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Interesting ambient stuff

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fish across face:
Here's some recommendations for free ambient music.  Would appreciate some return suggestions, if you've got any.

Aidan Baker & Ben Fleury-Steiner - Second Week of the Second Month - I've read people on here praise Nadja, so may as well start with these guys from Canada... two guitarists make beatless drifting with all sounds sourced from their guitars.  It's described as "drone" but there's lots of bright chiming sounds and so on.

Chris Herbert live set (click the Audiomulch Sound Out button)  One big file, but worth it.  Chris released his first album on reasonably awesome label Kranky.

Loscil - Stases  Another Kranky signee, but for this release the Canadian producer takes his released tracks and ditches all the bits that change. ;)  Heh.  Deep drone.  Emperor's New Clothes.  Who can say?  Any of us, I guess.

SummerTour Remixes 1 & 2 - Japanese-born NY resident Sawako did field recordings while on tour and offered them up to randoms to remix.  There are some beaty tracks in there, a few guitar bits, but mostly it sounds like just processed field recordings.  Marihiko Hara and Steinbrüchel both turn out particularly awesome bits.  Anything on Anticipate's worth checking out, although this free releases aren't 100% indicative of what the label's output is usually like.

The Noise & The City - One person from each of 30 cities around the world made field recordings from somewhere in their hometown and made music from them.  Some stuff is glicky and beaty, e.g. Manchester's Remote Viewer, Sydney's Roboneko; other bits surprisingly noisy and intense, e.g. Americans Greg Davis and Joshua Treble.  It's a bit hit and miss, but definitely a great concept and some really good results.

Jodi Cave - Absent  British electro-acoustic composer type does a small EP of rattling niceness.  Also recommended is his single track 'Flotsam & Jetsam' which is on Fat Cat Records' demos page and also on a compilation from the crazily named Frozen Elephants Music net label.  His tracks tend to be a combination of sort of scuffed and scraped textures (contact mics?) and processed chiming guitar harmonics.

^ Pretty much everything else on 12k's term sub-/net-label is worth a listen if you're happy with some abrasive bits and some tension.

Pablo Verón - Nieves - Lots of interesting stuff on Argentinian net label Naturalmedia, which I can't link you to directly due to the joys of Flash.  The first track is the most difficult listen, so don't be put off if that's a bit much for you.  It's definitely a bit more in the glitch school of ambience - skittering crackly rhythms right up in the high end and soft, deep chords punctuated by kick drums.  Roughly in the territory of early Pole, Oval and Shuttle 358.

I could keep going and going and going, but am conscious this isn't that commonly discussed here.  Let me know if you're interested in more.  And, yeah, please share your own suggestions.

Big Happy Captain:
2 artists I know of:

This Noise Between Us; electro-ambient which can get a little glitchy at times and quite a few interesting ideas thrown around. Their 2 EPs and a new album are for free download. http://www.thisnoisebetweenus.com/mp3.html

Bad Sector; not for most people, dark ambient noise, a lot of his stuff up for dl.
http://www.bad-sector.com/bs/download.html

Loscil's Stases is lovely, I am checking the others out now.

Will:
It's more on the "dark, scary, terror" side of ambient than the "chill, relax, smoke a bowl" side, but Jake Bannon from Converge did a record of ambient and experimental stuff under the moniker Supermachiner that's rather good. You definitely wouldn't make the connection to Converge if you didn't see the names involved in the project.

fish across face:
Haven't heard Converge or Bannon, but there was quite a bit of icy ambience in the late 90s/ early 00s from former metallers like Justin Broadrick (Jesu / ex-Godflesh), Mick Harris (Napalm Death) and James Plotkin (Old Lady Drivers / Khanate).  Brrr.

Daft pun:
Not quite ambient, verging on minimal techno, but lots of good stuff can be downloaded from Thinner or Autoplate.

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