Chapter IXTEAL
Infinite Loops
Ambient, industrial, techno and the hauntological drone
Showing all 054 works
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001
Here Comes the Warm Jets
Brian Eno
In Roxy Music, Eno had introduced synths and ‘tape effects’ to a rock ’n’ roll setting before leaving and making one of the most idiosyncratic records of the (fading) glam years – the swirling, bruising, psych-inflected Here Comes the Warm Jets (1974).
Album 1974 Open ↗ YouTube -
002
Another Green World
Brian Eno
Another Green World (1975) – while not an ambient album, per se – nevertheless marked a step in a different direction.
Album 1975 Open ↗ YouTube -
003
Discreet Music
Brian Eno
Discreet Music (1975) – his key proto-ambient record, released just two months after Another Green World – pivoted on fleeting movement, slowly drifting drones, an instantly recognisable lilting melody and pads untethered to the grid, melodic lines bobbing against one another like driftwood.
Album 1975 Open ↗ YouTube -
004
Ambient 1: Music for Airports
Brian Eno
Ambient – a term first used by Eno on Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978) – presents the flip side: a music that can take the back seat by design.
Album 1978 Open ↗ YouTube -
005
Cluster and Eno
Cluster & Brian Eno
Cluster and Eno was released the year before Music with Airports and, while more melodically strident than his ambient works, it shares with them a certain wistful, melancholic air, minimal rhythmic adornment and dreamlike sense of space.
Album 1977 Open ↗ YouTube -
006
Reflection
Brian Eno
More recently, he produced an app – Reflection – that allowed the album of the same name to be played in endlessly variable ways, the stems of each piece never repeating in the same way, no matter how many times you play it.
Album 2017 Open ↗ YouTube -
007
l’Apocalypse de Jean
Pierre Henry
Stopping music for a decade while raising her three children, she returned to Paris in 1967, this time working alongside Pierre Henry on his epic concrète piece l’Apocalypse de Jean (1967).
Composition 1967 Open ↗ YouTube -
008
Feedback Works
Éliane Radigue
Her recently unearthed Feedback Works (1969—1970) – selected from tapes that had hung on the walls of her flat in Paris for some forty years – emphasise minuscule change and extraordinary subtlety.
Album 1969–1970 Open ↗ YouTube -
009
A Portrait of Éliane Radigue
Documentary
A window into the nature of her painstaking process was captured in the short 2009 documentary film A Portrait of Éliane Radigue which showed her working the ARP in her small flat, adjusting the faders and poring over beautifully ornate handwritten frequency charts that showed ring and frequency modulators’ inputs and outputs while using her stopwatch – dubbed the ‘teddy bear’ – to mark exact timings on the synth delays.
Documentary 2009 Open ↗ IMDb -
010
Adnos Trilogy
Éliane Radigue
Her three-hour Adnos Trilogy, composed between 1974 and 1982, was an extraordinarily delicate take on pure drone that facilitates a contemplative mood, but changes and shifts so subtly that the effect – when you give your full attention – is startlingly dramatic.
Composition Open ↗ YouTube -
011
Trilogie de la Mort
Éliane Radigue
She is in absolute control of the journey, knows the precise direction of travel, and listening to her Trilogie de la Mort in its entirety – each movement lasting one hour – with the lights off and the headphones on, focusing completely, is a heavy emotional experience.
Album 1998 Open ↗ YouTube -
012
Eraserhead
David Lynch
Lights and decoration in chill-out rooms tended to be idiosyncratic but of a homely bent: bean bags, projections, cult B-movies (could go either way: Eraserhead seemed to be a perversely popular choice), fractal patterns and the ever present fugue of weed and cheap soap-bar hash.
Film 1977 Open ↗ IMDb -
013
U.F.Orb
The Orb
It hasn’t all aged well – they’d sometimes veer perilously close to New Age territory with cheesy panpipe samples and the like – but at their best, as on U.F.Orb (1992) they were pleasingly sideways.
Album 1992 Open ↗ YouTube -
014
Chill Out
The KLF
The KLF’s Chill Out (1990) also traversed ambient house territory, albeit to very different ends.
