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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.

[rynne]

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.

If you're looking for stuff in the isolationist vein, Nurse With Wound's drone albums---particularly Soliloquy for Lilith--- are quite good.

I’ll put in a plug for Loess, who're like BoC or Aphex Twin's minimal/ambient stuff.  They're a couple guys I knew when I was growing up, quite nice fellows.  They're on Mike Cadoo's (Bitcrush) record label.

[valley_parade]

I love pretty much anything Aiden Baker does. Thanks for that, dogg.

[fish across face]

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

Yeah, there's some great stuff on both of those labels.  Autoplate definitely tends to the more ambient end of things, e.g. this Marsen Jules release and these two from Off The Sky.  Off The Sky has done a lot of free stuff that I'd recommend actually.

I love pretty much anything Aiden Baker does. Thanks for that, dogg.

He has a lot more stuff available as MP3s.  Discogs is a great way to browse for more stuff by a particular artist, becuase it shows formats... so basically gives you all the info on what's available for download, most of which usually turns out to be free. 

Some of the other stuff I've listened to from there is more like jams around drum machines and so on, I like the drones the most.

[TheFuriousWombat]

I tend to recommend Jasper TX for kind of dark, drone-y, compelling ambient stuff. For something very minimal, Seaworthy is a good choice (new album 1897 especially). If you want scarier/darker ambient, go for Svarte Greiner or Deaf Center. For pretty/haunting ambient stuff, Grouper is a good choice. For more classical music inspired ambiance, Olafur Arnalds and Johann Johannsson are worth listening to. For weirder, more propulsive, tribal, noisy, chaotic, down right awesomeness, check out Tarentel's albums from the past couple years. Finally, I will always recommend Eluvium (and related projects Matthew Robert Cooper and Concert Silence) to anyone and everyone looking for good ambient music. For my money, he's the best. 

[Koremora]

This topic has gone on too long without mention of Stars of the Lid.

Seriously, Stars of the Lid are THE BEST. (Also seconded on Eluvium.)

[fish across face]

That Chris Herbert live set I linked to in my OP is actually him playing support for Stars of the Lid.  That link used to be to a download, I'm sure, so am not sure when it switched to just a stream.  Ah well.

I've never liked Stars of the Lid's sound much, likewise things like Eluvium... Just not the textures that make my ears fizz or something.

[valley_parade]

There's some Japanese ambient that I've been listening to lately as well. Fonica, Fourcolor, Minamo, Daisuke Miyatani..all highly recommended. I may have put some stuff from any of them in the mediafire thread a while back..it's worth searching for.

[fish across face]

There's some Japanese ambient that I've been listening to lately as well. Fonica, Fourcolor, Minamo, Daisuke Miyatani..all highly recommended. I may have put some stuff from any of them in the mediaf!re thread a while back..it's worth searching for.

If you like those artists, definitely check out the link in my OP to the net label Term.  It includes a free release by Minamo, and its parent label released (Minamo-member) Fourcolor's last album. 

Don't think I've heard the other two...  Will go looking. 

Saw Fourcolor play live once and he was pretty good. 

[valley_parade]

I want to say Fonica is another Minamo side project, but I'm not sure.