So THIS is where you all are.
 

Hello everyone! I'm an archivist and historian managing an independent music library. Was feeling hopeless about society's apathy towards music history and I'm hoping this forum will give me a greater perspective.

Favorite genres include the following:

(Please pardon the sub-genre redundancies - I'm simply attempting to cover all potential related search terms)

Furniture Music
Process and Chance Music
20th Century and Modern Classical
Avant-Garde / Experimental Music
Ambient, Space, and Drone Music
Electroacoustic / Electronic Music of the 1950s-70s
The Second Viennese School
Kosmische Musik
Free / Avant-Garde Jazz, Bebop, and Modal Jazz
IDM & Glitch
The Canterbury Scene
The Berlin School
Slowcore & Shoegaze Music
Chillwave/glo-Fi/Hypnagogic Pop
Post-Rock
Musique concrète / Tape Music / Noise
Funk
Downtempo (mmm... NinjaTune...)
Outsider Music
and Post-War Minimalism

Top 10 Artists:

So hard to narrow it down, but here's my all-time Top Ten:

- Brian Eno (father of contemporary ambient music and the Long Now Foundation)
- Karl Hyde (founding member of electronic legend, Underworld and head of the Tomato Design Collective)
- Fred Deakin (half of Lemon Jelly and owner of the Airside Design Group)
- Karlheinz Stochkausen
- Luigi Russolo (author of the Futurist Manifesto, The Art of Noises)
- Don Van Vliet of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
- Tom Waits (gravel-throated troubadour extraordinaire)
- Miles Davis (because Miles Davis.)
- The KLF (for their conceptual and Situationist art more than their music)
- and John Cage (for being the most important musical figure of his century)

Top 10 Desert Island LPs:

Brian Eno - Music For Airports (my first encounter with ambient sound)

Underworld - Dubnobasswithmyheadman (the first recording I ever heard which wasn't top 40 radio music)

Lemon Jelly - Lost Horizons (the world's greatest downtempo LP)

The KLF - Chill Out (the sound of driving across the country after a weekend rave)

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica (neo-Dadaist masterpiece)

Tom Waits - Raindogs (a perfect album.)

Dr John - Gris Gris (the mad shaman of swampy voodoo music)

Miles Davis - In a Silent Way (because it makes time stand still)

William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops 9LP Set (because it makes you forget that time even exists)

and for #10, I'm going to cheat - The Klaus Schulze Ultimate Edition (a 50-disc box set from the grand master of Berlin School ambient synth music... released as a single unit.)

Looking forward to stimulating conversation in the community!

Welcome aboard! Some good stuff on your lists there—which is always nice—and some stuff I'm unfamiliar with—which is even better! :)

Welcome. I love the Disintegration loops. We definitely interpret them differently, though.

Greetings Janszoon! I joined the site when I stumbled upon the Experimental forum, and I'll be happy to discover some deeper cuts I may not had heard of before, and to likewise return the favor for members of the group.

Whoa.
Sup.

I'm from New York too. Po town.

So tell me about Furniture Music. I'm not familiar with that term.

Welcome mate, Beefheart and Cage are two of my all time favorites. Stockhausen, Eno, Waits, Basinski, Dr. John, Russolo, and Davis are all great too.

I think he's referring to the form of background music to complement the furniture or style of a given room or with directions on what is to be on stage with the performer (at least that's my understanding of it) that Erik Satie created. Satie is the only one that I know who makes it though.

Frownland (awesome name) is spot-on. Though I've applied the term to similar "sonic wallpaper" albums and projects.

Eno's 77 Million Paintings and Robert Rich's Somnium both function well for passive-listening as part of the room.

...provided that the room puts you to sleep.

I've just posted a few of my favorite ambient records to the Official Ambient Thread and similarly inspired works in the classical group. I'd love to hear everyone's input if you're a fan of the genre.

yes cool I like this guy

ambient is the god damn bees