The drone
lexicon

The study of people and their sonic environment, born from R. Murray Schafer's World Soundscape Project in 1969.

Japanese composer and sound designer whose industrial, ambient and noise textures defined the sound of the Silent Hill games.

American composer (1931–2021) who turned rooms, brainwaves and a single wire into music, most famously in I Am Sitting in a Room.

Brian Eno's 1978 album that gave ambient music its name: four tape-loop pieces conceived in an airport to calm, not command, attention.

A room built to absorb all echoes; John Cage's 1951 visit to one at Harvard shaped his belief that silence does not exist.

Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow's 2018 score for Alex Garland's Annihilation, from folk guitar and waterphone to a vast electronic climax.

New York-born composer, based in Berlin since 1984, whose Orchestra of Excited Strings drives just-intonation harmonics from piano-wire basses.

Jóhann Jóhannsson's 2016 score for Denis Villeneuve's Arrival, built from choir, throat singing and voices treated as texture.

György Ligeti's 1961 orchestral piece of slowly shifting sound clouds, made famous by the Star Gate sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

An adjective from novelist J. G. Ballard for dystopian modernity, bleak built landscapes and their psychology, much echoed in music.

Australian-Icelandic composer and sound designer of heavy, distorted drone records and of the scores for Dark and 1899.

Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch's 2017 score, built on Vangelis's Yamaha CS-80 and granular, tape-treated walls of sound.

Japanese trio formed in Tokyo in 1992, named after a Melvins song, whose hour-long debut Absolutego made heavy music stand still.

The huge, low, brassy blast popularised by the Inception trailers of 2010 and later turned into a stock device of film marketing.

English composer and producer, born in 1948, who framed ambient music with Discreet Music (1975) and Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978).

A supposed infrasonic tone that would make listeners lose bowel control; a modern myth with no scientific support.

The 1980s network of home-taping musicians, mail-order tape labels and zines that sustained noise, industrial and drone music.

Swedish composer, poet and mathematician (1948–2023) whose just-intonation work The Electric Harpsichord became a hidden classic of drone.

Brooklyn-born composer and performer known for strumming, a torrential repetition of notes on a Bösendorfer piano, and for long organ continuums.

Hildur Guðnadóttir's Emmy-winning 2019 score for HBO's Chernobyl, made from recordings inside a decommissioned nuclear power plant.

English group founded by John Balance and Peter Christopherson in the early 1980s; their Time Machines project produced some of the purest synthesiser drones.

CTM Festival: Berlin's festival for adventurous music and art, born in 1999 as club transmediale alongside the transmediale media-art festival.

A strand of science fiction about networks, implants and corporate power, whose sound took shape in Vangelis's Blade Runner score.

Ben Frost's score for the German Netflix series Dark (2017–2020), built from slowed, smeared orchestral sound and drones.

Dark ambient: the shadowed branch of ambient music, grown from the industrial underground, built on deep drones, reverberant space and a sense of dread.

The vast span of geological history, named by John McPhee in 1981, which long-duration drone works try to make audible.

Dia Art Foundation: the New York foundation created in 1974 that commissioned the Harrison Street Dream House and maintains Max Neuhaus's Times Square.

Brian Eno's 1975 album whose title piece, generated by a synthesiser and tape-delay system, opened the road to ambient music.

Hans Zimmer's Oscar-winning score for Denis Villeneuve's Dune (2021), built on invented instruments, processed chant and ritual pulses.

Performance in which length is the material, from the 18-hour Vexations of 1963 to Max Richter's eight-hour Sleep.

American guitarist who founded Earth in Olympia in 1989 and, with Earth 2, slowed heavy guitar riffs down into the first drone metal.

American band led by guitarist Dylan Carlson, formed in Olympia in 1989, whose slow, distorted guitar drones laid the foundations of drone metal.

Earth's 1993 album on Sub Pop: three tracks of slow, distorted guitar and bass over 73 minutes, the acknowledged blueprint of drone metal.

Editions Mego: the Viennese label Peter Rehberg rebuilt from Mego in the mid-2000s, home to Fennesz, Stephen O'Malley's Ideologic Organ and Recollection GRM.

Russian composer (1937–2022), pioneer of Soviet electronic music on the ANS synthesiser and the composer of Tarkovsky's Solaris and Stalker.

The claim that voices of the dead can be caught in tape hiss and radio noise; tests point to perception, not the paranormal.

French composer (1932–2026) who drew slowly shifting drones from a single ARP 2500 synthesizer, then carried the same patience into acoustic music.

Swedish composer, born in Stockholm in 1990, whose slow chords for organ, brass and guitar study tuning and the moment of harmonic change.

American composer who built the Long String Instrument, room-length wires stroked with rosined hands to release organ-like overtones.

David Lynch's 1977 debut feature, whose soundtrack of industrial rumble and hiss, made with Alan Splet, foreshadowed dark ambient.

The Caretaker's six-stage cycle (2016–2019), about six and a half hours long, tracing the stages of dementia through decaying ballroom loops.

