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.
A Perfect Circle is an American rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1999 by guitarist Billy Howerdel and Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan. A Perfect Circle released three of their four studio albums in the early 2000s: their debut Mer de Noms in 2000, a follow-up, Thirteenth Step in 2003; and an album of radically re-worked cover songs, Emotive, in 2004. Shortly after Emotive's release, the band went on hiatus; Keenan returned to Tool and started up solo work under the band name Puscifer, while Howerdel released a solo album, Keep Telling Myself It's Alright, under the moniker Ashes Divide. Band activity was sporadic in the following years; the band reformed in 2010, and played live shows on and off between 2010 and 2013, but fell into inactivity after the release of their greatest hits album, Three Sixty, and a live album box set, A Perfect Circle Live: Featuring Stone and Echo in late 2013. The band reformed in 2017 to record a fourth album, Eat the Elephant, which was released in 2018. After spending the rest of the year touring in support of the album, the band fell into inactivity until 2024 for a brief tour and one-off song "Kindred".
Geir Aule Jenssen is a Norwegian electronic musician and composer who records as Biosphere. A resident of Tromsø within the Arctic Circle, Jenssen is well known for ambient and ambient house pieces, often inspired by Arctic or mountain settings, and his use of loops and peculiar samples from science fiction and natural sources. His 1997 album Substrata was voted by the users of the Hyperreal.org website in 2001 as the best all-time classic ambient album. He has also composed several film scores.
Dark ambient is a genre of post-industrial music that features an ominous, dark droning and often gloomy, monumental or catacombal atmosphere, partially with discordant overtones. It shows similarities with ambient music, a genre that has been cited as a main influence by many dark ambient artists, both conceptually and compositionally. Although mostly electronically generated, dark ambient also includes the sampling of hand-played instruments and semi-acoustic recording procedures.
Cosey Fanni Tutti is an English performance artist, musician and writer, best known for her time in the avant-garde groups Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey.
Paul Gordon Barker, also referred to as Hermes Pan, is an American musician, best known as the former bass guitarist, producer and engineer for industrial metal band Ministry from 1986 to 2003. Prior to Ministry, he provided bass for the Seattle post-punk ensemble The Blackouts alongside future Ministry drummer Bill Rieflin and his brother, one-time Ministry touring keyboardist/saxophonist Roland Barker, from 1979 until 1985.
Daniel Patrick Lohner, frequently known as Renholdër, is an American musician and record producer best known for his work with Nine Inch Nails and A Perfect Circle. In 2020, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Nine Inch Nails.
Chris Carter is an English musician, best known for being a member of Throbbing Gristle and the duo Chris & Cosey, both with his longtime partner Cosey Fanni Tutti.
Mathis Mootz is a prolific German electronic musician and DJ. Mootz is best known as The Panacea, his drum and bass stage name and main musical project, and as m2, his dark ambient side project and alter-ego.
Rachael Lynn Gabriela Kozak-Salmi, better known by her stage name Hecate, is an American-Austrian experimental industrial and breakcore musician currently based in Vienna. Her stage name originates from Hecate, the Greek goddess of sorcery.
Controlled Bleeding was an experimental music group based in Massapequa, New York. The group was founded by Paul Lemos, the group's only consistent member. Most of Controlled Bleeding's released recordings feature two main collaborators, Chris Moriarty and vocalist Joe Papa, who both died in the late 2000s. In February 2020 Lemos announced that the band had dissolved.
Puscifer is an American rock group formed in Los Angeles by Maynard James Keenan, known as the lead singer of the bands Tool and A Perfect Circle. Initially, Keenan was the only permanent member, and as such he considered the project to be his "creative subconscious". Later, frequent collaborators Mat Mitchell and Carina Round became permanent members.
Ben Frost is an Australian-born musician, composer, record producer, sound designer and director based in Reykjavík, Iceland as of 2014.
Paul Haslinger is an Austrian musician and composer. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Adam Thomas Jones is an American musician, songwriter, animator, and visual artist, best known as the lead guitarist for Tool. Jones has been rated the 75th-greatest guitarist of all time by the Rolling Stone and placed ninth in Guitar World's Top 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists. With experience in special effects and set design in the Hollywood film industry, Jones is also the director of the majority of Tool's music videos.
Aaron Turner is an American musician, singer, graphic artist, and founder of label Hydra Head Records. He is most widely known for his role as guitarist and vocalist for the post-metal bands SUMAC and Isis, while also participating in several other bands and projects such as Old Man Gloom, Lotus Eaters and Split Cranium, a collaboration with Jussi Lehtisalo of Finnish band Circle who toured with Isis in 2009.
"V" Is for Vagina is the debut studio album by Maynard James Keenan's side project Puscifer, released on October 30, 2007. The album features a significantly different, electronic sound and arrangements than Keenan's other bands: the progressive Tool and alternative A Perfect Circle. Keenan himself compared the sound of "V" Is for Vagina to "driving around in your car listening to those old Motown hits, James Brown, and cool R&B stuff". "V" is for Vagina has sold 112,000 copies.
Other is a 2008 studio album by Brian "Lustmord" Williams, released on Hydra Head Records. [ O T H E R ] was also released as a two disc set on Japanese label Daymare Recordings with the second disc featuring the Lustmord release "Juggernaut" in its entirety.
Heresy is an album released in 1990 by the dark ambient musician Lustmord. A remastered version was released in 2004.
Jonny Polonsky is an American songwriter, rock guitarist, singer, multi-instrumentalist and record producer.
