Dark Ambient Noise

Dark ambient is a subgenre of ambient music that features foreboding, ominous, or discordant overtones. Although it had its roots in the 1970s, Dark ambient emerged in the 1980s and 1990s^{[citation needed]} with the introduction of newer, smaller, and more affordable Effects units, synthesizer and sampling technology. 

 

 Dark ambient is an unusually diverse genre, related to industrial music, noise, ethereal wave, and black metal, yet generally free from derivatives and connections to other genres or styles.

 

http://www.ambientmusicblog.com/

 History

Dark ambient evolved partially based on several of Brian Eno's early collaborations that had a distinctly dark or discordant edge, notably "An Index of Metals" (from Evening Star (1975)), a collaboration with Robert Fripp that incorporated harsh guitar feedback, the ambient pieces on the second half of David Bowie's Low (1977) and "Heroes", Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics (1980), a collaboration with Jon Hassell, and particularly the fourth installment of his ambient series, On Land (1982),which had many deeply spatial elements, often utilising field recordings to foreboding effect. An important early precursor of the genre was Tangerine Dream's early double-album Zeit, which was unlike most of their subsequent albums in abandoning any notion of rhythm or definable melody in favour of a "darkly" sinuous, occasionally disturbing sonics.

 

Ambient industrial projects like Coil, Lilith, Lustmord, Zoviet France, and Nocturnal Emissions evolved out of industrial music during the 1980s, and were some of the earliest artists to create consistently "dark" ambient music.

These artists make use of industrial principles such as noise and shock tactics, but wield these elements with more subtlety. Additionally, ambient industrial often has strong occultist tendencies, with a particular leaning toward Chaos Magick, often giving the music a ritualistic flavor.

(In fact, a sub-genre dubbed "Ritual Ambient" has evolved in recent years, exemplified by work of such groups as Herbst9 and Desiderii Marginis, amongst others.) Ambient industrial is one of several directions that post-industrial music took on after the breakup of Throbbing Gristle in 1981. The last material that TG recorded in the studio, In the Shadow of the Sun and Journey Through a Body, was ambient, and pointed in the direction that several of TG's offshoots (notably Coil and CTI) would take.

 

 Generally the music tends to evoke a feeling of solitude, melancholy, confinement, and isolation. However, while the theme in the music tends to be "dark" in nature, some artists create more organic soundscapes. Examples of such productions are those of Oöphoi, Alio Die, Mathias Grassow, Tau Ceti, and Klaus Wiese. The Symphonies of the Planets series, a collection of works by NASA and Brain/Mind Research in which planetary electromagnetic waves are captured by the Voyager unmanned space probes and converted into audible sound, can also be considered an organic manifestation of dark ambient.