Experimental · 8D · Drone
The groups and the albums that turned sustained sound into a listening tradition.
Brian Eno's 1978 album that gave ambient music its name: four tape-loop pieces conceived in an airport to calm, not command, attention.
Japanese trio formed in Tokyo in 1992, named after a Melvins song, whose hour-long debut Absolutego made heavy music stand still.
English group founded by John Balance and Peter Christopherson in the early 1980s; their Time Machines project produced some of the purest synthesiser drones.
Brian Eno's 1975 album whose title piece, generated by a synthesiser and tape-delay system, opened the road to ambient music.
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.
The Caretaker's six-stage cycle (2016–2019), about six and a half hours long, tracing the stages of dementia through decaying ballroom loops.
Tony Conrad's 1964 tape of overdubbed amplified violin, his only solo violin recording of the 1960s, first released in 1996.
Trio from Richmond, Virginia, whose 1993 debut Prazision was Kranky's first release and set the tone for slow, spacious drone rock.
Project of Welsh-born musician Brian Williams, whose album Heresy (1990), built from subterranean recordings, is a founding work of dark ambient.
Sunn O)))'s 2009 album on Southern Lord, where Eyvind Kang's arrangements for brass, strings, harp and choir surround the guitar drones.
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.
1973 album by Tony Conrad with Faust: sustained amplified violin over an unchanging pulse, recorded at Faust's studio in Wümme in 1972.
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.
Aphex Twin's 1994 Warp album of dark, beatless synthesiser pieces, originally untitled and, by his own account, born of lucid dreams.
Texan duo of Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie, formed in Austin in 1993, whose slow orchestral drones became a cornerstone of the Kranky catalogue.
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.
Alias of English musician Leyland Kirby (1999–2019), who looped and decayed old ballroom records into studies of memory and its loss.
William Basinski's four-volume work (2002–03) recording old tape loops as they crumbled, later bound by circumstance to 11 September 2001.
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.
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.