Fluxus: the international network of artists and composers gathered by George Maciunas in the early 1960s, where La Monte Young's first drone scores circulated.

Swedish composer and trombonist (1935–2017) whose electronic piece What?? (Was??) is one of the earliest European landmarks of drone.

Tony Conrad's 1964 tape of overdubbed amplified violin, his only solo violin recording of the 1960s, first released in 1996.

Erik Satie's 1917 idea of music as part of a room's furnishings, to be heard but not listened to; an ancestor of ambient.

Italian composer (1905–1988) who, after a long crisis, built music from inside a single sound, as in Quattro pezzi su una nota sola.

An extreme noise subgenre of dense static held unchanged from start to finish; drone's saturated, motionless mirror image.

A word borrowed from Derrida by 2000s critics for music haunted by lost futures, decaying media and half-remembered broadcasts.

Icelandic composer and cellist whose sustained, slowly evolving music for Chernobyl and Joker won an Emmy, a Grammy and an Oscar.

Industrial music: the confrontational genre named after Throbbing Gristle's label Industrial Records (1976), that made noise, tape and drones into provocation.

The acoustic noise machines Luigi Russolo built from 1913, cranked boxes with horns that slid between pitches; no originals survive.

Isolationism: a bleak, withdrawn strain of 1990s ambient music named by Kevin Martin and gathered on the 1994 Virgin compilation Ambient 4: Isolationism.

Japanoise: the name given abroad to Japan's extreme noise scene of the 1980s and 1990s, from Merzbow and Hijokaidan to Incapacitants and Masonna.

Icelandic composer who carried drone, electronics and deep orchestral sound into the films of Denis Villeneuve.

Welsh musician, born in 1942, who carried the drone of La Monte Young's ensemble into rock through his amplified viola in the Velvet Underground.

American-born, Stockholm-based composer whose slow pipe-organ works in historical tunings include The Sacrificial Code and All Life Long.

Kosmische Musik: the cosmic music of early-1970s West Germany, from Tangerine Dream's Zeit to Klaus Schulze's Irrlicht, built on synthesisers and vast space.

Kranky: the Chicago label founded in 1993 by Joel Leoschke and Bruce Adams, home to Labradford, Stars of the Lid, Tim Hecker and Grouper.

American composer, born in Idaho in 1935, whose sustained tones, just intonation and Dream House installations laid the foundations of drone music.

Trio from Richmond, Virginia, whose 1993 debut Prazision was Kranky's first release and set the tone for slow, spacious drone rock.

Playdead's 2010 game, whose Martin Stig Andersen soundtrack replaces music with degraded, electroacoustic ambience.

Longplayer: Jem Finer's thousand-year composition for Tibetan singing bowls, playing without repetition since midnight on 31 December 1999.

Lowercase: a quiet, microscopic sound aesthetic of around 2000, named by Steve Roden, that magnifies tiny sounds and waits to be discovered.

Project of Welsh-born musician Brian Williams, whose album Heresy (1990), built from subterranean recordings, is a founding work of dark ambient.

American light artist and singer (1940–2024), co-creator with La Monte Young of the Dream House and a voice of the Theatre of Eternal Music.

MELA Foundation: the New York organisation behind the Dream House of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, presented at 275 Church Street since 1993.

English composer behind the sliding, microtonal strings of Under the Skin, Jackie and The Zone of Interest, formerly of Micachu and the Shapes.

Sunn O)))'s 2009 album on Southern Lord, where Eyvind Kang's arrangements for brass, strings, harp and choir surround the guitar drones.

A British anti-loitering device emitting a high tone that mostly young people can hear; the Council of Europe urged a ban in 2010.

Music composed from recorded sounds rather than notes, launched by Pierre Schaeffer on French radio in 1948 and a root of drone.

The background-music company founded on George Owen Squier's 1922 patent, whose name became shorthand for bland piped sound.

Shortwave broadcasts of voices reading strings of digits, widely believed to carry coded messages to intelligence agents.

English project led by Steven Stapleton since 1979, famous for its list of underground artists and for the feedback drones of Soliloquy for Lilith.

San Francisco duo turned trio formed in 2003 by Sleep's Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius, whose droning bass hymns join doom and devotion.

Onkyo: the near-silent improvised music that took shape in Tokyo around 2000, built on sine tones, feedback and tiny sounds played at very low volume.

ORGAN²/ASLSP: a John Cage organ work being performed in Halberstadt's St Burchardi church from 2001 to 2640, a span of 639 years.

1973 album by Tony Conrad with Faust: sustained amplified violin over an unchanging pulse, recorded at Faust's studio in Wümme in 1972.

American composer and accordionist (1932–2016) who coined Deep Listening after recording in a vast underground cistern with a 45-second reverb.

American composer and filmmaker (1933–2024) who stacked long, slightly detuned instrumental tones into dense walls of beating overtones.

Tim Hecker's 2011 Kranky album, built from a pipe organ recorded in a Reykjavík church and then smeared and dissolved in his Montreal studio.

The ambient sound of a location with nobody speaking, recorded on set so editors can fill gaps and keep a soundtrack from going dead.

