There are several fundamental genres in music, consisting of many subgenres. One of them is ambient. What is it, how does it sound and where is it used? Such questions most often arise in new listeners. In order to find out, you need to get acquainted with the music industry of the 1970s.
The emergence of the genre
Any list that lists artists in ambient style must include Brian Eno. It was this musician who became the founder of the genre and the author of the term itself. Brian's career began in the band Roxy Music, where he was a keyboard player. However, in the mid-70s, he decided to move away from rock and took up his own solo projects, a characteristic feature of which was a lot of experiments with sound.
The term ambient from English is translated as “enveloping”. It was Ino who was the first to achieve such a musical effect. Inspiration for him was street noises, to which he listened, lying once at home with a fracture. The composer decided to reproduce something similar to a household palette of sounds and record the result on a disc. To do this, he had to go to several technical tricks.
Brian Ino's concept
Brian Eno's first full-length solo ambient album is Discreet Music, released in 1975. It was then that the musician formulated the concept of a new genre, the basis of which was the idea of ​​the French composer-reformer Eric Satie about "furniture music."
The essence of both directions is that they imply unobtrusive melodies that the listener can equally carefully listen to and ignore. Furniture music is performed in shops, banks and other public institutions to create a cozy background. The similar nature of Brian Eno's in album booklets is meant for reflection and meditation. His music is defocused, scattered and spilled. And this is exactly what her human ears perceive.
Duo Ino and Frippa
Some of the ideas embodied in Ino’s experimental compositions were never developed by him, but served as an inspiration for future performers who tried to rethink what ambient is in their work. In the music of the founding father of the genre, for example, the first attempts to record gloomy "streaming" songs are traced. This trend is especially noticeable in the Evening Star album. The record was recorded in 1975. It is noteworthy that Brian Eno was then helped by another cult musician Robert Fripp, much better known as the luminary of progressive rock. The results of their collaboration on Evening Star became the forerunner of dark ambient.
The first collaboration between Fripp and Ino was their No Pussyfooting album, released in 1973. For its time, this disc was a unique experiment. The musicians used an innovative technique of recording on a magnetic tape. They used the loop effect (English term loop). Fripp and Ino took a specific short piece of music and, using technology, artificially repeated it several times. The result is a specific effect of echo and vibration. This technique was further developed both by the founding fathers themselves and their followers.
Technical features
Electronic music is what ambient is. Both Brian Eno's earlier experiments and more modern subgenres fall into this huge genre category. The effect of enveloping sound is achieved precisely with the help of electronics and all kinds of synthesizers. The original signal is passed through a graphic equalizer and gets into two microphones. The sound in them is reproduced at a short interval. With the help of this technical manipulation, musicians of the 70s. first created, and then developed ambient.
The meaning of the word is fully consistent with the nature of the genre. Such a sound envelops and is perceived by the listener as an environment. Ino himself compared ambient with the sound of rain and diffused light. In addition to furniture music, he was influenced by drone compositions, especially the work of La Monte Yang.
Ambient house
Key musical genres are very versatile, they consist of many subgenres. Ambience is no exception. What it is? This is a ramified system within which a variety of concepts coexist. For 40 years, the genre has become extremely blurred. Sometimes the term "ambient" is used as a prefix to describe the borderline style that exists at the junction of two different schools. Such two-faced genres began to appear in the 80-90s.
A vivid example of such a merger is the ambient house. This phenomenon belongs to electronic music used in discotheques. The founder of the genre was the British group Orbital, which existed in 1987-2004 and 2009-2014. Her music was considered club, but at the same time she remained too peculiar for youth discos. Orbital's compositions were distinguished by their emphasis on the atmospheric atmosphere that gave her ambient. The music style of the British was developed by some other groups of their generation: The Orb, Future Sound of London and KLF.
Ambient techno
As a dance direction, ambient in the early 1990s. evolved into ambient techno. Distinctive features of this genre are the average tempo of compositions, enveloping sound and the use of the new drum machine Roland TR-808. The performers of ambient techno mixed in their work elements of three musical pillars at once: ambient, trance and house.
The classic example of the direction is the album Selected Ambient Works 85–92, released by Aphex Twin (pseudonym Richard D. James) in 1992. On this album, the musician combined his experience as a DJ and his passion for ambient music.
Ambient industrial
At the turn of the 80-90s. representatives of each musical culture tried in their own way to answer the question of what is ambient music. Receptions Brian Eno were in service with a variety of experimenters. Mostly they worked in the underground and did not look back at the trends in the music industry. The same were the composers who worked in the framework of the industrial genre. In 1984, the band of this direction Throbbing Gristle recorded the album In the Shadow of the Sun, created under the influence of ambient music.
