Ambient

Ambient or Ambiance may refer to:

Music

Other

See also

Ambient (album)

Ambient is the second studio album by American electronica musician Moby, released in August 1993 by record label Instinct.

It received a mediocre critical reception. Ambient, unlike most other Moby studio albums, has never been re-released in a special-edition or a remastered issue.

Compositions

The album is composed of electronic ambient pieces, similar to Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works releases. Like the Aphex Twin releases, the work is mainly instrumental (although there are samples of the sound of a choir vocalizing on "Tongues", and a woman saying 'bad days' in the background of "Bad Days"). Many of the tracks are beat-driven, except "J Breas" and "Piano and String", which both use pianos and synthesizers. "Bad Days" uses a 'sweeping' synth effect, and "Sound" is a high pitched loop playing and fading out and in. "80" uses synths mimicking an acoustic guitar.

The album has an experimental, moody style. Many of the tracks (including "Bad Days" and "Lean on Me") are dark and unearthly. There are also some more uplifting numbers, like "Heaven", "Tongues" and "Dog", which are more beat driven, dancable numbers. The track "Myopia" uses a bubbling synth-bass style. "House of Blue Leaves" and "My Beautiful Blue Sky" are more experimental beat songs ("House of Blue Leaves" is a simple beat and some keyboards, and "My Beautiful Blue Sky" is a tribal rhythm, synths, and a piano).

Ambient music

Ambient music is a genre of music that puts an emphasis on tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. Ambient music is said to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality. According to one of its pioneers Brian Eno, "Ambient music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting."

As a genre it originated in the United Kingdom at a time when new sound-making devices such as the synthesizer, were being introduced to a wider market. Ambient developed in the 1970s from the experimental and synthesizer-oriented styles of the period. Mike Oldfield, Jean Michel Jarre and Vangelis, as well as the psychoacoustic soundscapes of Irv Teibel's Environments series were all influences on the emergence of ambient. Robert Fripp and Brian Eno popularized ambient music in 1972 while experimenting with tape loop techniques. The Orb and Aphex Twin gained commercial success with ambient tracks in the early 1990s. Ambient compositions are often quite lengthy, much longer than more popular, commercial forms of music. Some pieces can reach a half an hour or more in length.