Simon Reynolds on the decade in ambient and new age

https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3594

It’s oh-so-trendy to be into it now I guess, but all of the Light in the Attic reissues mentioned in this piece are spectacularly good. Very happy to see those mentioned, absolutely everybody should hear them.

Its a decent overview. Reynolds has a long standing interest in all things ambient. His experimental music blog has put me onto a ton of stuff down through the years. http://hardlybaked.blogspot.com/

  On 2/3/2020 at 12:34 PM, droid said:

Its a decent overview. Reynolds has a long standing interest in all things ambient. His experimental music blog has put me onto a ton of stuff down through the years. http://hardlybaked.blogspot.com/

Thank you for this.. I love these kind of music sources

I love ambient ambient music, probably my favorite genre, but I fucking hate anything classified as "new age". Just loathe to see the two associated so strongly.

article seems more focused on 'new age'. a good read.

Its a bit silly to dislike music based on an arbitrary application of a label. There's a ton of brilliant new age. Music from that tradition has as much of a claim to being ambient music as anything else, certainly more so than the avant roots that are normally cited for the genre. 

i'm not saying otherwise, just saying the article focused on more of the 'new age' classified ambient

Yeah, thats fine, but who cares what people call it? I would have felt the same a decade or so ago, but the rehabilitation of new age is one of the best things to happen to ambient in 20 years. Earnest, sincere, often very deep music intended to evoke positive emotions in listeners - a necessary counterpoint to the experimental, dissonant and avant strains.

New age, 

Constance Demby

Iasos 

Trans Music Consort

And so much more....

a lot of them hated the new age genre name but this is what journalists do, they classify and name genres. Britain hates the IDM classification but we need names to reference stuff, braindance just didn't cut it. 

I wish we could put new age, ambient, and drone into one category. The individual artists will always be what truly matters.

Reynolds usually writes well. It”s a good overview of provenance, connections, how different worlds converge/coalesce in sound design.

it’s not like you get brass-band ambient (or could u?), so technology, culture, social norms, individuals, tropes, or moods that feature in the aural worlds synth-realms create, runs into the hall of mirrors of how you extrapolate or interpret meaning from sound, an entire universe humanity has been trying to figure out for as long as life has had ears.

So many releases intersect around what this range of artists do though, so any author will still bump into the meaning/interpretation + boil down a summary title.

jon hassell is brass-band ambient

  On 2/3/2020 at 6:41 PM, cwmbrancity said:

it’s not like you get brass-band ambient (or could u?), so technology, culture, social norms, individuals, tropes, or moods that feature in the aural worlds synth-realms create, runs into the hall of mirrors of how you extrapolate or interpret meaning from sound, an entire universe humanity has been trying to figure out for as long as life has had ears.

what the fuck kind of grammar is this?

  On 2/3/2020 at 6:41 PM, cwmbrancity said:

Reynolds usually writes well. It”s a good overview of provenance, connections, how different worlds converge/coalesce in sound design.

it’s not like you get brass-band ambient (or could u?), so technology, culture, social norms, individuals, tropes, or moods that feature in the aural worlds synth-realms create, runs into the hall of mirrors of how you extrapolate or interpret meaning from sound, an entire universe humanity has been trying to figure out for as long as life has had ears.

So many releases intersect around what this range of artists do though, so any author will still bump into the meaning/interpretation + boil down a summary title.

 

Expand  

hey you found your thesaurus! ‘grats!

Now you just need to find that elusive Style Guide. 

You’re doing great!

"writing about music is like dancing about architecture" - le corbusier

  On 2/3/2020 at 9:42 PM, prdctvsm said:

"pee pee poop poo" - Arthur Schopenhauer

I'm not saying ambient needs to be dark, harsh or dissonant. It can be positive, up-lifting, relaxing or whatever. But for me "new age" is like the opposite of sincerity and spirituality. You just take the most superficial elements of spiritual and religious traditions, package them as some kind of feel-good consumer product and sell it to people who feel empty despite their material wealth.

that is an amazing argument posted in usenet group rec.music.ambient, 1993

  On 2/3/2020 at 6:41 PM, cwmbrancity said:

it’s not like you get brass-band ambient (or could u?)

Colin Stetson is the name that immediately springs to mind wrt brass ambient/drone due to his circular breathing and neck/throat pickup technique.  Would be grateful for any recs from other people in this idea too.

  On 2/3/2020 at 9:58 PM, Salvatorin said:

that is an amazing argument posted in usenet group rec.music.ambient, 1993

Thank you, I was feeling very nineties already when I saw the thread title.

  On 2/3/2020 at 9:50 PM, MIXL2 said:

y do yall weird discord sleuths come posting all at the same time 

p cringe tbqh

It's actually a quite funny subject because it has such a nostalgic value for someone who grew up in the nineties.

Also funny that they mention Robert Anton Wilson who was very much anti-New Age even though he was pretty well associated with the whole thing. He would pronounce new age newage, so that it would rhyme with sewage. Ah ah.

  On 2/3/2020 at 10:02 PM, ManjuShri said:

Colin Stetson is the name that immediately springs to mind wrt brass ambient/drone due to his circular breathing and neck/throat pickup technique.  Would be grateful for any recs from other people in this idea too.

Every record with a trombone is brilliant, its one of the ur-ambient instruments.

usual suspects derail a thread

@hello spiral coming from someone who goes for the David Mitchell x roll-ups x Jeff Lebowski fusion image, knock yourself out champ , but if you don't mind let's keep it to the music maaaaaaaaaaaaan

  On 2/3/2020 at 9:19 PM, Salvatorin said:

jon hassell is brass-band ambient

true, i was thinking northern English brass bands jamming through a minimoog for some reason, Blue Period is a personal favourite JH