The meeting of two independent genres gave rise to a new plane that interested many young musicians. In the 1980s ambient industrial became the leitmotif of Lustmord and Coil. Their music was gloomy, and in some cases occult themes. Later it turned out to be the basis of ritual ambient.
Dark ambient
By the 1990s ambient industrial finally evolved into dark ambient. The most notable groups besides the already mentioned Lustmord and Coil in this niche were Endura, Nocturnal Emissions and Zoviet France. In their music, they used natural sounds (the noise of the forest, animals, water and birds) and industrial sounds (the noise of workshops and working machines, metal ringing). Minimalism is another feature that distinguishes dark ambient. What it is? This is the characteristic monotony of music, its repeatability and the absence of noticeable details. It uses looped samples of popping claps and other stress-boosting effects. Such a kaleidoscope creates a hypnotic atmosphere.
Being the heir to industrialism, dark ambient is rarely ideological. The lyrics of musicians of this direction rarely refer to social and political topics. What is ambient according to the lyrics? This is an attempt by the authors to rethink the religious, mystical and moral aspects of human life. There are many instrumental compositions in this genre, in which there are no texts at all, and the listeners' attention is focused exclusively on music. The prerequisites for the emergence of dark ambient were laid not only in industrial experiments and the work of Brian Eno, but also in the albums of David Bowie Low and Heroes, as well as on plastic Tangerine Dream Zeit.
Drone ambient
In the late 1990s. by merging ambient and drone, the drone ambient genre emerged. It is characterized by vibrations, a frequent change of pace, humming at low frequencies, resonances and other non-standard sound recording techniques.
Drone ambient compositions (just like dark ambient) almost always contradict the classical structure of songs (a series of verses and choruses). They correspond only to the author’s idea of ​​the beautiful and therefore often become abstract and excessively long. In drone ambient, besides classical instruments for ambient, electric guitars are also used, parts of which are passed through many synthesizers and equalizers.
Dungeon synth
A separate phenomenon in ambient is dungeon synth. This genre was formed in the 1990s. as a result of experiments by black metal musicians from Norway. For example, the creator of the cult project Burzum Varg Vikernes refused heavy guitar sound and recorded several albums based on synthesizer harmonies. Most of all, the established genre was similar to dark ambient, however, there is a fundamental difference between the two concepts.
Dungeon synth is by definition distinguished by intentional poor recording quality. This was due to several reasons: the use of cheap cassette recorders, the desire to protest against the mass music industry, the commitment of artists to a deep underground. Norwegian musicians often turned to the folklore themes of their home country and used the ambient material suitable for atmospheric experiments to immerse the listener in it.
What it is? In addition to Burzum, Mangiis, Wongraven, etc. can be attributed to dungeon synth. Some of them were created as side projects. In other words, these were additional groups, which in their concept differed from the priority metal group of the performer.
To the cinema
Due to their stylistic features, ambient compositions are often used in movie soundtracks. This kind of background music is great for giving a special atmosphere to cinematic scenes. For directors and composers, it is another language with the help of which the mood conceived in the picture is conveyed to the viewer.
The fashion for ambient in cinema appeared thanks to the world classic Stanley Kubrick. Streaming music has become an integral part of his films The Space Odyssey of 2001 and The Radiance. Another such ambient propagator on the big screen was David Lynch (Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive).
In music and advertising
As in the movies, the developers of computer shooters, strategies and other virtual entertainment are trying in their own way to demonstrate to the audience what ambient is. In games, audio tracks perform the same function - they bring the player closer to the fictional environment in which the next novelty takes place. Especially popular ambient in space simulations.
If everything is quite obvious in the relationship between ambient and films and games, then what is ambient in advertising? Such music is often used in various commercials, but this is far from all. In the professional industry, there is the term ambient media, which means the use of the environment for advertising purposes (we are talking about outdoor advertising near crowded places).
The audience
Ambient never became a commercially successful genre. Critics of the genre have reproached and reproach him with excessive dullness and intelligence. For ordinary listeners, the direction is frightened off by excessively long compositions, the absence of the usual melodic structures and vocal performance.
Since its inception, ambient has occupied a certain small niche in the music industry and continues to remain within its framework for more than 40 years. Not becoming a massively popular genre, he acquired a modest in size, but very loyal audience, the magnitude of which never depended on market conditions or fashion. Approximately the same path goes any other style, which has become a cult in fairly narrow circles.
According to the studies of musicologists, the target audience of the genre is people from 16 to 33 years old. It is they who listen to the ambient. What does this statistic mean? What kind of music are most often carried away in college and youth. The ambient community has grown a lot since the advent of the Internet. Thanks to the free download of new releases and the communication of like-minded people, interest in the genre has spread throughout the world. A good indicator in this sense is the number of bands and solo artists playing ambient. Most of them are in Australia, Germany, Canada, Great Britain and the USA. There are relict regional scenes, like the Norwegian one described above.