Room40: the Brisbane label and curatorial platform founded in 2000 by the composer Lawrence English, devoted to experimental sound, drone and listening.

Canadian composer and organist, born in Calgary in 1987, who writes slow, timbre-focused music for organ, Mellotron, strings and voices.

Aphex Twin's 1994 Warp album of dark, beatless synthesiser pieces, originally untitled and, by his own account, born of lucid dreams.

Jóhann Jóhannsson's 2015 score for Sicario, built from processed low percussion, double basses and the deepest pipes of a church organ.

Konami's horror game series, launched in 1999, whose radio static, silences and industrial noise were shaped by Akira Yamaoka.

Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 Lem adaptation, whose soundtrack sets a Bach chorale against Eduard Artemyev's ANS synthesiser textures.

Sonic Acts: the Amsterdam arts organisation that grew from a 1994 festival at Paradiso, exploring sound, art, technology and, increasingly, ecology.

The use of sound and vibration as instruments of power and fear, theorised by Steve Goodman (Kode9) in a 2010 book.

Art that uses sound as its primary medium, usually in galleries or sites rather than concerts; the term dates from a 1983 New York show.

Southern Lord: the label Greg Anderson started in 1998, home of Sunn O))) and the main outlet for drone metal, including Earth's later albums.

Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film, whose Eduard Artemyev soundtrack dissolves the line between drone, music and processed noise.

Texan duo of Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie, formed in Austin in 1993, whose slow orchestral drones became a cornerstone of the Kranky catalogue.

American guitarist and designer, born in 1974 and based in Paris, co-founder of Sunn O))) and of the Ideologic Organ label.

Biosphere's 1997 album: Geir Jenssen's glacial ambient record of slow tones, wind and running water, reissued by Touch as Substrata 2.

American drone metal duo of Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson, formed in 1998 and known for robed, smoke-filled rituals at enormous volume.

American composer, born in 1935, whose tape loops, In C and all-night keyboard concerts joined repetition and drone to Indian music.

Luigi Russolo's 1913 Futurist manifesto calling for music built from the noises of the machine age, the founding text of noise music.

Alias of English musician Leyland Kirby (1999–2019), who looped and decayed old ballroom records into studies of memory and its loss.

A four-CD set of shortwave numbers station recordings issued by Irdial-Discs in 1997, a cult source of eerie voices and samples.

William Basinski's four-volume work (2002–03) recording old tape loops as they crumbled, later bound by circumstance to 11 September 2001.

A low droning noise reported by a minority of people in places from Bristol to Taos; some cases are traced, most remain unexplained.

The Kitchen: the New York arts space founded in 1971 by Woody and Steina Vasulka, where Tony Conrad premiered Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain.

Brian Eno's phrase for thinking in millennia, and the foundation, formed in 1996, building a clock meant to run for ten thousand years.

The music of Kubrick's The Shining (1980): Penderecki, Ligeti and Bartók recordings around a Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind main title.

Stars of the Lid's two-hour 2001 double album on Kranky, made largely by mailing tapes between Chicago and Austin.

La Monte Young's improvised solo work for a retuned Bösendorfer, begun in 1964; its 1981 performance fills five CDs and five hours.

Jonathan Glazer's 2023 Auschwitz film, in which horror is never shown but heard through Johnnie Burn's Oscar-winning sound design.

German composer and media artist, born in Bochum in 1965, whose slowed, close-miked gongs evoke polar ice on Nunatak, Teimo and Permafrost.

Canadian composer, born in Vancouver in 1974, who sculpts organ, piano and gagaku into blurred, saturated drones on albums like Ravedeath, 1972.

Times Square: Max Neuhaus's unmarked sound work of 1977, a deep, pulsing drone rising from a subway grating on a Broadway traffic island in New York.

American violinist, filmmaker and teacher (1940–2016), a member of the Theatre of Eternal Music and maker of the stroboscopic film The Flicker.

Touch: the London publisher of sound and image founded by Jon Wozencroft and Mike Harding in 1982, home to Chris Watson, Fennesz and Hildur Guðnadóttir.

Éliane Radigue's three-hour cycle for ARP synthesiser, drawn from the Tibetan Book of the Dead and issued as a three-CD set by XI in 1998.

Jonathan Glazer's 2013 film starring Scarlett Johansson, scored by Mica Levi with sliding, microtonal violas and slowed percussion.

Unsound: the festival of adventurous music and art founded in Kraków in 2003, known for themed editions and concerts in salt mines, churches and hotels.

Wandelweiser: an international network of composers founded in 1992 by Antoine Beuger and Burkhard Schlothauer, devoted to silence and very quiet music.

American composer, born in Houston in 1958, whose decaying tape loops became The Disintegration Loops, an elegy linked to 11 September 2001.

12k: the New York label founded by Taylor Deupree in 1997, moving from glitch and microsound to warm, minimal ambient built on acoustic detail.

John Cage's 1952 piece in which the performer plays nothing, leaving listeners to hear the sounds of the room and the world.