Here is a list of my favorite instrumental albums that are genres related to ambient (electronica, noise, some even jazz, etc.), and scenarios I thought of that go with the feel of the music, to exercise my creative writing skills a bit too. I realize that some of these descriptions have turned out a little disturbing, extremely specific, and/or just weird, but I think it's just my nature to do that. (I realized recently that I have a hard time coming up with any story ideas that are not weird or disturbing.) I also realized that I listen to a lot more ambient music than I thought I did, so it turned out really long.
Some of these are more famous but most of them are my obscure favorites, so the other purpose of this post is to shed light on some fantastic records that have sadly gotten very little recognition - so please check out any of these that sound interesting! Most of these are on Spotify so look for them there if you have it, but I've also included relevant links on other websites.
And here's my ambient music playlist if you're interested: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0JbhILQAPDATcUrYQUiop6?si=j8ynGuz4StmTpjlo3MITTA
Honorable mention: Alog - Unemployed: It doesn't have an overall theme or mood, at least not one that I can put into words, because everything here is so different. Every song is its own painting. It defies genre. It's not quite electronic, but not quite organic. They've invented their own instruments and recorded and mixed things in such extremely unconventional ways that you have no clue how this music was made, which is rare in our day and age when you'd think that all music-making methods have been exhausted. But everything still fits together. It's definitely at least one of my top 20 albums ever, and favorite by Alog (who definitely deserve more fans for how original and crazy they are).
Now for the actual list:
- Phonophani - Genetic Engineering: You're in an old abandoned GMO lab and you're reliving the tragedy of what happened there. Sometimes you don't know what is real or what is virtual.
- Brian Eno - Ambient 4 / On Land: You're lost in a dark forest and surrounded by strange, disturbing, unidentifiable creatures. Their unique sounds make you feel sad and lonely.
- Biosphere - Substrata: You're alone in the arctic sea but there is a ghost of a man saying incomprehensible things to you, and he does not respond to anything you do.
- Phonophani - Animal Imagination: You're being abducted by aliens.
- Biosphere - Autour de la Lune: You're completely isolated in a ship in the middle of space but there are remnants of the people that used to be with you.
- Brian Eno - Ambient 1 / Music For Airports: You are in an airport. Just kidding. You are stuck inside a primitive old Windows computer but there is something strangely comforting and nostalgic about it.
- Svarte Greiner - Knive: It's the middle of the night and you're stuck in your isolated cabin in the middle of the woods trying to fall asleep, but you find yourself walking around instead. Eventually, you fall asleep on a pile of leaves.
- Jherek Bischoff - Cistern: You're inside a giant empty tank for hours, and you start hearing music in the complete silence, and having hallucinations about various natural landscapes and characters.
- Sonic Youth / Jim O'Rourke - Invito Al Cielo (Syr 3): All you can hear from your house is construction noises, which you feel like you should be annoyed by, but you become enveloped and start hearing melodies in them.
- Deathprod - Imaginary Songs From Tristan da Cunha: You're visiting the most isolated island in the entire world, and the natives will not talk to you. The sky is very dark and cloudy and it seems it will never let up. They start playing their extremely strange music that is unlike anything else you have heard before, and you're not sure how it makes you feel, but you record it on your vintage tape recorder, picking up other random sounds in the process. You fall asleep for the first time on the island, and have the most vivid and disturbing dream of your entire life. In the dream, demons and bats are flying all around your head, moving inside you, and constantly shrieking and screaming, and rumbling and vibrating when they are not. You wake up from the dream and see that you are actually performing on stage at a late night show in a theater, with bright spotlights in your face that obscure the faces of the audience members. The audience applauds and gives you a standing ovation.
- Osamu Sato - Objectless: You're working your job in a factory for hours upon end and the monotony is driving you insane. Sometimes you envision the happier times in your life and hear subtle pleasant music in the background. But you keep coming back to the monotony, and you have a headache that throbs and pulses like a beat and makes it hard to hear anything or anyone else.
- Phonophani - Phonophani: You haven't left the house for months, and haven't talked to anyone the whole time. You've started to realize that your hearing has improved greatly after living in silence for a long time. There is no sound small enough for you to not hear.
- Sonic Youth / Tim Barnes - Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui (Syr 6): You're trapped in a dark facility full of horrifying mutated monsters... but sometimes something is oddly thrilling and pleasurable about it.
