Where do you draw the line between Ambient and beatless Psybient?

[Ormion]

For example why Ishq is considered part of psybient, but Nimon is not?

[abasio]

I don't really feel that Psybient is a real genre, the music that was labeled psybient and even psychill was generally just the ambient and chillout that psy-heads enjoyed listening to.

Psychill became much more of its own genre because we enjoyed the psychedelic elements in Psy so they got put in the chillout stuff too. Also a lot of Psy artists made downtempo stuff which was mostly slowed down versions of their upbeat style.

 

Ambient though was different, it was an established genre long before Goa came along and IMO is extremely psychedelic journey music. But it's not psybient.

 

Drone ambient like Nimon and a lot of Ishq's recent stuff was not popular on this site 15 years ago. Stuff like Shpongle was referred to as ambient and Ishq as Beatless, which in my head-genres are completely wrong. For me Ishq - Orchid is upbeat ambient: there are obvious rhythms, a lot of percussion and melody. Beatless for me is more like Steve

Roach (The magnificent void ) in which you can still hear rhythms and even percussion but it's much more subtle. Genres in your head might be different still.

 

Ishq - Orchid was very popular with psy-heads and his later follow up albums: ...and awake & Sama were in a similar natural, melodic, rhythmical style. A lot of Matt Hillier's other projects were very different though and I doubt would have even seen the light of this site if it wasn't for the fact that his Ishq project was so well loved.

 

But even if we loved Orchid, it isn't psybient. Nor are any of his other projects but as loved as it was it was clumped in to this genre of psybient.

 

Later Matt stopped only using the Ishq moniker only for that certain style and now a lot of drone, glitch and other kinds of ambient are released as Ishq.

 

They're not Psybient, Ishq never was.

His newer stuff is still great in my ears but it's not Ishq. I don't know what to expect when and Ishq album is released.

 

Now Nimon doesn't have this history therefore he's considered ambient or drone ambient.

 

Well that's what I think anyway.

 

TLDR: Orchid

[Starkraver]

Recently, I have been buying up Ishq/Virtual (Matt Hiller's albums, I am not good with classifying them into different Virtual series, thats Master Paul's territory) back catalogue like a mad man, Its just ambient and field recording. Psybient? Not at all.

 

Psybient = Psychedelic trance in ambient form. Like Asura, Altar record releases.

 

What you are referring to as Psybient in your question is ambient that is psychedelic, am I right?

 

 

Offtopic - Is Nimon related to Ross Baker/Adian Baker.? There are many "Baker's" producing ambient and all are from UK.

[Paul Eye]

Steve Roach (The magnificent void )

A virtual high five to you, that's a damn fine album and a perfect examle of what I'd call "ambient". I had the CD years ago but I have no idea what happened to it (apart from me not having it). I should get myself a copy one of these days.

[Starkraver]

^^ you might already know this. Steve pointed me towards a Netherlands shop which stocks all his releases. Shipping from US is insane. Let me know if you want the name, I'll search my mailbox.

So , has either of you tried Bloodmoon rising? What do you guys think of it?

[Ormion]

Psybient = Psychedelic trance in ambient form. Like Asura, Altar record releases.

My question is valid for non beatless psybient as well. Asura for example is considered psybient. But I doubt people who like Ultimae and don't listen to psytrance call his music psybient.

Solar Fields is a great example. We call him psybient, but people who played Mirror's Edge don't.

[Starkraver]

True. Solar fields albums are either experimental ambient/downtempo or progressive trance.

 

I'll leave the discussion to you genre needs.

[mars]

I don't draw a line, I just listen to some music.