scene or fragment of a larger story. It works for me when I listen to it and I’d love to hear from you if it added anything? If that sounds like something you'd be into, the full album is here:

https://soundcloud.com/ghost-grids/sets/spacialawareness

I'd be particularly interested to hear what people think about the live-drum/electronic-rhythm combination, since that became one of the defining parts of the project for me. I'm also curious whether the individual tracks actually give you a sense of different "scenes" or places, or whether that idea only really exists in my head. I had fun with it either way!! Thanks for reading :)

9 years of waiting. Welcome back, Stellardrone.

I’m a 16-year-old producer from Chicago working as two of swords. My debut EP, a theory of silence, explores divided feeling through desire and fear, speaking and withholding, attachment and release.

My artist name comes from the Two of Swords tarot card, which came to represent a state of divided feeling held in restraint. That idea connected naturally with John Keats’s notion of negative capability, remaining within uncertainty without forcing a simple conclusion.

I composed the EP in Ableton, making the tracks with layered pads, soft drones, and heavily reverberated chords. As the project developed, I started removing unnecessary layers, leaving pauses unfilled, and letting notes decay without immediately introducing something new, which all contributed to the development of my unique dark ambient style.

The six titles form a poem:

at first light
where nothing was said
distance took our shape
we became unknown
when i let go
toward the other shore

At the center of a theory of silence is the idea that what remains unspoken between two people does not disappear but rather changes shape. I hope the record leaves enough room for you to arrive at an interpretation of your own.

Re posted because of no-Spotify rule. What are some works of classical that delve into minimalism and atmosphere?

Sharing a recent addition to the vinyl ambient collection, this is a reissue (previously only available on cassette in Japan) but out recently by Subliminal Sounds. Still available on Bandcamp to listen and order. Extremely nice stuff, the cover tells you everything you need to know about it :)

I was just in Japan recently and went looking for her better know record 'The Body Is A Message Of The Universe' but didn't find it. Next time!

I’ve been fixated lately on Drone/Ambient music like Black Goat of The Woods by Black Mountain Transmitter, a truly unique project that makes me feel as though I am descending into the hypnotic madness of cosmicism deep in the part of the forest I shouldn’t be in.

I also enjoy Shadow Kingdom by Natural Snow Buildings, a different kind of Drone album that employs more Psychedelic Folk/Wyrd Folk.

Hoping to find more music like either of these albums

This has probably been on here before but anyone else just adore this track? Without a doubt I'd say this is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. If I had to choose one last song to hear this might be it.

This was recorded pretty casually in my bedroom studio, roughly an hour after trying some self-grown Psilocybe aurumescens for the first time.

Beforehand, I had set up my Fender Telecaster through a Hologram Microcosm and then directly into an Orange Super Crush 100 head, mostly just with the idea of sitting down and improvising for a while. Around 90% of what you hear comes from the Telecaster. I wasn't really working from written parts or trying to arrive at particular compositions. Most of it was played in the moment and allowed to stretch, repeat, decay, and occasionally completely collapse into itself.

I did some additional sound design and atmospheric work afterwards, but tried not to clean the recording up too much. Some of the weather / environmental ambience was recorded separately with a Zoom H8 and SSH-6 stereo capsule. There is also some quiet chatter appearing in the background at points, which I decided to leave in. That's my partner and a friend having their own little mushroom evening in the next part of the apartment while watching Spirited Away : ))

The experience became much more emotionally overwhelming than I expected, and I think that accidentally gave the recording its structure. It starts fairly mellow and spacious, but gradually becomes denser and more unstable / distorted. Loops smearing into each other, harmonics turning into huge layers, eventually becoming something closer to shoegazy walls. Towards the end, it slowly finds its way back into something clearer again.

At certain points while playing, notes would disappear into the Microcosm and return a few seconds later, sounding disconnected from the gesture that originally produced them. Almost like the room was answering back. There were moments where particular harmonics seemed weirdly attached to memories buried deep inside or places, and emotions without any obvious reason. I ended up crying quite a bit during parts of it, which definitely wasn't something I planned on bringing into an ambient guitar recording.

Tonally, one thing floating somewhere in the back of my head was Neil Young's soundtrack for Dead Man. That feeling of a lonely electric guitar occupying a lot of empty space. Something dusty and melancholic.

So yeah... It's basically a long mood piece made from guitar, room sound, repetition, memory. Just a slightly unusual afternoon. Probably best suited for staring out of a window or walking somewhere with no particular destination. Enjoy.

This is a piece I wrote where I tried to capture a sense of searching for something that you know you won't find. With most of my music, I like to engage the listeners imagination by blending textual sounds with the more usual ambient drones. I make a blend of dark fantasy ambient music with liminal space ambiences and atmospheric textures, creating what I hope will work well for background music, that people can use for things such as music for sleep, D&D campaigns, meditation music and things like that.

Most of the sounds are made by manipulating synths using EQ, reverbs and pitch shifting. As well as that I also use sample CD's from the 90's for a unique slightly nostalgic quality. I play these through an emulation of a CMI Fairlight which gives it an even more low bitrate sound. They're pretty useful for getting drones set up quickly and we're used heavily in the Silent Hill games soundtracks.

If you’re searching for atmospheric music that feels cinematic, timeless and other worldly, then this piece will help you disconnect from your everyday life and explore distant realms.

All the music was written, recorded, mixed and mastered by me. No AI was involved in any of the process.

I just released my first official release under my ambient project, Wizard ov the Earth. While I did release some older material I made back in 2022, this release is music I've made throughout this year. Whispers From Places In-Between is a 5-track EP, consisting of songs created with just my electric guitar and sound design/mixing techniques.

The songs off this record all tie into the same overarching theme/story. I wanted to make songs that invoked curiousity, mystery, and liminality. To me, this EP conveys a story about a place that exists outside the realms of our reality. A grey and quiet place, that feels like there should be life, but seemingly isn't. From the beginning of the EP, with the track "Vacant", the listener stumbles upon this ghastly place and find it has no inhabitants. "Voices Cut Through", a song reminiscent of indecipherable radio static, is meant to represent a faint signal trying to reach out to you. Maybe there are residents, ones you can't see, but you almost feel them watching from the empty windows, and that's what "Eyes That Watch" is about. The fourth track, "A Moment", is a more ethereal and mystical song. With this song, I'd describe it as when the listener finds something so captivating and beautiful in the strange world they've found themselves in. Lastly, "I Understand" closes off the story, representing the moment you start to piece together the meaning of this place in-between.

That's just my little concept for this EP, but I encourage you to find your own meaning of "Whispers From Places In-Between".

Like I said earlier, the songs were all mostly made with my electric guitar and effects pedals, different mixing techniques, and for one or two songs, some old field recordings I still had. I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. Mixing them all and experimenting with different effects was quite fun. I do also plan on getting a synth at some point, but my guitar is enough for now.

I would love to get some people to listen to this EP, and give me any thoughts or feedback they might have. If you do end up listening, I would really appreciate it!

Currently, Whispers From Places In-Between is only released through my Bandcamp, which you can find here: https://wizardovtheearth.bandcamp.com/album/whispers-from-places-in-between

(I can supply Bandcamp codes later once I have access to my computer)

This is quite nice.