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Did ambient techno have a golden age, and was it the early-to-mid 90's? Tricky questions both. If you understand ambient techno in a broad sense I'd say there has been a creative resurgence in recent years with the diverse and wonderful downtempo coming from the global psy-trance scene. If you regard the term more narrowly then those heady days may certainly seem idyllic, particularly if you feel alienated by the cold digital-glitch aesthetic that now seems to define this said genre. Golden age or not, there is no denying that the first wave of experimental chill music to emerge from the afterglow of early rave, techno and acid house in the early 90's did have that special warmth and sense of wide-eyed wonder. Listening to it now is to witness the thrill of discovery. The music was inspired by many things: digital invention and new studio technology, a shrinking global village, the optimism of rave and (ahem) assorted mind-expanding substances. Some of it sounds naive today, but the best examples of ambient techno/trance from these years still ranks among the finest ambient music ever released. Take San Francisco label Silent Records. Silent grew from the same kind of post-rave creative ferment which across the Atlantic was fueling the likes of Warp Records classic Artificial Intelligence series and pioneering ambient labels Fax Records and Rising High Records . Warp called its wonderful but short-lived A.I. series "electronic listening music". As popular and definitive as it was, Warp's legacy of lush ambient remains disappointingly small, a reflection perhaps of that curiously British ambivalence towards making pretty, trippy music lest one be labeled a hippie. By contrast, North American labels like Instinct and particularly Silent were more inclusive and open to notions of psychedelia: space travel, consciousness expansion, spiritual ecology and renderings of imaginary and alien worlds. Founded in 1986 by experimental musician Kim Cascone (who became best known as Heavenly Music Corporation), the label began life as an outlet for darkish, abstract and industrial ambient sounds including his own PGR project. By the turn of the decade, however, underground electronica in America and Europe was changing dramatically. This was reflected in the demos Cascone was receiving of these strange and beautiful new sounds some were calling techno. Cascone was turned on to the idea of ambience as something transcendent and he soon broadened the label's scope. Silent's peak years followed, fed in part by the chill rooms of San Francisco's rave scene and the creative communities that gravitated towards it, both locals and like-minded musicians from around the world. By the time of its demise in 1998 the main label had issued around 70 releases (plus nearly 100 more on various sub-labels covering club music, dark industrial and other experimental electronica). Volume One sets the standard and is notable for lots of creative improvising based around single drones. Tracks by Spacetime Continuum and Heavenly Music Corporation, for example, use long tonal arcs that rise and fall beneath layers of arpeggios, slowly morphing, building and spiraling ever deeper into the surrounding space. Spice Barons "Spice Of God" samples dialogue from David Lynch's Dune and creates an extraordinary mystical effect with simple major-minor chord changes. More abstract moments like a doom-laden percussive track or twisted piece of dub provide an effective contrast with the surrounding prettiness, a light-and-shade approach that is repeated on all subsequent volumes in the series. By the time of Volume 2 artists from outside the USA are making significant contributions; Pelican Daughters and Transcendental Anarchists (both from Australia) and the always quirky Legion Of Green Men (Canada). The last of the series Volume 5 is Cascone's personal favourite and contains Makyo's towering Vedic epic "Devabandha", an example of the exotic ambient dub style which to this day remains passionately championed by Waveform Records. Several other Silent collections also rate essential listening. Unidentified Floating Ambience contains almost no percussion and emphasises rich, ethereal drones and smooth cascading sounds ala The Orb at its spaciest, with the occasional bubbling 303 acid line rising to the surface. Consisting entirely of music co-composed by Cascone and his prolific associate Don Falcone under various pseudonyms, this album is perhaps the most beautiful and euphoric Silent compilation of all. Completely different is 50 Years Of Sunshine, the label's strangest various-artists collection and one the more original concepts to come from an ambient label of any era. This double CD celebrates the 50th anniversary of the discovery of LSD, kicking off with a specially recorded four-minute introduction by ye olde acid guru himself Dr. Timothy Leary. It's a remarkable and often outrageously surreal collection of techno in the Silent mould alongside spacey prog rock with swirling guitars (Closedown), mystical folksy pop (Kykean), edgy industrial synthpop (XKP) and indescribably bizarre moments like "Beetle Crawls Across My Back" which is more sound collage than music. Usually weird and downright menacing at times, 50 Years Of Sunshine is a completely involving mix of songs and instrumentals but I wouldn't recommend approaching it in anything other than a completely sober state. Silent sadly folded in 1998. The end was precipitated two years earlier with a crippling blow dealt by a new distributor which had changed ownership and then - without telling anyone - failed to honour a prevously struck deal to distribute Silent to the bigger music retailers and chains. Silent suddenly found itself with a huge quantity of returned stock manufactured for this planned expansion. At this point Kim Cascone was going to dissolve the label so that he could pursue his interests in the internet and more seriously avant-garde computer music. As it turned out he sold the business to a willing colleague who took the label in a more dub, trip hop and drum 'n' bass direction but ulimately to no avail. Cascone sensed that a segment of Silent's market was moving on anyway. As he told AmbientTrance e-zine in a 1998 interview: "The biggest problem for ambient music was that it had been reborn as a sub-genre of techno and hence experienced a short life cycle due to it riding the back of dance music culture...[and] because this music wasn't tailored for the dancefloor the economic base wasn't there to support it". These same conditions no doubt contributed to the demise of America's other iconic ambient techno label Instinct Ambient in 1997, which abruptly shifted to nu-jazz and dub shortly before being terminated altogether by it's parent company. Some of the major talents in new-school ambient who started with Silent continue to release music today such as Makyo, David Moufang (Move D) and Alpha Wave Movement. With the label now defunct you'll have fun finding the releases but there is some truly fantastic music to be uncovered if you're determined. Beyond the compilations look out for any artist albums on Silent by Heavenly Music Corporation, Spice Barons, Makyo, 23 Degrees and Ambient Temple Of Imagination among others. A few albums have been re-issued on other labels, otherwise check fansites like www.silentrecords.net which contain links to shops and collectors selling original Silent stock at quite reasonable prices. Beware of online auction sites - you may well get ripped off. |
