How Did You Discover Ambient?

[synkrotron]

He was, and may be still is, a great guitarist, and I loved his playing and the whole sound of the band. I think he is still gigging with Miquette Giraudy.

Used to love some of the Gong stuff to, back in the day.

Never got to see SH live though.

[Sonic Bodhi]

Not heard of Aura, Sonic Bodhi

Looks like a compilation or "best of" album.

Ah, just looked at his discography.

The first album I heard of SH was Live Herald which was three sides live and one side studio.

I then bought his back catalogue including Fish Rising, L, Motivation Radio, Green and Rainbow Dome Musick.

I did buy Open, too, but by this time I was getting fed up with the new age spiritual stuff which I hadn't really noticed in the earlier albums, although it was there. But Open, for me, pushed that too far over the edge for me and I literally threw that album away and never bothered keeping up with his work after that.

I'm not religious either, but fortunately for me, I don't let those issues decide for me whether or not I like a piece of music. Unless you ruin a piece with lyrics, that is, proselytising your religion. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with telling people what you believe, but I do object to having someone else's world view jammed down my throat. This is why I specifically picked all the instrumental stuff of Steve Hillage, and left out all the 'airy-fairy' stuff with words.

[falls a star]

I blame Starthief (don't know their user name on here, though): http://blog.starthief.net/2020/03/09...ng-in-the-air/

EDIT: OH not Ambient Online.

Right.

I was only 6 months slow noticing this, but I'm Starthief I don't think there's a way to change usernames here, and I decided to just keep using the old one.

[zweiton]

I got into ambient through two artists mainly; those being C418 and Ann Annie. C418 has works ranging from ambient soundscapes all the way to IDM. He was what really introduced me to ambient music. Ann Annie's work consists of a lot of synths, tape-loops and drones which really solidified my love of ambient music. I would highly recommend both of these artists, as they really represent the far ends of two different spectrums of ambient.

[Spaces Sound]

In 1999, I bought minidisc recorder with a decent mic. I was already a fan of more atmospheric music but this changed my perspective on things. The act of recording and listening back out of context made me perceive things a little differently, then a couple of years later i found myself in art school and discovered synthesizers and the two things seemed like a good match. Some years later i discovered Biosphere, Hazard (BJ Nilsen) and co. which was something of a revelation.

[MnemoSign]

Cut my teeth on Pink Floyd and ELP. That got me into New Age. Which led me to George Winston and the whole Windham Hill stable, which I guess led me to Eno.
I have listened to so many kinds and types and genres of music over the years that I'd have to say music led me to Ambient Music.
In these crazy days it seems to be the only kind of music I want to listen to, though I am revisiting my roots of late....

[ZacharyTalis]

Here's my first ambient listen from before I knew what ambient was: Drownscapes by Locust Toybox. It's still one of my faves.

I also remember listening to Boards' Corsair on repeat, as well as this wild NMH classic.

[Karpatenhund77]

For me it was Labradford - fixed:: content. I played this album literally thousand times and the third vinyl copy is sitting on my shelf

[EloquentWizard]

Black metal. I like all styles of music, and I always have, but I am a massive metalhead. Burzum was the first ambient artist I got into. Still my favorite by the way. Now I make music myself.

[Void Worshiper]

In middle school I was discovering more and more extreme music. After geting into some metal i decided to go other side to more minimal sound, i didn't like enjoyed metal society. From metal i went to Sunn O))), and later into Lustmord.

[antoniograz]

i was in finland studying classical music composition, my roommate was a sound designer enthusiast of field recording and ambient music. he showed me his collection of musicians of that genre and suddenly i didn't feel alone in this world. i suddenly understood the kind of music i was trying to create

[Castleview]

I discovered Biosphere back when I was still in high school.

[Pygmalion]

It's actually kind of weird when I think about it now but I feel like discovering ambient was like, a natural progression of my music taste or something xd Started out as a teen who picked up guitar listening to heavy metal and such, but I quickly got bored with "traditional" rock music and started going more into post punk/coldwave direction. My biggest and most precious discovery at the time was The Cure, still one of my most beloved bands. Since I got so much into post punk music it was only a matter of time that I discovered Cocteau Twins, dreampop and then shoegaze genres. As indicated by my nickname, my music taste got influenced a lot by Slowdive haha, also My Bloody Valentine kind of opened my eyes on what music can really be. From shoegaze I think there's a short way to discovering ambient, I think the first "purely" ambient artist that I started listening to was Chihei Hatakeyama, after that I started digging more and more into it, especially Ryuichi Sakamoto's recent work has influenced my music taste.

[bojanboyss]

As a listener: movies, since very young age. Horror, sci-fy... I also waited for end credits to listen to it if there was some. Didn't even know the name for it since on regular TV or radio there wasn't such music that much represented.
As a producer: since I first time pressed a key using HGF synths, decade if not longer, ago. I was like OMG

[Synestia]

I think there were two main drivers behind me discovering ambient and electronic music:
Firstly I absolutely fell in love with the Lost In Translation soundtrack. Opened my ears to how emotional electronic music could be - I still go back to a lot of the things I discovered through that soundtrack.
Secondly, during my first year of university in 2005, I tuned in to Classic FM at about 1am one night and the Chiller Cabinet show was on - this was a show created by Ben Eshmade, and showcased ambient soundscapes and minimalist trip-hop. This is where I heard Boards of Canada for the first time, and that triggered so much inspiration for me. A friend introduced me to Reason 3 and I started producing from there.