Album 1990 Open ↗ YouTube -
015
Atom Heart Mother
Pink Floyd
As such, the sleeve notes to Chill Out are peppered with earnest piss takes – ‘Ambient house makes love to the wind and speaks to the stars!’ – while the cover features a field full of sheep – a reference, Drummond said, that alluded to Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother but was just as likely to be a sardonic nod to the cult-like aspect of ‘togetherness’ that underpinned rave culture.
Album 1970 Open ↗ YouTube -
016
Artificial Intelligence: Electronic Listening Music
Warp Records
Their Artificial Intelligence: Electronic Listening Music (1992) compilation featured a crop of artists – the Orb, Autechre, the Black Dog and Speedy J – who submitted tracks that weren’t necessarily geared to ‘chill out’ per se, but rather to continue the night at a lower-lit pace.
Compilation 1992 Open ↗ YouTube -
017
Autobahn
Kraftwerk
The sleeve mapped out the psychic territory – the futuristic meeting the domestic – explicitly with a robot splayed out on a chair in a living room listening to Kraftwerk’s Autobahn, a nod both to that group’s pivotal influence on techno culture but also – again – a metaphorical tip of the hat towards rave as journey and living room as final, weary, terminal destination.
Album 1974 Open ↗ YouTube -
018
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
Aphex Twin
It was the psychic territory of the ‘club drowse dawn’ – the creative atomisation of sleep deprivation – tracks primed for home listening rather than the clubs – that provided Warp mainstay Aphex Twin (Richard D. James) with creative inspiration for much of his work, Selected Ambient Works Volume II in particular.
Album 1994 Open ↗ YouTube -
019
Zeit
Tangerine Dream
Tangerine Dream’s Zeit (1973), for example, was a brooding hour of droning, black atmospherics playing out over four movements which each lasted a full side of vinyl.
Album 1973 Open ↗ YouTube -
020
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
Zeit presents an oppressive, dystopic vision of space – less gleaming chrome and fastidious co-ordinates, more staring into a void of shabby nothingness, a creeped out, paranoid, Heart of Darkness descent into abyssal dread.
Book Open ↗ Goodreads -
021
D.o.A: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle’s D.o.A: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle (1978) channelled a similarly otherworldly vibe; not in the cosmic sense, but rather the feeling of having slipped into a nearby dimension of drabness and decay.
Album 1978 Open ↗ YouTube -
022
Scum
Alan Clarke
Throbbing Gristle belong as much to the dream unconscious of late 1970s/early 1980s Britain as that so viscerally tapped by the film-maker Alan Clarke (Scum, Made in Britain etc), only while Clarke was reflecting the reality TG were concerned with the upside down; the dreamlands articulated by means of sonic obfuscation and decay.
Film 1979 Open ↗ IMDb -
023
Scatology
Coil
Rather, they ploughed a unique furrow that stretched from abrasive, sample-heavy cut-ups (Scatology) to mauve, cinematic ambient (Musick to Play in the Dark) and pure dronal hypnosis (Time Machines).
Album 1984 Open ↗ YouTube -
024
Musick to Play in the Dark
Coil
Rather, they ploughed a unique furrow that stretched from abrasive, sample-heavy cut-ups (Scatology) to mauve, cinematic ambient (Musick to Play in the Dark) and pure dronal hypnosis (Time Machines).
Album 1999 Open ↗ YouTube -
025
Time Machines
Coil
Rather, they ploughed a unique furrow that stretched from abrasive, sample-heavy cut-ups (Scatology) to mauve, cinematic ambient (Musick to Play in the Dark) and pure dronal hypnosis (Time Machines).
Album 1998 Open ↗ YouTube -
026
ELpH
Coil
Their music is about beauty and terror and sex – and an opening of hidden channels (their 1995 album ELpH, for example, was named after the invisible presence they felt was ‘directing’ proceedings), arcane lore.
Album 1995 Open ↗ YouTube -
027
How to Destroy Angels
Coil
How to Destroy Angels was ‘ritual music for the accumulation of male sexual energy’ and featured the layered drone of the bull-roarer – an ancient Aboriginal wooden drone instrument.
Album 1984 Open ↗ YouTube -
028
Horse Rotorvator
Coil
It was a fertile, free-spirited scene, and records like Horse Rotorvator (1986) hinged on a similarly chaotic tapestry of sound: samples were gleaned from anywhere and everywhere, the ancient drone – bagpipes, hurdy-gurdies, organs – colliding with state-of-the-art drum machines and synths.
