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Ambient

Cornwall, Apollo, 1992

Aphex Twin

Richard D. James started making ambient pieces as a teenager in Cornwall, from about the age of fourteen, mostly onto cassette with synths and drum machines he had modified himself. Those tapes became Selected Ambient Works 85–92, released in November 1992 on Apollo, the ambient imprint of Belgium's R&S. It sounds murky in places, and AllMusic blamed part of that on a cassette damaged by a cat. Selected Ambient Works Volume II followed on Warp in March 1994, mostly recorded in 1993 at his home studios in London and Cornwall. Nearly every piece was left untitled, represented by a photograph instead. James said a lot of it came out of lucid dreams. It still got to number eleven on the UK albums chart.

New York, Subharmonic, 1993

Bill Laswell

Bill Laswell was born in Salem, Illinois, in 1955 and spent his teens in Michigan, where he taught himself bass and played in funk and R&B bands around Detroit and Ann Arbor. In New York he led Material and became one of the busiest producers of the 1980s, working with Herbie Hancock and PiL among many others. His ambient side took shape in the 1990s. He started Axiom with Chris Blackwell's backing in 1990, and in 1993 he co-founded Subharmonic, a New York label for ambient and dub. Its first release was Ambient Dub Volume I, under his Divination name. Subharmonic also put out his collaborations with Pete Namlook, Tetsu Inoue and Terre Thaemlitz. In 1998 he remixed Miles Davis's electric period for Panthalassa.

San Francisco, Dark Entries, 2013

Patrick Cowley

Patrick Cowley was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1950 and moved to San Francisco in 1971 to study music at City College, where he concentrated on synthesizers. He went on to shape hi-NRG, working with Sylvester and making some of the biggest dance records in early-1980s San Francisco. His slower synth music mostly went unreleased. From 2007 the San Francisco label Dark Entries and the club night Honey Soundsystem went looking for it, and in 2013 they released eleven pieces from the archive of Fox Studio, which had used them as scores for gay adult films. The studio's owner, John Coletti, had changed their speed to fit the scenes. It's odd, drifting synth music, far from the dancefloor. Cowley died of AIDS in 1982, aged 32.

Cleveland, Editions Mego, 2010

Emeralds

Emeralds were John Elliott, Steve Hauschildt and Mark McGuire, from Cleveland, Ohio. They played as Fancelions in 2005 and took the new name in 2006. The early years went into limited tapes and CD-Rs, part of more than forty releases on independent labels. The sound drew on ambient music and German kosmische, with analog synthesizers under McGuire's clean guitar. They opened for Throbbing Gristle's reunion tour in 2009 and for Caribou in 2010. That year their album on Peter Rehberg's Editions Mego was Pitchfork's Best New Album and Drowned in Sound's album of the year. McGuire left in January 2013 and Hauschildt followed weeks later. They reunited to play Primavera Sound in 2023.

Bordeaux, Blue Room, 1996

Total Eclipse

Total Eclipse formed in Bordeaux in 1992, a trio of Stéphane Holweck, Serge Souque and Loïc Vanpoucke. They were among the founders of Goa trance, writing highly melodic tracks from the start, though they never got quite the attention of Juno Reactor or Astral Projection. Their debut album came out on Blue Room Released in 1995. Violent Relaxation followed in 1996, a double CD on the same label, and Avatar Records reissued it in Israel in 2003. Later digital reissues split it into a light side and a dark side. Their 1999 album slowed down into downtempo and breakbeat. Souque left around 2000 and recorded as Antidote and Deviant, among other names, while Holweck kept Total Eclipse going.

Newcastle upon Tyne, 1980

Zoviet France

Zoviet France formed in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1980, with Ben Ponton among the founders. The name has had several spellings, and it is now usually written :zoviet*france:. The group came out of the early-1980s tape scene and stayed mostly anonymous. The releases were known for their packaging, wrapped in hessian or tar paper, sometimes aluminium foil. The music is dissonant, built from industrial textures, and it gets filed under dark ambient and post-industrial. Records came out on Charrm, Red Rhino and a long list of other labels. Former members Robin Storey and Mark Spybey went on as Rapoon and Dead Voices on Air. Ponton still runs the group with Mark Warren, and in 2015 they scored the film Savageland.

Offenbach, Psi49Net, 1998

Anthony Rother

Anthony Rother was born in 1972 and is based in Offenbach, just outside Frankfurt. He started recording in the late 1980s, and his debut album arrived in 1997. A year later he set up his own label, Psi49Net, to keep control of his work, and in 2004 he added Datapunk for more melodic, song-based records. Electro is his home ground, drum machines and dystopian ideas about technology, and he has worked with Karl Bartos of Kraftwerk, Sven Väth and DJ Hell. He has also recorded as Psi Performer and Little Computer People. The quieter side gets less attention. Pete Namlook's Fax label put out some of his ambient recordings, and he released several ambient albums between 2003 and 2011.

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