Brian Eno	Ambient 1: Music for Airports	This album marks, both in name and execution, the quintessential spirit of ambient music. Using traditional acoustic elements such as the piano and human voice, pitting them against tape loop techniques pioneered by varese and others in the middle part of the 20th century, and finally adding carefully chosen analogue synthesis textures, eno achieves a carefully planned landscape of sound. Minimalist, for sure, but approaching the sublime, this is music not to inspire emotion, but rather a structure for the listener to feel into, comparable to the experience intended by monet with the advent of the impressionist movement in art, and partially mirrored by impressionist composers such as debussy and ravel around the turn of the century. While the album could serve as ideal background music, as the name itself implies: careful, unobtrusive, uniform in dynamics, and calculated in texture, the listener finds that the experience becomes less and less passive, and he begins to anticipate every next note, an interactive guessing game of pitch, harmony, and rhythmic placement. This is music you feel like you already know, even upon first hearing it, and which you will grow to remember to a depth unlike anything else you've listened to.
Tangerine Dream	Phaedra	Tangerine dream, in general, has avoided classification throughout its thirty-plus year existence, from its post-psychadelic distorted-electric beginnings, to its painfully commercialized motivational-video-ad sound of late. During a few years here and there, however, the band created some truly groundbreaking and magical work, and phaedra is one such album. The title track is a gurgling, giggling, bubbling weave of analog-sequenced euphoria, enhanced by a series of last-minute studio mistakes in instrument tuning and microphone chatter which lead to an unmistakeable and unrepeatable creative music experience. The second track, "Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares," complements the first with a richly ebbing, oozing synth texture and haunting melody which rivals some of brian eno's best. The album continues with the chattery "Movements of a Visionary" and is appropriately summed up by the short but solid Peter Baumann (in one of his final billed credits with the band) piece, "Sequent C'," a swirling twist of acoustic flute lines, deluged with reverb and delay, which form an unequalled melodic piece. Phaedra was one of the few experimental electronic albums to receive large mainstream recognition (it hit the British Top 5 in 1975), and it's no surprise considering the artistry and accessibility of this music.
Aphex Twin	Selected Ambient Works: Volume II	Although similar in minimalist approach, this album at first feels as foreign as Brian Eno's Music for Airports feels familiar. the presentation is a bit more expansive as well; in contrast to the concise set of four homogeneous pieces on Music for Airports, Selected Ambient Works, Volume II is a sprawling two disc set of 25 vastly different musical textures. This album is not initially easy to listen to. Implementing such techniques as half tone scales, harsh ring modulated tones, detuning, and odd or unpredictable meters, it catches the listener by surprise, and has earned a very negative reaction from many unwilling to let it grow on them. Like a nonlinear film, though, the pieces become more familiar each time they're experienced, and the discord is elegantly resolved by such tracks as 1:3 and 2:2 (the tracks are named by a complex photograph coding system rather than via verbal means) which shimmer in their Eno-esque atmospheric quality, and resolve the tension built up by the pieces around them. All in all, the album is a carefully-crafted exhibit of sound which serves as a great reward to anyone who takes the time to really experience it.
John Cage	In a Landscape	In a Landscape is actually a posthumous compilation, performed by Stephen Drury, of Cage's ambient keyboard works. Though not a true member of the ambient movement, which would start much later, summoned by artists such as Tangerine Dream and Harold Budd, and officially named and codified by Brian Eno, Cage serves as the artistic foundation for the style, and deserves a place in a listing of the greats. Best known for his avante-garde works which border almost on performance art (4'33", for example), Cage dabbled quite a bit in more traditional musical media, to good effect. This compilation is framed on each end by "In a Landscape" and "Dream," atmospheric solo piano works of incomparable class. The inner section of the recording includes selections from Cage's electronic, prepared piano, and toy piano compositions.
Loop Guru	Duniya	Loop Guru, a modern ambient effort, is primarily marked by its blend of Balinese, Tibetan, and Indian instrumentation and motif with contemporary electronic elements to create an interesting hybrid of Asian and European themes. The crowning track on the album is "The Third Chamber: Part Four" (the remainder of the Third Chamber series can be found on the album of that name); a cornerstone of world-ambient music, it deftly avoids the kitchy poppiness typified by other groups such as Deep Forest and Enigma and creates a texture elevated in class and style above anything similar in sound.
