I would not have written it any better myself. Work like this is what inspires my love for this music. Warren put together a really, really great mix.

“This mixtape is a collection of some of my favourite instrumental and ambient music that I’ve come across in the past few years. I usually reserve a lot of this stuff for periods when I’m feeling especially stressed and strung out. As I’m sure is the case with a lot of people who enjoy this kind of music, I always find that binging on ambient music helps me to relax and retreat into my own mind and process whatever thoughts that I have endlessly rattling around in my head. I also tried to sequence all these songs in way that would work best for the kind of music that it is and the kind of energy each song has as to not be completely boring. I hope you enjoy these recordings as much as I do and attach your own memories and meaning to each of them.”

- Foxes in Fiction

From http://deeplistening.org/site/content/about:

“Deep Listening is a philosophy and practice developed by Pauline Oliveros that distinguishes the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary selective nature of listening. The result of the practice cultivates appreciation of sounds on a heightened level, expanding the potential for connection and interaction with one’s environment, technology and performance with others in music and related arts.”

1. Memoryhouse – Minor White
2. RxRy – Baulkn Slihts
3. Bradford Cox & Locket Pundt – Urbana Library of Electronic Music
4. Gas – Untitled #4 
5. Casino Versus Japan – Untitled
6. Foxes in Fiction – Static Cults
7. Benoit Pioulard - I Emptied My Lungs Into The Dirigible.
8. Balam Acab – Big Boy
9. The Sight Below – Dour
10. K.C. Accidental – Residential Love Song

http://foxesinfiction.tumblr.com
http://www.handsomeclothing.com

William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops (1.1)

By chance discovery I found William Basinski’s ‘The Disintegration Loops’ way back in High School, before I was even interested in ambient or drone music. I was fascinated with the story behind these pieces, and hearing them was a real experience, unlike any other music I had heard before. They are, in a word, melancholic. Great for a rainy day where you’ve got nothing to do but think.

The perfect Companion Piece to The Caretaker’s An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, which I will post soon.

Eluvium - The Motion Makes Me Last

I don’t usually like vocals in ambient music, I think it takes away from the rest of the song. But this. This. I love Matthew Cooper.

Loscil - Brittle

One of the first ambient acts I got into, Loscil definitely shaped a large portion of my love for this type of music. I would really like to see him live someday (though I did in some capacity, he is drummer for the band Destroyer). Go get First Narrows, or Endless Falls, or Plume, or Submers, all of his albums are amazing.

(Source: youtube.com)

Geotherm - Clairvoyance / Hypothetical Environment

Leonce Nelson has been making some pretty awesome drones as Geotherm. I was attracted to these two songs specifically, making up his ‘Distances’ release from June last year. I was on these right when they came out and I still find myself visiting them from time to time. It’s something really great to put on when you’ve 40 minutes laying around. Starting with Clairvoyance, fades lightly into an ambient drone that builds up and up and up. It gains momentum throughout the whole piece and I find it has a really nice energy to it, eventually cresting and folding out to make way for the next track, Hypothetical Environment, which is a much more textural work. It reminds me of being in a swimming pool during a summer rain, the sound of the rain and the water hitting water entirely surrounding you. Then all of a sudden 3/4ths through the piece we plunge underwater and are treated to an entirely different experience. The water splashing on the ceiling above us becomes just an echo. Holding our breath, sinking deeper and deeper as the music fades out.

Eluvium - New Animals From the Air

This song and the album it begins are some of the most important ambient pieces in my life. Talk Amongst the Trees is an album that I can continuously return to again and again. Once, when I was playing it on an extended car trip, my grandmother told me it sounded like a funeral. For me this song represents the exact opposite. This is the song that started my interest in ambient. It’s still one of my favorite songs.

rickyeatacid:

so don’t expect a lot of new music from me right away this year - i’ve got a lot finished and waiting to be released (an ambient split with malcom from the summer, my band’s ep, the rea + arrange ep, and seeing little ghosts reissue). i’m incredibly excited about all of this, and i’m hoping to play a lot of live shows (teen suicide and possibly rea) this spring/summer. that said, i can’t say for sure when i’ll have new music to release. i haven’t been able to write anything at all lately that i’ve wanted to for ‘ricky eat acid’ and the stuff i have finished (which i’m personally so proud of) certainly isn’t the kind of thing most of you would expect from me. i’m not even sure how many people would be into it. 

to put it in perspective - seeing little ghosts was the first time i’ve really been very happy with something i’ve done, and that’s the direction i want to go in. the ambient split with malcom further continues this. 

as for right now, i’m going to release probably the only song i’ve been happy with in months. it’s called “so i will not fall deep into the earth” and it’s a 9 minute track comprised only of my voice and, at the very end, some very strange guitar. this track characterizes my own little half-serious genre that i’ve dubbed “spacepunk”

i’ll quote the bandcamp description here

this is spacepunk. it’s a genre. it’s not a serious genre, but it’s a serious genre. there is no point to spacepunk. it’s anti-trendy. there are no driving electronic rhythms - it lacks any post-rave, post-internet, future-pop beats. there’s nothing really. that’s it. 
there’s nothing. it’s music that evokes the feeling of floating endlessly and eternally through darkness. it’s inspired as much by the romanticized and unscientific idea of space as it is by sleep, heavy opiate use, and the feeling of being alone in bed, half awake on a rainy day. it’s a very sad feeling. it’s not nostalgic, but it still makes me miss everything. 
it’s nothing, really. you could characterize it as drone, sometimes, or ambient. i’m not really sure. it’s fun, but it’s not. 
it’s not post-internet, it’s post-life. 
“space is the place”

so check it out, check out spacepunk (i know adam and kelsie have both experimented with it too, even getting a few blogs and the like to recognize spacepunk as a “growing movement”), don’t take anything too seriously ever, and please, download this track if you like it. it’s free. 

i love all of you guys. i don’t know where i’ll go next and i don’t know how long it’ll take me to figure it out and make it happen, so thanks for putting up with all of this. 

i don’t make music to get any kind of attention, make any money, or really do anything else. i make music because i have to make music to survive, and i don’t know what i’d do without it. i’d love to say that because of that i didn’t care what anyone thought, but i do. i want people to like it, i understand when people hate it, and i’m so happy when people love it. that said, it’s not like i’ll ever stop doing it, no matter how discouraged i might get. 

i write a ton of music, i realize this, and it probably looks kind of bad to some people, but i don’t do it because i want attention for it, and i don’t release everything i write (i actually release so little of it). i just am always trying to get better at it because it’s something i love, and the only way to improve is to constantly be trying new things and pushing myself. 

thanks for putting up with all of this. it’s also 430 am so i realize not a lot of you are even awake, most likely. i’ll try and reblog this again tomorrow sometime. 

<3 - ur pal - sam

(click through to download from bandcamp)

Everything that I was going to say was already said, twice over. This is amazing.