Experimental

Brian Eno gave ambient music its name; he also gave the genre its definitive soundbite when he imagined a style "as ignorable as it is interesting." And with a remarkable run of albums beginning in the mid 1970s, he laid the groundwork for ambient at its most all-encompassing. Many of those albums were his own, whether solo or in collaboration: Ambient 1: Music for Airports, a limpid snapshot of generative processes at work, is the ur-text, and is exactly as described: Its less something you pay attention to than a tool for subtly charging the air around you. On Apollo, Daniel Lanois pedal-steel guitar is the filament connecting earthy Americana with Enos vaporous space music. And in his position as label-head (of the short-lived Obscure Records) and curator (of Editions EGs Ambient series), he expanded ambient musics purview with work from Harold Budd, Laraaji, and the Penguin Café Orchestra.

The Kompakt label deserves some kind of cultural service award for Box. Released in the fall of 2016, this highly welcomed package collects the bulk of Wolfgang Voigt’s output under his GAS alias: the Zauberberg, Königsforst, and Pop albums, plus the Oktember 12-inch. Roughly 20 years after their release, these sublime recordings sound as if they were produced only yesterday. At times throbbing, and at other times profoundly glacial, they hover over the abyss between spellbinding beauty and subconsciously relaxing wallpaper, an aesthetic originally articulated by Brian Eno in the late ’70s.There’s very little ambient music created in the 21st century that doesn’t owe the GAS titles a deep debt of gratitude, and after a 17-year absence, he’s set to redefine the medium once again with his new album, NARKOPOP. Yet as influential as he is, it’s hard to frame Voigt’s output as definitive ambient techno. In fact, it’s hard to cite any album as definitive due to the genre’s ambiguous identity. Like its fuzzy textures and formless expanses, from its very birth, ambient techno exists in a state of nebulousness.Rewind to the first half of the ’90s—when the genre emerged as something of a cerebral chill-out tonic to rave’s relentless pounding, and artists as diverse as Aphex Twin, Biosphere, The Orb, Higher Intelligence Agency, Orbital, and µ-Ziq were all creating vastly different iterations of ambient techno. While the Aphex Twin classic “Xtal” is minimal and ethereal in ways that were extremely modern (and still are), HIA’s “Spectral” already felt nostalgic for dusty Jean-Michel Jarre albums when released in 1993. And then there are dub techno heavies like Basic Channel and Monolake—do they count as ambient techno? On the one hand, their explicit debt to dub reggae’s bass culture seems to place them in a parallel universe with it, yet what could possibly be more ambient than the time-expanding crackle, squelch, and hiss soaked into Basic Channel’s “Quadrant Dub I”?Rather than attempt to lock ambient techno into a rigid definition, our playlist embraces this nebulousness. Prepare yourself for a deep and expansive journey, or since this is ambient music we’re talking about, simply press play and forget about it. That’s what Brian Eno would do.

British experimental pianist Tom Rogerson is set to release his debut album on Dead Oceans, but his isn’t the only name on cover—Finding Shore is billed as a full-album collaboration with avant-rock emissary Brian Eno, who threads Rogerson’s meditative playing through pulsating, droning electronic soundscapes. Prior to the album’s arrival on December 8, we asked Rogerson to compile a playlist of his favorite Eno tracks. "Instead of trying to create an Eno Greatest Hits Ive gone for the pieces that have meant the most to me over the years, including some of the most iconic songs with which hes associated, whether because of their commercial success or their conceptual influence. Ive tried to even it out so its not too tilted towards any particular decade or style. (NB: Unfortunately, Spotify is missing some of the crucial collaborations, notably those with David Byrne and Robert Fripp.)"—Tom Rogerson

There are some styles of music that get codified early on, and then musicians play by certain rules in order to fit in with a group of artists and succeed in their genre’s community. But that’s not the case with black experimental music, where it’s best to surrender to your musical intuition instead of relying on a definition. I, for one, listen for creativity, off-kilter sounds, and anything and everything that veers away from popular aesthetics. Sure, it’s possible for black experimental musicians to cross over to the mainstream—like Funkadelic, Outkast, Erykah Badu, and even Kendrick Lamar—but that popularity doesn’t deter those artists from continuing to shun musical norms and cultivate music from their own imagination.The way I became a vocal proponent of black experimental music was by loosening my own reins as a music critic. Experimental music reveals itself to the world—it finds you and pulls you in. Those nuances of strangeness—the tiny surprises of beats, reverbed whispers, overlaid vocals, and sounds that don’t quite make sense—call out to you, and these artists ask you to listen on a deeper level. This Black Experimental Mixtape Series exists for that purpose. I’m not here to tell you what I know, but to share the sounds that come out of the deepest recesses of black artists’ psyches and creative inner worlds.