Album 1986 Open ↗ YouTube -
029
The Rites of Spring
Igor Stravinsky
Opening with ‘The Anal Staircase’ – a paean to sex and death that samples Stravinsky’s The Rites of Spring and slowly unfurls in a stuttering electronic groove, a line is trod between bright energy – layered synths, razor-tight percussive loops, Balance’s powerful baritone – and bleakly opulent romance.
Composition Open ↗ YouTube -
030
Salo
Pier Paolo Pasolini
A gay man working amid the corruption and prejudice and wild excess of the Italian movie business, Pasolini had just finished directing Salo – a hyper-violent and lushly baroque adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom – before being murdered in sadistic fashion on the beach at Ostia.
Film 1975 Open ↗ IMDb -
031
Love’s Secret Domain
Coil
Moving on from the funereal grandeur of Horse Rotorvator, Coil’s next record – Love’s Secret Domain (1991) was a kaleidoscopic trawl through the ragged excesses of London clubland.
Album 1991 Open ↗ YouTube -
032
Gymnastics
Surgeon
Debut LP Gymnastics (1994) was as minimal as anything Jeff Mills or Robert Hood were doing but psychically aligned to the weird corners of late 1970s England: lino flooring, empty swimming pools, piss-soaked stairwells, stale fat coagulating in the fryer.
Album 1994 Open ↗ YouTube -
033
Breaking the Frame
Surgeon
Recent years have seen him push further into the realms of avant-garde experimentation with 2013’s Breaking the Frame including a selection of intensely uplifting drone pieces alongside depth-charge techno.
Album 2013 Open ↗ YouTube -
034
Modern Methods for Ancient Rituals
Transcendence Orchestra
For the past decade he’s also been a keen practitioner of intense ashtanga yoga, while more recently his Transcendence Orchestra project (alongside Dan Bean) has focused on lush meditative drones, their two albums – 2017’s Modern Methods for Ancient Rituals and 2020’s Feeling the Spirit – both channelling a sense of palpable well-being via slowly unfurling drones and ambient soundscapes.
Album 2018 Open ↗ YouTube -
035
Cabaret Voltaire Live at the Lyceum
Cabaret Voltaire
So I got stuff like Cabaret Voltaire Live at the Lyceum and was exposed to drones and drum machines, essentially (laughs).
Live album Open ↗ YouTube -
036
Streetcleaner
Godflesh
Signing to Earache for the seminal Streetcleaner (1989) Broadrick found himself in a difficult position.
Album 1989 Open ↗ YouTube -
037
Rise Above
JK Flesh
Often working at a crawl-pace shuffle – as low as 80–90 bpm – records like Rise Above (2016) were a lesson in claustrophobia and clammy tension while his latest project with Kevin Martin and Moor Mother – Zonal – was equally tumultuous, their Wrecked LP (2019) hinging on shattered bass, mighty drones and Moor Mother’s apocalyptic vocal.
Album 2016 Open ↗ YouTube -
038
Wrecked
Zonal
Often working at a crawl-pace shuffle – as low as 80–90 bpm – records like Rise Above (2016) were a lesson in claustrophobia and clammy tension while his latest project with Kevin Martin and Moor Mother – Zonal – was equally tumultuous, their Wrecked LP (2019) hinging on shattered bass, mighty drones and Moor Mother’s apocalyptic vocal.
Album 2019 Open ↗ YouTube -
039
Ghosts
Techno Animal
Making industrially inflected, avant-garde noise as GOD, Martin eventually formed Techno Animal with Broadrick, releasing Ghosts (1991) then Re-Entry in 1995.
Album 1991 Open ↗ YouTube -
040
Re-Entry
Techno Animal
Making industrially inflected, avant-garde noise as GOD, Martin eventually formed Techno Animal with Broadrick, releasing Ghosts (1991) then Re-Entry in 1995.