Human Mesh Dance	Mindflower	Human Mesh Dance is the epitome of modern ambient, including a rich mix of electronic, classical, experimental, and pop themes. While not approaching the artistic character of Brian Eno or Tangerine Dream, the music feels unmistakably complete and seems to strike a very resonant chord with any listener not too quick to dismiss it as "too tame."
William Orbit	Strange Cargo III	William Orbit has always been characterized as ambient music's idiosyncratic classicist. While limiting his performance to strictly synthesized electronic media (with little or no acoustic segments or sampled loops), he takes a very traditional approach to orchestration, using the same voices (primarily analog in nature) with recognizeable regularity across multiple pieces and albums, and limiting those voices to similar pitch ranges and textural functions, in a way that one would expect a viola or oboe section to perform in a traditional orchestra. Any taped or sampled sections are secondary to the texture itself. The effect, in fact, is extremely successful, and creates a sort of synthesized "culture" and undeniable identity which can be followed through each of his works. Orbit's classicist bent was confirmed with his year 2000 release of Pieces in a Modern Style, an electronic refactoring of a full range of classical pieces, from Vivaldi to Barber to Cage, though his creative spirit is best illustrated by Strange Cargo III. Though, as hinted at by the album cover art and song titles, Strange Cargo III was intended to be Orbit's foray into world-ambient, his more traditional inclinations overshadow any potential Asian experimental efforts, and what results is an accidental but beautiful work of a peculiar childlike quality. The album is accessible like almost no other, at the risk of sounding a bit commercial at times, but is unique within the genre and well worth looking into. Regrettably, tracks 1 & 6 seem to be intended only for techno audience accessibility, but the remainder of the album is extraordinary.
The Orb	Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld	The Orb is an odd creature, at once popular and obscure, both endearing and alienating fans of more mainstream electronic music. The double-album's opening track, "Little Fluffly Clouds," was a chart topper of sorts, and served as the selling hook for the album as a whole, but it's almost tragic that the most interesting songs from an ambient music standpoint, "earth (gaia)," "back side of the moon," and "star 6 & 7 8 9," were, in large part, a disappointment to the popular culture which expected the remainder of the album to be something far different than it is. The Orb has carved their own niche in ambient music, abandoning the classical roots of Cage and his contemporaries, and latching on more firmly to musical genres related strictly by convergent evolution: pop electronica, dub, and hip-hop, to create a strand of ambient, which compared to many other developments is refreshing, far less dark, and considerably more rhythmic. It's music to dance to, at 30 beats per minute, no doubt, and the cultural resonances of the accomplishment seem to show up in many unexpected areas of pop and electronic music even today.
SETI	The Geometry of Night	SETI is interesting, as a band, in its lack of uniform style. Compared to their flagship album Pharos, Geometry of Night seems texturally hollow and far less atmospheric, lacking a great deal of instrumental ingenuity (Pharos included 2400 baud modems, satellite telemetry, and pulsar signals in its list of musical instruments). At the same time, however, there's something musically unique that occurred with this album, and it's very difficult to identify. Characterized by a quirky monophonic percussion track, full of analog snaps, claps, and ticks, highly syncopated swing rhythms, and a sporadic texture of string pads and sampled vocal lines, the album does in a non-mainstream way what many pop efforts attempted to do: successfully integrate the inherent atmospheric quality of renaissance vocals and classical string lines with the mechanical remoteness of modern technologies of digital synthesis, rhythm machines, and spoken word samples. Track 7, mare crisium, with its Orb-like title but distinctly dirge-like style is the gem of the album. Like most ambient music, there's nothing complex or large about the song, but there's something indescribable that it achieves musically, and is unique to the genre.
Autechre	Tri Repetae++	Though admittedly belonging as much to the Drum & Bass genre as Ambient, and as such more of a pop element, Autechre still makes the best representation of the opposite boundary of Ambient music from Brian Eno and Tangerine Dream. Absolutely mechanical, lacking any organic elements, but still perversely satisfying, the style is like the odd fascination one can get from staring at the skeletal structure of a concrete parking building or a delicately crafted suspension bridge. The feeling is grid-like, but still definitely musical and forms a stark contrast to the rolling, swooshing soundscapes of other Ambient artists. Even Aphex Twin's unpredictable snare rolls and bass drum chatters don't approach the assembly line character of Autechre's music, but it's definitely music, and aurally satisfying at that, earning Autechre's place as an influential ambient artist.