Non-ambient listening:
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles (aka Crystal Castles I)Bizarre and awesome. A malfunctioning Atari video game + female vocals.
Samples/Buy:
http://crystalcastles.bandcamp.com/album/iAmbient:
Marsen Jules - BeautyfearOkay, maybe not classic ambient. This is the latest Marsen Jules release. I wasn't a big fan of his last release on 12k, so I was a bit uncertain about what to expect with
Beautyfear. Fortunately, this album is perfect in the sense that it retains elements of what I would consider his "roots" (i.e., orchestral or acoustic samples manipulated, looped, and layered in creative ways) while still trying to innovate beyond that. As the title suggests,
Beautfyfear is a collection of tracks of that span the spectrum from ethereal and light to the darker and more foreboding. The cool part is that the tracks cannot be discriminated by name; the tracks are simply numbered, leaving the listener a bit uncertain about what will come next. The instrumentation itself doesn't vary much and leans more toward the synthesized end of the strings spectrum more than the acoustic one. The homogeneity of the instrumentation coupled with the split personality lurking in the atmosphere makes for a really cool listening experience.
Samples/Buy:
https://oktaf.bandcamp.com/album/beautyfear