well, the more strict definition of ambient music would be in the eno
mold - music experienced at sucha low volume it becomes part of the
ambient background of your environment. it's also been called music
you can pay attention to or ignore, but it's there. kind of like
wallpaper.
i believe for music to be these kinds of ambient, there wouldn't be
any beats, because percussion (especially ordered, repetitive
percussion) tends to jump into the foreground by nature. you can
certainly play anything with beats (or anything at all for that
matter) as "background music" in many situations; even fairly loud
rock or dance music is technically in the background if everyone in
the room is paying more attention to their shouted conversations than
what's coming out of the speakers. but that definitely gets away
from the spirit of the creation of music as ambience.
so, technically, i'd have to disagree that ambient and idm can be
interchangeable terms. for one reason, idm is made primarily if not
exclusively with electronics, and ambient music can be made with
almost anything, including no electronics at all. i would even go so
far as to classify aphex's two "ambient" albums as misnomers to some
degree - definitely the first one. even parts of the second are a
little too actively engaging, even disturbing, the listener, as
opposed to creating hypnotic, repetitive, unassuming compositions.
eno's "discreet music", "apollo", and (naturally) the "ambient"
series come to mind.
the problem gets worse when adding other words to ambient, such as
"dark ambient". this has opened up a whole can of worms that seems
to give many people and musicians the ability to call anything dark
and brooding "dark ambient". some of my own music has fallen victim
to this labeling, some of it, sadly, self-inflicted, simply for lack
of a better term. the chief practitioner of this subgenre (who
denies it) has been lustmord, most notably with the classic album
"heresy" and a few others. others to seek out would be r|a|a|n, yen
pox, vidna obmana, and several albums by steve roach (caveat emptor:
about 1/3 of his huge catalogue is more "world music", for lack of a
better term, using digeridoo and bongos).
too often ambient is used lazily to describe anything that has no
vocals and sounds pretty mellow, or has no beat or obvious hooks or
melodies. the term has gotten so widespread that this is inevitable.
in that sense, ambient and idm are the same - terms that may be
misused every day, but at least they help point the way to some
interesting music.
d.
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