The following is a list of notable artists who play, compose, have played, or have composed albums or pieces of drone music or drone metal.
Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. It is often "peaceful" sounding and lacks composition, beat, and/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.
Condé Nast is a global mass media company founded in 1909 by Condé Montrose Nast (1873–1942) and owned by Advance Publications. Its headquarters are located at One World Trade Center in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan.
Phillip Earl Niblock was an American composer, filmmaker, and videographer. In 1985, he was appointed director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a parallel branch in Ghent, Belgium.
Band of Susans was an American alternative rock No Wave band formed in New York City in 1986 and active until 1996. It originally consisted of Robert Poss (guitar/vocals), Susan Stenger (bass/vocals), Ron Spitzer (drums), with Susan Lyall (guitar), Susan Tallman (guitar), and Alva Rogers (vocals). The band would undergo several permutations over the years, usually involving three guitarists. Poss, Stenger, and Spitzer were the band's core members throughout its duration. They originated in the New York No Wave noise rock scene, but due to their layered guitar sound were sometimes seen as the American counterparts to the UK shoegazing bands. Like Sonic Youth, they drew influence from noise music experimental composers for the electric guitar Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca.
Drone music, drone-based music, or simply drone, is a minimalist genre of music that emphasizes the use of sustained sounds, notes, or tone clusters called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy compositions featuring relatively slight harmonic variations. La Monte Young, one of its 1960s originators, defined it in 2000 as "the sustained tone branch of minimalism." Music containing drones can be found in many regional traditions across Asia, Australia, and Europe, but the genre label is generally reserved for music originating with the Western classical tradition. Elements of drone music have been incorporated in diverse genres such as rock, ambient, and electronic music.
Oren Ambarchi is an Australian musician. He is a multi-instrumentalist who plays mainly electric guitar and percussion.
Boris is a Japanese band that draws variously from styles such as sludge metal, drone, noise, psychedelia, and minimalism. Formed in 1992 in Tokyo, the band is composed of drummer Atsuo, guitarist/bassist Takeshi, and guitarist/keyboardist Wata. All three members sing. Boris has released more than 20 studio albums on various labels around the world, as well as a variety of live albums, compilations, EPs, singles, and collaborative albums. They have collaborated with acts such as Sunn O))), Merzbow, Keiji Haino, and guitarist Michio Kurihara.
Éliane Radigue is a French electronic music composer. She began working in the 1950s and her first compositions were presented in the late 1960s. Until 2000 her work was almost exclusively created with the ARP 2500 modular synthesizer and tape. Since 2001 she has composed mainly for acoustic instruments.
Ulrich Krieger is a German contemporary composer, performer, improviser and experimental rock musician based in Los Angeles.
Rhodri Davies is a Welsh musician and comppser. He is a harp player working within the field of free improvisation. He was one of the most prominent members of the London reductionist school of improvised music that was active in the late 1990s and early 2000s and which has been described as being "extremely influential over the last decade".
Eli Keszler is an American percussionist, composer, and visual artist based in New York City. Known for his complex and intricate style of drumming, as well creating sound installations involving piano wire and other mechanisms to accompany his live performances, his shows have involved visual elements such as Keszler's drawings, diagrams, screen prints, and writings. In 2012, Pitchfork wrote that "Keszler deserves recent attention for his large-scale sound art installations, which not only force musical ideas to interact with an acoustic environment but, in turn, for flesh-and-bone musicians to interact with both of them."
Kannon is the seventh studio album by American drone metal band Sunn O))).
American Dollar Bill – Keep Facing Sideways, You're Too Hideous to Look at Face On is a collaborative album between Japanese free improvisation/noise music artist Keiji Haino and American post-metal band Sumac. Serving as Haino's 86th and Sumac's third studio album, American Dollar Bill was released on February 23, 2018 through Thrill Jockey.
Crater is a collaborative studio album between American drone/noise artist Daniel Menche and the American post-rock band Mamiffer. The album was released on November 13, 2015 through SIGE Records, an independent label founded by Aaron Turner and Faith Coloccia of Mamiffer. Crater was created over the course of four years and was inspired by hikes through the Pacific Northwest. On those hikes, Turner, Coloccia and Menche collected field recordings of nature, which make up a portion of the music on Crater. About the collecting of these recordings, Turner said: "the process of making many field recordings together for this record while hiking and exploring nature, was a lot of fun—our mutual obsession with field recordings is one of the things that drew us together in the first place. The enjoyment of each others company in the process of making something together added a lot of meaning to the music itself, and made it all much more like play than work."
Reset is an album by Panda Bear and Sonic Boom, released on August 12, 2022 through Domino. It marks the duo's first collaborative album; Kember had previously co-produced Lennox's Tomboy (2011) and Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper (2015).
Kali Malone is an American composer and organist based in Stockholm. Her works implement unique tuning systems in minimalist form for analog and digital synthesis often combined with acoustic instrumentation.
Vision Eternel is a Canadian-American ambient rock band. Formed by guitarist Alexander Julien in Edison, New Jersey, United States in January 2007, the band eventually relocated to Montreal, Quebec, Canada in July 2007. The musical group's sound has been described variously by critics as a blend of ambient, shoegaze, post-rock, ethereal, drone, space rock, emo, post-black metal, post-metal, dark ambient, dark wave, experimental rock, minimal, dream pop, progressive rock, modern classical, and new-age.
Solar Bridge is a studio album by the American drone trio Emeralds. The album was released through Hanson Records on June 16, 2008. The album was completely improvised, and recorded digitally in July 2007 at a home studio in Westlake, Ohio. Critics have described the album's genres as drone, ambient, and kosmische. The album runs for 26 minutes and is split into two tracks which consist of "meditative" drones made of two synths and a guitar. Solar Bridge was the first Emeralds album to be released on vinyl and CD, and received positive reviews from AllMusic, Pitchfork, and Tiny Mix Tapes.