Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds Of (2001)

Stars of the Lid are by far my favorite ambient group; if you ever wondered what to listen to while you read on the couch with a mug of chamomile tea, look no further than this record. Have you ever wondered what the noise between space stations and satellites sounds like? How about the sounds of mice tunneling under snow?

And if you want to fall asleep to their languorous, slow-churning, drony textures; please do...

...I think that's the whole point of this record.

Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds Of (2001; Kranky Records)

Links to Spotify

Steve Roach - Structures From Silence (1984)

Pure ambient bliss; sound textures from deep space.

From the back of the album cover:

Suspension . . . Intimacy . . . Silence
Touch the essence of Structures from Silence.
Steve Roach's flowing melodic impressions and
sustained synthesizer chords breathe.
rest, and breathe again.
A subtle visionary album,
serene and haunting.
a timeless statement.

Steve Roach - Structures From Silence (1984; Fortuna Records)
Links to Spotify

Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music For Airports (1978)

As great as Brian Eno's non-ambient albums are (the one he did with David Byrne can be downloaded here); I've always been intrigued with this one. It's got more feeling than any other record; just atmospheres, textures and landscapes of the mind- it's also one of the most demanding records I own because of what it asks of the listener.

Most music with words (or even guitars or saxophones or drums or etc.) pretty much tell you how to feel; or rather what the musician was feeling at the time of recording. Eno has stated that his intention with Music For Airports was to defuse the tenseness and anxiety of air travel by creating "sound installations" to be played on continuous loops in the terminal, and as to not be noticeable to the listener. A sort of non-invasive procedure, done musically.

Robert Wyatt helps out on the piano on two tracks; I hate to use the word "track" here because the four pieces are so seamless, it really should be taken as a whole. This is from the 1983 Working Backwards box set so the last track is four minutes longer than the CD or vinyl pressings.

Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music For Airports (1978; Polydor Records)

David Bowie - Low (1977)

When I first heard Low a few years ago, I didn;t know what to make of it. I was fresh off a serious early-era Bowie jag; the more glammy period starting with 1969's self-titled (re-issued in '72 as Space Oddity) up to the awful covers album Pin Ups from 1973. Then there's the next era, where Bowie transformed himself into a soul crooner called The Thin White Duke, experimenting with funk and R&B on Diamond Dogs through Station to Station.

This album is the start of the Berlin trilogy (Low, "Heroes" and Lodger) when David up and shipped himself off to Germany to rent a flat with Iggy Pop and get straight from the piles of coke he'd been snorting for most of the 1970s. It was a great idea, Bowie would not only put out two of his best records, he worked with Iggy on The Idiot and Lust For Life. 

Enter Brian Eno as well, he worked alongside Bowie with the second half of the record on the more ambient-based tracks (here as a musician and consultant to his friend, the actual producer role fell to Tony Visconti); this album is the synthesis of the whole Krautrock movement, listen to Tangerine Dream's Phaedra or Klaus Schulze's Timewind to get Bowie's inspiration.

So here's David Bowie's Low from 1977, an album totally ahead of its time...

David Bowie - Low (1977; RCA Records)

The Durutti Column - LC (1981)

Another criminally overlooked musician, Vini Reilly was the sole member of The Durutti Column. A Tony Wilson (of Factory Records) find, Reilly tried to make the band a collaborative effort but all the other members parted ways (two would go on to start '80s easy listening act Simply Red), so Vini opted to play all the instruments on his records (save drums, here on LC the duties went to Bruce Mitchell).

LC could arguably be labeled as one of the first post-rock records, Reilly uses piano/keys, guitars and basses more for timbre than for rhythm, rather than chunking chords out one after the other he relies on echo, delay and other processed effects to convey emotion and movement. Some of the songs feature vocals, but they stay half-buried under sheets of reverb and layers of ambient synth washes. There are also jazzy elements as well as the post-punk ideas left over from working with Martin Hannett (who produced Joy Division's records). Reilly has gone on to find more notoriety later in his career by writing a lot of the music (and playing guitar and keyboards) on Morrissey's debut solo outing, Viva Hate.

Here's another wonderful album that's been under-rated and overlooked (it contains some out-takes and bonus tracks, from the 1996 re-issued remaster)...

The Durutti Column - LC (1981; Factory Records)