Ambient Music

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Ambient Music
« on: May 29, 2011, 07:31:09 PM »
Do any GM/MC out there have a bit of ambient music playing during sessions? I thought it'd be nice to put some on, but wasn't really sure what suited the apocalypse. This worked nicely, I think.

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Chris

  • 342
Re: Ambient Music
« Reply #1 on: May 30, 2011, 09:52:17 AM »
Straight from the Ludography:

http://youtu.be/b3GtitpzhFc
A player of mine playing a gunlugger - "So now that I took infinite knives, I'm setting up a knife store." Me - "....what?" Him - "Yeah, I figure with no overhead, I'm gonna make a pretty nice profit." Me - "......"

Re: Ambient Music
« Reply #2 on: May 31, 2011, 04:07:14 PM »
Holy crap do I think about this a lot.  Here are my suggestions and the stuff I have put on when I've played in Apocalypse World games:

1) EARTH.  Earth is awesome for any game that's even remotely westerny or apocalypticy. 

2) Zoe Keating, Julia Kent, and Adam Hurst.  All three of these folks play a mean cello.  Not overbearing, but moody and tone-setting.

3) Vincent mentions Nick Cave and Warren Ellis in the book.  I wholeheartedly agree.  They have a compilation of a bunch of their stuff called "white lunar" that's a good Apocalypse World spin. 

4) Max Richter.  Contemporary classical artist who does nice, moody stuff. 

5) Labradford.  One of my favorite ambient acts.  I find his albums Mi Media Naranja and Fixed::Context to be good Apocalypse World stuff. 

6) Soundtracks by Clint Mansell tend to be good.

7) There's also a lot of stuff in the "doomjazz" genre that works pretty well.  In particular, I like the band Bohren & Der Club of Gore.  They have about a bazillion albums, each of which are just long chunks of real gloomy, melancholy, ambient jazz. 

If I think of any more, I'll post them. 

Re: Ambient Music
« Reply #3 on: June 01, 2011, 12:14:18 AM »

Re: Ambient Music
« Reply #4 on: August 18, 2013, 04:06:36 AM »
Also worth checking out the http://roadsidepicnic.net/ podcast. Always good for ambient darkness. Most everything they play works.

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Scrape

  • 378
Re: Ambient Music
« Reply #5 on: August 22, 2013, 01:01:59 PM »
I made a playlist for our sessions. It's all instrumental, with heavy focus on atmospheric electronic music with metallic sounds. There's a lot of Burial, Kangding Ray, some of Loscil's darker, earlier stuff, and a little Four Tet. Toshinori Monro & DJ Krush is atmospheric and moody and so is Bluetech. You can maybe tell that I listen to a lot of downtempo ambient already, so there's some really lesser-known acts like Plat, Loess, Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid, Carl Sagan's Ghost.

It's like an hour and a half loop of dark but unobtrusive tunes with a weird mix of relaxation and tension. Works like a charm!

Re: Ambient Music
« Reply #6 on: November 10, 2013, 12:51:18 PM »
I'm late to the party but I wanted to thanks everyone for these suggestions. I've got a few to add:

If you like the Cello stuff that toddjank shared, you might like Sybarite5 - they're a chamber orchestra but they do excellent, almost unrecognizable covers of current tunes in addition to their own compositions.

Also, check out the Kilamanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble for moody, dark themes.

Jordan Reyne out of New Zealand used to play with Dr. Kevorkian and the Suicide Machines - I don't like having lyrics in my background music, but I've made some exceptions for her, especially the album How The Dead Live.

There's a guy named Jenova7 on BandCamp (not me, honestly) whose dusted jazz works can fit nicely in urban environments.

And if you've got a skinner in the group, you can do a lot worse than Beats Antique.