Ambient Genres with Drums

Bandcamp released an article a few weeks ago about ambient techno. I feel like this might answer your question.

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Interesting topic, I’ve been into ambient techno really, especially Gas.
I highly recommend “Nah und Fern” which is a compilation of his first 4 albums I believe:

I discovered this as an influence from The Field, which is another ambient techno artist I really love, much more “easy listening” though. The last album “Infinite Moment” is great:

I guess they both qualify as ambient with drums. I don’t know if this is the sort of things you were looking for though?

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Always loved this one, which, sure, is basically Trip Hop, but there’s some good kinda clave/latin bits in there too, which is at least a slightly different rhythm of trip hop?

is it ambient? Who knows. Totally brilliant though.

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I think Trip Hop really merges drums and ambience well. Maybe labeling trip hop together with ambient is´nt proper etiquette, but i think Teardrop is a great example of ambient tones with drums.

i´ve also made my own genre which i dubbed IDMbient (JK of course) which i call my stuff that has very mellow ambience cobbled with really energetic drums.

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For me the true king of ambient with drums is Burial. A lot of his tracks breath into a very mysterious, eery atmosphere, while still providing some kind of balance with a clear (yet shuffled) drum beat.

Here are a few examples (would recommend proper headphones for best experience) from different eras, starting from the oldest to the latest releases so you can also see the evolution of the sound design:

Burial - Prayer (2006)

Burial - Etched Headplate (2007)

Burial - Fostercare (2009)

Massive Attack + Burial - Four walls (2011)

Burial - Young Death (2016)

Burial - Deep Summer Remix (2017)

Enjoy :slight_smile:

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This for me is the ultimate ambient + hip hop drums album.

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brief derail to say this is a big favourite and great reference

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My personal favourite for this kind of music (ambient but with drums) might be Vulvaland from Mouse on Mars:

I just love this kind of music that’s drifting in several directions but is never going to a point where it has a really classic structure.

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I think Detroit Escalator Co is a great example of ambient with percussion

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Psybient is your friend. maybe

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She’s one of my favorites too. I feel like with her last release she really took it to the edge of what is considered “ambient.” There’s a lot of ambient music out there that’s very vanilla, so it’s cool to see artists still innovating within the genre.

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‘Foam’ yeah? And I agree. Gorgeous for completely different reasons from their other work.
Many elements feel like echoes of what might have been traditional songs, guitar/voice/piano etc just absolutely melted and reassembled…very hard to describe but maybe you know what I’m trying to get at - stunning.

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Following this thought … are we all using the same definition of ambient ? I’m not sure if its

  • music that doesn’t draw attention to itself (I thought that was the original definition)
  • music without a rhythm (which seems to be some peoples definition)

Ambient music - Wikipedia.

EDIT: After reading all the wikipedia page, I realise the potential for very divergent definitions is bigger than I thought.

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Eno said it best.

Ambient music is “ignorable as it is interesting”.

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Indeed.

Bigger quote:

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To continue recommending works that feel ambient in nature/intention, I’ll cite Hoavi - if zoning in on perc in particular then ‘Invariant’ LP has a lot of interesting rhythms. Admittedly not that ambient in the strictest sense, where a lot of his work is, dubbier/IDM vibes but it’s definitely a component and blissed out is the overall vibe to me. A big favourite.

If I think of more recommendations, I’ll add here.

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Namlook’s Air series:

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