Essential Artists
BRIAN ENO
We make no apologies for invoking Brian Eno’s name again here, as without him there’s no ambient. Sure, he was building on what others had done (Erik Satie had invented what he termed ‘furniture music’ in the 1910s, while originative pieces such as John Cage’s entirely silent 4’33 – where the sounds come out of the environment that the listeners hear while it’s performed – could be described as ‘ambient’), but the electronically-formed sounds of what we think of as contemporary ambient come from Eno. Aside from Ambient 1: Music For Airports, he’s put out experimental albums including Ambient 4: On Land (released as the follow-up to Ambient 1, there are no second and third volumes), Thursday Afternoon (one 60-minute composition) and Lightness: Music For The Marble Palace – The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, made for an installation that took place in 1997 at the historic venue.
C418
The enigmatically named C418 (aka Daniel Rosenfeld ) is one of the 21st century’s most respected names in ambient. Just 34, he got his big break composing the music for the video game Minecraft. His 2011 album Minecraft: Volume Alpha is a minimalist delight, both eerie and beautiful. His work isn’t always in the ambient genre (2011’s 72 Minutes Of Fame and 2012’s One are more IDM, while 2015’s 148 had him playing in dance-pop waters), but his work in the ambient field is up there with Eno’s best. His latest album, tied to the incremental game Cookie Clicker, is another chilled-out marvel.
BIOSPHERE
Born in Tromsø, Norway, in 1962, Geir Aule Jenssen released his first album in 1990 as Bleep.
However, The North Pole By Submarine was more acid techno than ambient, and it wasn’t until Jenssen adopted the new moniker of Biosphere that he embraced more ambient textures. 1991’s Microgravity was fabulously sinister and haunting, while 1994’s Patashnik was an ambitious concept piece about a lost cosmonaut drifting aimlessly in outer space. Other discography highlights of Jenssen’s include his work with German ambient composer Pete Namlook as The Fires Of Ork and his disquieting soundtrack to 1997’s Norwegian thriller Insomnia.