Album 1995 Open ↗ YouTube -
041
Tapping the Conversation
The Bug & DJ Vadim
The Bug was initially a project undertaken alongside DJ Vadim, the pair’s debut LP – 1997’s Tapping the Conversation – a sombre, smoky affair, some distance from the ragga-inflected chaos that was still to come while 2003’s Pressure (released on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex Records) saw Martin, now solo, presenting a noisier, more aggressive sound with the ragga influence front and centre, marrying acidic digital chaos to abyssal dub and glitched beats.
Album 1997 Open ↗ YouTube -
042
London Zoo
The Bug
The seminal London Zoo (2008) was a huge leap forward and something of a line in the sand.
Album 2008 Open ↗ YouTube -
043
Angels and Demons
The Bug
In comparison, Angels and Demons (2014) was a (marginally) subtler affair that featured – alongside rapid-fire spitting from Flowdan, Miss Red and Warrior Queen – haunting vocals from Liz Harris (aka Grouper) and Inga Copeland.
Album 2014 Open ↗ YouTube -
044
Sirens
Kevin Richard Martin
While the Bug negotiates maximal dancehall pressure, 2019 saw the release of two drone-centred records – Sirens (as Kevin Richard Martin) and the fourth King Midas Sound LP Solitude – in which Martin navigates loss and trauma.
Album 2019 Open ↗ YouTube -
045
Solitude
King Midas Sound
While the Bug negotiates maximal dancehall pressure, 2019 saw the release of two drone-centred records – Sirens (as Kevin Richard Martin) and the fourth King Midas Sound LP Solitude – in which Martin navigates loss and trauma.
Album 2019 Open ↗ YouTube -
046
Diversions 1994–1996
Lee Gamble
Lee Gamble’s Diversions 1994–1996, for example, was assembled entirely from his teenage cache of jungle mixtapes, splicing together a hazy selection of samples that speak to mid-nineties Midlands raving.
Album 2012 Open ↗ YouTube -
047
Dead Air
Mordant Music
Run by producer Baron Mordant (who also made the majority of the tunes put out on the label) and ploughing a Chris Morris-esque furrow of gallows humour and unflinching everyday observation, records like Dead Air (2006) imagined a parallel universe of eerie domestic dread: a fusty brown-and orange-wallpapered living room, Ceefax flickering on the telly and an unnatural hue to the sky outside.
Album 2006 Open ↗ YouTube -
048
MisinforMation
Mordant Music
Elsewhere a commission from the BFI – MisinforMation – saw Baron Mordant rummaging through hundreds of hours of archival material for an audiovisual remixing of the sinister UK Central Office of Information films of the 1980s.
Album 2009 Open ↗ YouTube -
049
The Séance at Hobs Lane
Ghost Box Records
Theirs is world-building par excellence, the beautifully observed covers and titles often imagining novels and TV series and plays, an evocative cultural haunting that encourages imagery to form in the mind of the listener: The Séance at Hobs Lane, The Owl’s Map, The Belbury Tales.
Album Open ↗ YouTube -
050
The Owl’s Map
Ghost Box Records
Theirs is world-building par excellence, the beautifully observed covers and titles often imagining novels and TV series and plays, an evocative cultural haunting that encourages imagery to form in the mind of the listener: The Séance at Hobs Lane, The Owl’s Map, The Belbury Tales.
Album Open ↗ YouTube -
051
The Belbury Tales
Ghost Box Records
Theirs is world-building par excellence, the beautifully observed covers and titles often imagining novels and TV series and plays, an evocative cultural haunting that encourages imagery to form in the mind of the listener: The Séance at Hobs Lane, The Owl’s Map, The Belbury Tales.
Album Open ↗ YouTube -
052
The Death of Rave
The Caretaker / V/Vm (Leyland Kirby)
As he explained in 2011: ‘the idea for The Death of Rave was conceived in early 2006 after a visit to the Berghain club in Berlin.
Album Open ↗ YouTube -
053
On Silbury Hill
Adam Thorpe
There is a great book called On Silbury Hill by Adam Thorpe and he posits the theory that they’d shine torches and create shadows on the side of the hill as part of a ceremony.
Book Open ↗ Goodreads -
054
Screamadelica
Primal Scream
His production for Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, of course (alongside remixes for everyone from My Bloody Valentine to Happy Mondays) ensured his name was known far outside the confines of underground dance culture in the early nineties – but that was only ever part of the story.
Album 1991 Open ↗ YouTube
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