With Thanksgiving off from work and the whole day to myself it felt like the perfect opportunity to run some metrics on my archive to provide me with some valuable insight as to the development of my larger libraries just in time to close out the year.
And it couldn't have come a more fitting time, as I've been filled with inspiration and have been actively expanding my archive thanks to the magnificent ambient soundscapes showcased on the syndicated radio program,
Hearts of Space.
I maintain a complete broadcast archive of every transmission of the program since 1983 - over 1200 hours of ambient space music. These tone poems accompany me for eight hours every day at the office, and all through the night as I sleep. (For someone as hyperproductive as I am, this music is a godsend as it helps to quiet my overactive mind.)
Captivated by these contemporary instrumental works, I've spent the last few months compiling complete discographic archives of the artists featured on the program, many of whom have over one hundred albums in their respective catalogs spanning the history of ambient and space music. It's a labor of love, and infinitely rewarding as I enjoy the company of their music all throughout my waking and restful hours.
I had previously compiled a digital archive of all official and unofficial Tangerine Dream releases, including the Tangerine Tree live recording archive totaling 298 discs of electronic ambient music.
Soon thereafter I assembled a complete discography of the 45 releases by modern classical composer Harold Budd. I've loved his soft-pedal technique ever since I first heard his collaborations with Brian Eno.
Inspired by the Hearts of Space program I continued this effort by building a lossless library of the 72 releases by veteran ambient composer, Robert Rich. Rich has been featured on 84 transmissions of Hearts of Space and is a staple figure of the genre.
From there I built an archive of the 161-album catalog of his collaborator and
Hearts of Space favorite artist, Steve Roach. Roach's recordings are informed by his impressions of environment, perception, flow, and space and are considered to be highly influential in the genre of new age music.
Next I compiled a complete 100-album discography of the late master of Tibetan singing bowls, Klaus Wiese. Wiese played tamboura on Popol Vuh's classic
Hosianna Mantra and
Seligpreisung LPs and isconsidered by some as one of the great ambient and space music artists.
I then secured a 149-disc library of the German dark ambient / drone ambient musician, Mathias Grassow. His Wikipedia entry notes that "[his] music often has a meditative and emotional and spiritual context, which induces deep feelings of introspection in listeners."
I did the very same for the Berlin minimalist composer Andrea Porcu, who performs under the moniker Music For Sleep, and for UK experimental artist 36 (a project of Dennis Huddleston), and for other prominent figures of the genre.
These explorations directly resulted in a number of physical media investments like the
Hearts of Space first transmission LP limited to 500 copies worldwide, Robert Rich's
Premonitions 4LP box set (also limited to 500 copies), and the limited edition
Nighthawks / Translucence / Drift Music autographed vinyl box set comprising the complete collaborations of Harold Budd and John Foxx.
I last published a feature on my playlist projects five years ago so it seemed like a good idea to recalculate the number of albums and total runtimes for the artists and record labels representing the largest segments of my library as a means of both organizing large sets of data and to serve as a reminder of catalogs I still need to explore in full. And while the former project from 2015 included large-scale genre maps I thought that this time it would be more productive to focus on specific artists, producers, and record labels specializing in a particular sound to highlight large libraries in my archive.
So that tabulation is consistent and equally weighted across various collections, I've calculated totals based on the total number of
discs, so that a 30-disc box set weighs accurately against a single-disc release.
I factored collections of greater than 20 albums as being eligible large libraries. I was going to render a set of graphs of the results as I did with large playlists in 2015, but given the sheer number of eligible sets I felt that the data is most clearly expressed in a basic table. This list of approximately one hundred artists accounts for roughly 1% of the artists in my library, but over 75% of the total albums cataloged.
Here are the results, organized from largest to smallest libraries. I’ll divide the results into three categorical sets - first complete artist / record label discographies, followed by libraries of old time radio broadcasts, and close with box sets of audiobooks.
(Forgive me for the lack of formatting - I tried every permutation of BBCode table formatting from
https://theenemy.dk/table/ but none were recognized by the coding of this forum.)
