Dark ambient

Dark ambient
Stylistic origins
Cultural originsMid-1980s,[1] Europe
Derivative formsDungeon synth[2]
Subgenres
  • Black ambient
  • ritual ambient
Fusion genres
Other topics

Dark ambient (referred to as ambient industrial especially in the 1980s) is a genre of post-industrial music[1][3] that features an ominous, dark droning and often gloomy, monumental or catacombal atmosphere, partially with discordant overtones. It shows similarities with ambient music, a genre that has been cited as a main influence by many dark ambient artists, both conceptually and compositionally.[4] Although mostly electronically generated, dark ambient also includes the sampling of hand-played instruments and semi-acoustic recording procedures.[5]

  1. ^ a b Reed, Alexander: Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music, Oxford University Press, 2013, ISBN 0-199-83260-9, p. 190
  2. ^ "Days of Yore: Dark Ambient, Black Metal, and the Birth of Dungeon Synth". February 15, 2016. Retrieved January 21, 2016.
  3. ^ Partridge, Christopher; Moberg, Marcus: Industrial, Post-industrial and Neofolk music, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music, Bloomsbury Academic 2017, ISBN 1-474-23733-9, p. 206
    "From the early 1980s onwards industrial music as represented by Throbbing Gristle influenced and was fused with other musical styles, resulting in what can be termed 'post-industrial styles'."
  4. ^ Thomas Hecken, Marcus S. Kleiner: Industrial. Die zweite Generation., Handbuch Popkultur, J. B. Metzler Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-02677-4, p. 99.
  5. ^ Schmidt, Axel; Neumann-Braun, Klaus: Die Welt der Gothics. Spielräume düster konnotierter Transzendenz., Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2004, ISBN 3-531-14353-0, p. 274.