- Kim Hiorthøy - Hei: It's the time of your childhood again, when things were all fun and simple.
- Phonophani - Kreken: You're exploring an ancient empty building that you've never been in before, with broken windows that let sunlight pour in everywhere. But everything feels wrong; things are upside-down, it's hard to walk, gravity has almost shifted somehow while you are there. It might be haunted.
- Alog - Red Shift Swing: You're traveling with a time machine and every time you land in a new era you don't know what's going on. Sometimes there are people, sometimes they play music, sometimes you are alone and it is silent.
- Alog - Miniatures: Your time machine broke and you don't know what year it is but you're stuck there, and it's rather loud and crowded there. But despite all the noise and disturbances, you're still determined to make music out of something, anything.
- Alog - Amateur: It's a rainy day and you're bored at your house and you try to make music by scraping random stuff or throwing things at the wall or setting stuff on fire. It sounds good to you but you know everyone else would find it weird.
- Lee Ranaldo - Ambient Loop For Vancouver: You're at a rest stop in the middle of the American country while on a long road trip. Wind chimes, breeze, and the rustling of the trees. You feel déjà vu every time you come to another rest stop.
- Body/Head - The Switch: What being scared and cold in a pitch-black room feels like.
- Yellow Swans - Going Places: It is the last thing you hear before you ascend into the afterlife.
- Kim Myhr - All Your Limbs Singing: You're alone in the middle of nowhere in the desert but it's actually quite peaceful.
- Visible Cloaks - Reassemblage: Exploring various natural sceneries in virtual reality. They don't look quite real.
- Kim Myhr - You | Me: You're going out for a run near the lake in a downtown area, early enough in the morning that almost no one is there. There's something beautiful yet disturbing about being isolated in a place where you should not be.
- Kikiyama - Yume Nikki Soundtrack: It sounds like how the game looks, but in a real dream that you're having instead of a pixelated image on your screen.
- Probably my favorite game ever, with a very unique and atmospheric soundtrack too. I could write for so long about how this game is amazing, but I think that's for its own post. The video I linked to has pictures for each track that show how the songs connect so well with the aesthetic of the game, if you don't want to play the whole thing (but you should). I also recommend the soundtrack of the 3D sequel (but not the game itself, I don't know if it's really worth your money - I paid for it twice to get it on two platforms - one of them didn't even work - and I have deep regrets...) Many Yume Nikki fangames have phenomenal soundtracks as well such as Yume 2kki.
- Facade Soundtrack: You are being held hostage.
- This game is universally regarded as terrible and ugly but all joking aside, it has an unexpectedly high-quality avant-garde, minimalist, and atmospheric soundtrack that I legitimately recommend. Now why in the world does a game that takes place in an apartment, about a couple trying to fix their broken marriage, have such a creepy soundtrack? It's a hard question to answer, but if it says anything, I think it's that the game developers weren't just fooling around.
- Biosphere / Deathprod - Nordheim Transformed: You're having a dream about something that could never plausibly happen in real life, but it still feels incredibly real.
- Oval - Systemisch: Your parents put in their favorite CD that you've heard so many times already, and you're skeptical that it's going to work at all anymore because they don't bother making sure the CD doesn't get scratched - they just throw it around random places in the car and it got quite ruined over time. But when it starts playing, the songs have been so warped from their original form with the scratches on the CD that it's a completely new creation.
- Sondre Lerche / Kato Adland - The Sleepwalker Soundtrack: The power has been out in your house for days. You hate living in the darkness for so long with your family who hate talking to you, and circling around the same areas of the hallways, the garage, and the nearby lake, but you don't have the motivation to drive somewhere else. You keep having nightmares. You start to think you're being haunted.
- Side note: I watched the actual movie. It was bad.
- Sonic Youth - Silver Sessions For Jason Knuth: You're surrounded by loud machines. Airplanes. TVs that only pick up noise. Air conditioners. Giant fans. Washing machines.
- Arve Henriksen - Chiaroscuro: Waking up early in the morning in the rainforest.
- Josh - Fear of People: For months, you isolate yourself in your house and close all the blinds, and only go outside at night to drive around aimlessly, sit in the grass and look at the stars, or walk through a graveyard. The TV and random old recordings you have of your friends are all that you've been listening to - not even music - and they have the ability to transport you to another time and place. Sometimes the feelings get so intense that you forget what music and melody sounds like, but sometimes there is a glimpse of hope, and you get a tune stuck in your head.