Here are the discographies:
Largest Discographic Archives by Artist / Record Label: # of Discs
Hearts of Space Radio Broadcast Archive 1232
The Progressive-Kraut-Psych-Avant garde Rock Collection (Vols I-VIII) 753
Underworld 600
The World's Greatest Jazz Collection 500
Psybient DVD Packs Map 317
Tangerine Dream and Tangerine Tree Live Archive 298
Big Band Music Digital Archive 259
FAX +49-69450464 Catalog (Pete Namlook) 254
The KLF / Kopyright Liberation Front / JAMS / Justified Ancients of Mu Mu / The Timelords 189
Steve Roach 161
Ninja Tune Records 154
Mathais Grassow 149
Future Sounds of London & Amorphous Androgynous 141
Lemon Jelly 137
Keith Jarrett 135
Max & Dima: Sapovnela Studio Sessions 131
Throbbing Gristle 131
111 Years of Deutsche Grammophon 111
Miles Davis 109
Daft Punk 104
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno 100
Flea Market Funk: Funky Soul & Rare Groove 100
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention 100
Hit the Brakes DJ Series 100
Klaus Wiese 100
RYM Top 100 Downtempo / Trip Hop LPs 100
Sigur Ros 100
Nurse With Wound 99
Franz Liszt 97
Thelonious Sphere Monk 97
Good Looking Records: Archive of LTJ Bukem's Intelligent D'n'B Label 94
Deuter 89
Franklin Mint's 100 Greatest Recordings of all Time 88
Vangelis 87
Richard D. James / Aphex Twin 86
Karlheinz Stockhausen 86
Jimmy Smith 85
Klaus Schulze 81
Ravi Shankar 81
Ludwig Van Beethoven 80
Sun Ra and the Arkestra 74
John Cage 73
2manyDJS / Radio Soulwax 72
Robert Rich 72
They Might Be Giants 72
Café del Mar 71
Peter Gabriel 68
Philip Glass 68
Ornette Coleman 66
Mike Oldfield 65
Muslimgauze 63
Tom Waits 63
The Orb 63
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers 62
Spacemind Psybient Mix Series 62
Cornelius 60
Attention K-Mart Shoppers: K-Mart Corporate Muzak (1973-1992) 58
DJ Food & Solid Steel Radio Sets 58
Porcupine Tree 58
Parliament / Funkadelic 57
Ambient Music Guide Podcast (2015-2019) by Mike G 55
Cocteau Twins 52
Herbie Hancock 52
Ash Ra Tempel / Manuel Göttsching 50
Early Experimental Electronic Music (1940-1976) 50
Bill Laswell 49
Early Moog & Synthesizer Library 48
Jimmy McGriff 48
Harold Budd 45
Ryuichi Sakamoto 44
Duke Ellington 42
Bob Marley & The Wailers 40
Captain Beefheart 40
DJ Prestige 39
Fela Kuti: The King of Afrobeat 39
Enya 37
John Fahey 36
Fluke 35
Low 35
Arvo Pärt 33
Electronic Supper Club 33
Robert Fripp 33
Charles Mingus 32
Jah Wobble 31
Moog Indigo: Classic Albums of Space Age Bachelor Pad Music 31
Claude Debussy 30
John Coltrane 30
The Flaming Lips 30
Chant Ambrosien: Sacred Music From the Middle Ages to the 20th Century 29
Music For Sleep (Andrea Porcu) 29
Kruder & Dorfmeister 28
Moondog 28
Cabaret Voltaire 26
William Basinski 26
Son House: Walkin' Blues (The Complete Recordings) 25
Top 25 Psybient Ultimae Records Releases 25
Autechre 24
36 (Ambient Composer Dennis Huddleston) 22
Biosphere 21
And the Old Time Radio Series:
Old Time Radio: # of Discs
Dragnet 298
The Adventures of Superman 171
The Goon Show 168
X Minus One (1955-1973) 122
CBS Radio Mystery Theater: The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 83
BBC Radio: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 79
The Shadow (1937-1954) 75
The Complete Sherlock Holmes Audiobooks 60
Flash Gordon 26
Orson Welles Mercury Theater 1938 20
And Audiobooks:
Audiobooks: # of Discs
Ray Bradbury 425
Isaac Asimov 348
Douglas Adams 268
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 207
Philip K Dick 124
HP Lovecraft (Dark Adventure Radio Theatre Complete Programs) 17
The next libraries I intend to collect are Conny Plank’s 122-release extended discography, Dieter Moebius’ 65-album map, Hans-Joachim Roedelius’ 115-release catalog, and the 126 releases by Klaus Schulze, Pete Namlook, and Tetsu Inoue.
This new data will prove to be immeasurably useful for my annual reports and as a mental bookmark of large libraries I'll continue to explore throughout my work days and subliminally while I sleep each night. And I have exciting new listening equipment arriving in the weeks ahead which will further enhance my sonic experience so stay tuned for an exciting feature to kick off the year 2020!
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.