54 albums · 1969–2024

Ambient, from minimalism and Brian Eno to Japanese environmental music, the chill-out room, drone and today

· 2 min read · by 1001 Albums

Laraaji in orange clothes striking a large gong on a dark stage, a table of instruments beside him and a blue-lit screen behind
Liz Harris of Grouper sitting at a table of cables, a mixing desk and tape machines, her hands on the controls, in blue stage lightA crowd in green light watching Suzanne Ciani at her synthesizer on a small stage, with swirling projections on the wall behind her
Laraaji playing the gong on Madeira in December 2017. Photo: clemisan, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Grouper at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona, June 2014. Photo: deepskyobject, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Suzanne Ciani in concert at the Armory in Durham, North Carolina, May 2017. Photo: phil nunnally, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Ambient music has its roots in Erik Satie's idea of furniture music, music meant to be part of a room rather than listened to closely, and in the minimalism of the sixties, where Terry Riley built long pieces from repeated patterns on organ and tape. In Germany Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh and Cluster made slow electronic records in the early seventies. In 1978 Brian Eno named the genre with Music for Airports, music "as ignorable as it is interesting".

Eno's Ambient series went on with Harold Budd's piano, Laraaji's zither and his own On Land, and Jon Hassell's trumpet. In Japan, Hiroshi Yoshimura and Satoshi Ashikawa made kankyō ongaku, environmental music for rooms and public spaces, and in America Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel, Steve Roach and Pauline Oliveros worked with synthesizers, tape and the resonance of a cistern. Around 1990 the Orb, Global Communication and Aphex Twin played it in the chill-out rooms of the rave years, and Biosphere in Norway. Later come the drones of Stars of the Lid, William Basinski's decaying tape loops, Gas's forest of sound, Fennesz and Tim Hecker, the voices of Grouper and Julianna Barwick, and in the 2020s KMRU in Nairobi, Sarah Davachi, Kali Malone and Floating Points' Promises with Pharoah Sanders.

The list has 54 records from 1969 to 2024. It leaves out most of new age and of dark ambient, the long works of Max Richter and La Monte Young, and the albums Deezer does not have, among them the KLF's Chill Out, Midori Takada's Through the Looking Glass and Gavin Bryars' first recording of The Sinking of the Titanic. About 56 hours of music, 5 days of a few records each.

By genre

Electronic 78%Rock 8%Classical 5%Other 9%
  • Electronic 78%
  • Rock 8%
  • Classical 5%
  • Other 9%

The genres named most: ambient, electronic, experimental, drone, japanese, jazz.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 12 countries: United States 18, United Kingdom 12, Germany 6, Japan 4, Belgium 2 and 7 more. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Genres first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.