Despite his later reputation as rock’s preeminent egghead, Brian Eno clearly delighted in his showman tendencies when he arrived on Roxy Music’s stages looking like a space-age ostrich before smothering the band’s high-concept art-rock rave-ups and decadent ballads with synthesizer whirrs and squeals. Even by the standards of early-‘70s glam, he was wildly flamboyant, so much so that Bryan Ferry grew weary of competing with him for attention from audiences and critics. The tensions prompted Eno to quit the band in 1973.Starting with the same year’s Here Come the Warm Jets, Eno then released a series of solo albums that were just as packed with wild new ideas as his albums with Roxy Music had been. With the help of friends like Roxy guitarist Phil Manzanera, King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, and Soft Machine’s Robert Wyatt, he would demolish just about every piece of existing rock methodology in songs that turned and twisted while somehow retaining their headlong velocity.

The erudite Brian Eno once said, “There were three great beats in the ’70s: Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, James Brown’s funk, and Klaus Dinger’s Neu!-beat.” They are so great, in fact, that strains of their DNA can be detected in practically every groove-based genre of the last 35 years. These include not just hip-hop and techno, but industrial and jungle/drum ’n’ bass as well. Bringing together landmark recordings from all three, this playlist is a sprawling tapestry of densely undulating polyrhythms, purring 4/4, and ecstatic syncopation punctuated with seriously nasty breaks. The bulk of the tracks feature Kuti, Brown, or Dinger, obviously. There are exceptions, however. Kraftwerk, for instance, explored Dinger’s motorik rhythm to great effect years after the group and drummer had parted ways. Hit play and find out why Eno knows what the hell he’s talking about.

What can you say? Brian Eno is a people person. Even before his tenure with Roxy Music was done, he was networking with just about every member of the art-rock elite. Dalliances with King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, John Cale, Kevin Ayers, and Nico would lead to his collaboration with David Bowie on his Berlin trilogy. In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, he’d prove his mettle with rock’s new vanguard as a producer for Ultravox, Talking Heads, and Devo, as well as the no-wavers he included in the No New York compilation.His work with an ambitious young Irish band is what truly established Eno’s rep as someone who could bring the best out of musicians in a recording studio. Eno and Daniel Lanois’ wide-screen production aesthetic for U2’s The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree became the gold standard for Important Rock of the 1980s. But rather than apply the same brush to every artist’s music, he’s continued to adapt his methods to whatever the situations require, thereby eliciting extraordinary moments both from blue-chip clients like Coldplay and Damon Albarn and fellow avant-pop artists like Owen Pallett.

This playlist was curated by Soft as Snow. Like what you hear? Subscribe to the playlist here, and check out their music here. And be sure to pick up their upcoming album, Deep Wave.Since its inception five years ago, the Houndstooth label has quickly emerged as one of the leading lights of progressive, experimental electronic music. From Marquis Hawkes to Guy Andrews, the musicians on the label have consistently privileged artistry and innovation, and they continue to push boundaries. The label also oversaw the emergence of immensely talented Call Super, who would go on to become one of this generations more acclaimed new electronic musicians. To celebrate five years releasing electronic music, Houndstooth are delighted to offer a free 15 track compilation Hound5tooth, available here.The Norwegian-born, Berlin-based duo Soft as Snow are one of the Houndstooth’s stand-out acts. Their sound mingles the more gothic-tinged edges of post-punk with liberal swaths of classic Detroit techno and a splash of glitch. The result is a sound that is foreboding and mercurial. The group recently got together to capture some of their favorite synth classics. The playlist is titled “Dark ‘80s Synth Pop,” though most of the tracks are taken from their contemporaries in the synth trenches.

