Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. It may lack net composition, beat, or structured melody. It uses textural layers of sound that can reward both passive and active listening and encourage a sense of calm or contemplation. The genre is said to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual", or "unobtrusive" quality. Nature soundscapes may be included, and the sounds of acoustic instruments such as the piano, strings and flute may be emulated through a synthesizer.
Vidna Obmana is a pseudonym used by Belgian composer and ambient musician Dirk Serries. The name Vidna Obmana, a phrase in Serbian, literally translates to "optical illusion" and was chosen by Serries because he felt it accurately described the music. Serries created music under the Vidna Obmana pseudonym from 1984 until 2007, when he officially retired the name. Most of his current work is released under the Fear Falls Burning pseudonym.
Steven John Wilson is an English musician. He is the founder, guitarist, lead vocalist and songwriter of the rock band Porcupine Tree, as well as being a member of several other bands, including Blackfield, Storm Corrosion and No-Man. He is also a solo artist, having released seven solo albums since his solo debut Insurgentes in 2008. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Wilson has made music prolifically and earned critical acclaim. His honours include six nominations for Grammy Awards: twice with Porcupine Tree, once with his collaborative band Storm Corrosion and three times as a solo artist. In 2017, The Daily Telegraph described him as "a resolutely independent artist" and "probably the most successful British artist you've never heard of".
David Lloyd Stewart is an English keyboardist and composer known for his work with the progressive rock bands Uriel, Egg, Khan, Hatfield and the North, National Health, and Bruford. Stewart is the author of two books on music theory and wrote a music column for Keyboard magazine (USA) for thirteen years. He has also composed music for TV, film and radio, much of it for Victor Lewis-Smith's ARTV production company. He has worked with singer Barbara Gaskin since 1981.
Muslimgauze was the main musical project of Bryn Jones, a British ethnic electronica and experimental musician who was influenced by conflicts and history in the Muslim world, often with an emphasis on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. With dozens of albums released under the Muslimgauze name, Jones was prolific, but he never achieved mainstream success. His music has been described by one critic as "among the most startling and unique in the noise underground."
No-Man are an English art pop duo, formed in 1987 as No Man Is an Island (Except the Isle of Man) by singer Tim Bowness and multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson. The band has so far produced seven studio albums and a number of singles/outtakes collections (most notably, 2006's career retrospective, All the Blue Changes). The band was once lauded as "conceivably the most important English group since The Smiths" by Melody Maker music newspaper, and a 2017 article of Drowned in Sound described them as "probably the most underrated band of the last 25 years".
Murcof is the performing and recording name of Mexican electronic musician Fernando Corona. Corona was born in 1970 in Tijuana, Mexico and raised in Ensenada. He was for a time a member of the Tijuana-based Nortec Collective of electronic musicians under the Terrestre project name. In 2000, he returned to Tijuana. Since 2006, Corona has been living in Barcelona, Spain.
Theo Travis is a British saxophonist, flautist and composer. He is a member of Soft Machine which he joined in 2006 while the group was still using the "Legacy" suffix and was a member of Gong from 1999 to 2010.
Continuum is a collaborative ambient and drone music project between Bass Communion and Dirk Serries. The project looks to expand on the artists' "collective ambition and vision, motivated by their immense passion for a wide-range of musical styles, ranging from spacious ambience to pounding doom metal."
Mullah Said is a studio album by British experimental musician Bryn Jones, best known under the name of his primary musical project Muslimgauze. It was released in July 1998.
Ghosts on Magnetic Tape is the fourth studio album released by British musician, songwriter, and producer Steven Wilson under the pseudonym Bass Communion. It was created primarily from processing 78rpm records and piano sources. There was a limited edition of 300 copies available as a double CD including Andrew Liles' reconstruction disc.
Darkroom is a British electronic music project created by Andrew "Os" Ostler and Michael Bearpark. Other contributors to the project have been Tim Bowness and Peter Chilvers.
Molotov and Haze is the eighth studio album released by British musician, songwriter and producer Steven Wilson under the pseudonym Bass Communion.
Reconstructions and Recycling is a collection of remixes of music from Bass Communion's album Bass Communion II by leading figures from the experimental, electronic and ambient music scenes. Limited to 1000 copies released on CD by Headphone Dust.
Martin Lee Stephenson is a British experimental sound artist, musician, producer and songwriter from London. He is one half of the experimental act Spooncurve and the composer/producer for the occult/hermetic inspired dark ambient project Apollon (apollon93). He also records under the names of Doppler 20:20 and Vulse. At the end of 2012, he had released more than 150 recordings. The primary labels of these releases were recording companies Sony, BMG, EMI, AVEX and independent labels D.O.R., Copasetic, Better, Reel 2 Reel, Law and Auder, Sub and Bleep, Slammin', Quirky, 3MV, Pro One, Squat, Keda and Offspring Records.
Experimental pop is pop music that cannot be categorized within traditional musical boundaries or which attempts to push elements of existing popular forms into new areas. It may incorporate experimental techniques such as musique concrète, aleatoric music, or eclecticism into pop contexts. Often, the compositional process involves the use of electronic production effects to manipulate sounds and arrangements, and the composer may draw the listener's attention specifically with both timbre and tonality, though not always simultaneously.
Headphone Dust is an English independent record label founded by the musician Steven Wilson. It's almost entirely focused on releasing Wilson's own music as well as his remixes of other artists. The only exception to this is the Irish band Fovea Hex.
Untitled is a box set compilation of songs released by British musician, songwriter, and producer Steven Wilson under the pseudonym Bass Communion. It contains many rarities from the last 15 years of Steven's ambient and drone work, especially from vinyl-only editions of Bass Communion albums. It also features the previously unreleased track "Temporal", recorded in 2012 as a homage to composer Harrison Birtwistle and his 1971 composition "Chronometer" – both pieces are created entirely from the sounds of clocks and other timekeeping devices.
In music production, the recording studio is often treated as a musical instrument when it plays a significant role in the composition of music. Sometimes called "playing the studio", the approach is typically embodied by artists or producers who favor the creative use of studio technology in record production, as opposed to simply documenting live performances in studio. Techniques include the incorporation of non-musical sounds, overdubbing, tape edits, sound synthesis, audio signal processing, and combining segmented performances (takes) into a unified whole.
