Top Ten Ambient Music Albums

The Top Ten
1 Substrata - Biosphere

This is great stuff. There is just something magical about it that I can't explain. One of if not, the most beautiful album in ambient music.

This album is breathtaking. Total nirvana is achieved through tracks like Antennaria and Kobresia.

2 Evening Star - Fripp & Eno
3 Endless Falls - Loscil

Start with the first track which shares the name, and bliss.

4 Eingya - Helios
5 Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2 - Aphex Twin

This is the best by far. Every song was constructed very well. Selected Ambient Works 85-92 isn't ambient and has no business being on this list. This is real ambient music.

6 Ashra - New Age of Earth

This album is beautiful! There is a lot of New Age influence here, that makes it all the better. From the warm first half of the album, to the cold and melancholic second half that is Nightdust, is all amazing. Go check it out, and also check out Ashra.

Not a new age album! Emerging from the Krautrock scene of the early 70s, this ambient album is space music at it's best. Part electronic, part acoustic, warm and sad at the same time and immensely enjoyable.

More like progressive electronic than ambient.

7 Ambient 1: Music for Airports - Brian Eno

This is one of the best ambient albums I ever heard. If you haven't heard it, you really should. My favorite ambient album is Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume 2. Music for Airports isn't far behind it. I love it's welcoming feel.

I am greatly disturbed that this album wasn't already on this list. It's one of the most significant and influential albums of the genre. It came out in 1978, and it's still just as mind blowing.

23? Really? One of the most important ambient albums ever and you put it on 23? Should be at least number 2 or 3.

8 Triple Point - Loscil

How you could not be soothed by any of this, I don't know.

9 Microgravity - Biosphere

Especially the track "Microgravity", which is beautiful.

10 The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid - Stars of the Lid

Amazing ambient group from my hometown released this beautiful 2001 recording, with some elements of post-rock and some field recordings thrown in. A modern classic of its genre.

The Contenders
11 Ambient 4: On Land - Brian Eno
12 Submers - Loscil
13 The Plateaux of Mirror - Harold Budd & Brian Eno

This really is a great album. Its arguably better than Music for Airports. It was put together and mixed very well. It might be Eno's most solid album. Music for Airports beats it by just a little bit though because I like its welcoming atmosphere better. This is also amazing.

Did NOT invent ambient music; he merely gave it a name! Artists were creating minimalist and ambient music nearly a decade earlier. Listen to Zeit by Tangerine dream (1972) for Dark spacey ambient long before Eno's masterworks.

14 Tim Hecker - Virgins
15 By the Throat - Ben Frost
16 Chill Out - The KLF
17 Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks - Brian Eno
18 An Empty Bliss Beyond This World - The Caretaker
19 Plume - Loscil
20 Selected Ambient Works 85-92 - Aphex Twin

This album is great, though it isn't exactly ambient.

21 Gas 0095 - Gas
22 And Their Refinement of the Decline - Stars of the Lid

The name says it all. It creates this beautiful atmosphere that just makes you wonder how heaven will feel nicer. Amazing ambient work that will never age.

23 As the Snow Fell - Iambic2
24 Ravedeath, 1972 - Tim Hecker
25 Replica - Oneohtrix Point Never
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