Back in the stormy ‘70s, when Brian Eno was inventing ambient music in England and Tangerine Dream was mixing Moogs with Krautrock, a crew of electronic individualists in France was busy crafting some singular synthesizer tapestries of their own. Sometimes they were influenced by the aforementioned trailblazers and their ilk, but often they were finding their own idiosyncratic way into previously unexplored electronic thickets, without stopping to worry about what the end result might be or what anybody would think about it. With the notable exceptions of Jean-Michel Jarre, who found fame with his 1976 classic Oxygène, and Moog pop pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey, these artists were working well under the radar, largely unnoticed in their own country and all but invisible on an international level. (And that remains the case today—a lot of this music isn’t available on Spotify, so I’ve created a YouTube playlist instead.) But the frequently quirky electronic vistas they created deserve their own chapter in the saga of synth music.

Paul Putti’s short-lived Pôle label achieved underground renown releasing albums by his project of the same name as well as fellow travelers like Philippe Besombes, freely utilizing minimalism and avant-garde techniques. Composers like Jean-Pierre Decerf and Teddy Lasry crossed over from the world of “library” recordings for film and TV but ultimately made intoxicating, atmospheric music that stood on its own. On tracks like “Speedway,” the duo Space Art came off like a Gallic version of Autobahn-era Kraftwerk. If there’s ever a synth-assisted apocalypse, Fredric Mercier’s doomy, titanic “Storm” would certainly make a suitable soundtrack. And Philippe Féret has all but vanished into the deep pockets of time, but his 1978 debut album nevertheless found him at the front lines of the ambient movement. Take a deep dive into a French river filled almost to overflowing with visceral analog electronic tones and maverick notions about what music could be.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase is celebrating the release of Drums and Drones: Decade, a 144 page book and triple album, culminating the first ten years of his solo project, Drums and Drones. This project, which began in 2007, is initially inspired by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela’s legendary Dream House installation. The aim of the project is to create elaborate meditative soundscapes derived from the resonant acoustic tones of tuned drums. Drums and Drones: Decade captures the essence of the project in sound/image/text. Check out the Jazz Drummer Spotlight: 1952-66 playlist he made for The Dowsers right here, and go here for more info about the book and its three albums.Says Chase, "This playlist focuses on the drum solo in jazz from 1952-1966. What appeals here, in addition to the incredible music itself, is stylistic evolution and how the drum solo reflects its musical context at each step along the way. In listening to this playlist, an awareness is brought to how the drums ‘play’ melody, harmony, and texture, not only rhythm. Much gratitude and praise goes to these remarkable and pioneering musicians."Brief personal notes:1. “Caravan” - “Papa” Jo is a master of melodic drumming.2. “Skin Deep” - Louis Bellson’s grand drum solo is an early use of double bass drums on record.3. “It Don’t Mean A Thing…” - Max is a master at outlining melodic phrasing (i.e. using the drums to create ‘shape’ which suggests melodic line), and establishing harmonic-like patterns (i.e. ‘arpeggios’).4. “Minor Mode” - “Philly” Joe is a master of ‘melodic rhythm:’ one can sing the melody of “Minor Mode” along with the solo.5. “Swinging’ Kilts” - Three classic Hard-Bop drummers play together here: Art Blakey, “Philly” Joe Jones, and Art Taylor.6. “Folk Tale” - The playful freedom of Ornette’s soloing is beautifully reflected in Ed Blackwell’s melodies and rhythms.7. “Kid Dynamite” - Motian’s playing represents the beauty of abstraction and gesture.8. “Al’s In” - Alan Dawsons brilliant and unconventional style showcase techniques that expand the ‘vocabulary’ of the instrument.9 and 10. “Nomadic” and “Agitation” - Tony Williams, Dawson’s protege, takes center stage on these tracks. A more open and free-form playing style is on display with the drums given extended space to establish the musical scene.11. “The Drum Thing” - Elvin! As Elvin improvises he establishes new thematic ideas which continually build intensity.12. “East Broadway Run Down” - Elvin! I love in particular the long legato phrasing…13 - 15. “The Drum Also Waltzes,” “For Big Sid,” “The Drum Thing” - These are Max Roach’s drum solo masterpieces.16. “Nothing 19” - Milford Graves and Sunny Morgan, two drummers who helped establish the Free-Jazz style.17. “Free For All” - Art Blakey in his glory.