Dark Ambient - Origins and Development

Origins and Development

Dark ambient evolved partially based on several of Brian Eno's early solo albums (Another Green World -> In Dark Trees, Music For Films) and collaboration 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 utilizing 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 favor of "darkly" sinuous, occasionally disturbing sonics.

Ambient industrial projects like Lustmord,Coil, Nocturnal Emissions, Zoviet France, and Lilith 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 magick, as expounded by Aleister Crowley, and chaos magic, 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.

Among the many artists who produce ambient industrial are Cloud Shepherd, Coil, Controlled Bleeding, CTI, Deutsch Nepal, Hafler Trio, Lustmord, Nocturnal Emissions, PGR, Thomas Köner, Zoviet France, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK, Lab Report, Akira Yamaoka, early Techno Animal, Robin Rimbaud and Final. Many of these artists are eclectic in their output, with much of it falling outside of ambient industrial. Ambient industrial often consists of evolving dissonant harmonies of drones and resonances, low frequency rumbles and machine noises, sometimes supplemented by gongs, percussive rhythms, bullroarers, distorted voices and other found sounds, often processed to the point where the original sample cannot be recognized. Entire works may be based on radio telescope recordings (Arecibo Trans-Plutonian Transmissions), the babbling of newborn babies (Nocturnal Emissions Mouths of Babes), or sounds recorded through contact microphones on telegraph wires (e.g. Alan Lamb's Primal Image).