ambient archaeology

Genealogy of ambient with multiple lines of descent - something I did for Details in 1993. The text / timelines. not the actual design. 

AMBIENT / CHILLOUT thinkpiece /feature package with SEEFEEL, MAIN, STEREOLAB and TELEPATHIC FISH 

Melody Maker, 1993 

by Simon Reynolds

    In '93, 'ambient' is everywhere.  The span of music that 

calls itself 'ambient', or is ambient-tinged, is staggering. 

     In the post-rave zone, there's Aphex Twin, Orbital, 

Bandulu and the Infonet crew, R & S's Apollo offshoot 

(Biosphere, Jam & Spoon), Sandoz, Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia, 

and the triumvirate of Peter Namlook/Dr Atmo/Mixmaster 

Morris.  In a post-Orb stylee, there's the sometimes beatific 

(Original Rockers, Higher Intelligence Agency), mostly boring 

'ambient dub' on the Beyond label.  And there's a yawning and 

yawnsome expanse of "electronic easy listening" (Sven Vath, 

Future Sound Of London, the Recycle Or Die label etc) - 

pseudo-mystic bilge that you too could cobble together, with 

some bird-song samples, 'cosmic' synth-sounds, a 24 track 

studio and a spliff. 

     On the post-indie front, there's Stereolab's muzak-of- 

the-spheres; the ice-olationist tundra-scapes of Main, Thomas 

Koner, Ice, Scorn and Lull; the post-MBV locked grooves of 

Seefeel and Moonshake; the post-Eno art-rock of Papa Sprain 

and Bark Psychosis.  And if you really want to stretch the 

definition a bit, you could add the sampladelic Spector of 

Saint Etienne too. 

     So what does it mean to align yourself with 'ambient' 

these days?  Rock starts to take on an ambient tinge almost 

as soon as it departs from 'naturalistic' recording, the 

simulation of a live band.  If you go down the path of using 

the studio-as-instrument, what Eno called the creation of a 

"fictional psycho-acoustic space", chances are that you'll 

finish up making ambient. 

     In some ways, ambient is the ultimate destination of the 

psychedelic impulse. Technically, in that psychedelia 

pioneered stereo and the illusion of spatial dimension; 

spiritually, in that ambience is the heavenly end of the 

psychedelic trip. Where acid rock plunges into into the 

cosmic beyond, ambient is more like treading water, drifting 

in cosmic/oceanic womb-space. For instance, Spacemen 3 

started out trance-rocky, then got progressively more ambient 

and nirvanic ("Playing With Fire", Spectrum and 

Spiritualized).  The blurry zone between psychedelia and 

ambient is a bit like the way abstract art is always on the 

verge of lapsing into mere decorative art (in rock terms, 

think of the way MBV evolved from the action-painting chaos 

of "Isn't Anything" to the almost ambient placidity and 

prettiness of "To Here Knows When"). 

     The current invocation of 'ambient' as buzzword and 

rallying cry is really a quiet revolt against grunge, a 

nouveau hippy riposte to grunge's punk revivalism. It recalls 

that moment in the late Eighties when former hardcore/noise 

musicians decided it was more radical to whisper rather than 

scream: Cowboy Junkies (who were tres ambient in that they 

recorded in a church), Hugo Largo (who abandoned drum beats 

and riffs), Swan's reverberant offshoot Skin, etc.  The 

ambient impulse is an anti-rock gesture, or rather a 

rewriting of the meaning of rock: rock, as in a cradle 

motion, or rock as in petrified, stoned immaculate.  Ambient 

is un-rock'n'roll because it's built up by layers, whereas 

rock is about jamming: instruments fit together like cogs, 

forming a rhythmic engine that kicks your ass. Ambient is 

kind to your ass. It's sofa rock, Erik Satie's "furniture 

music". 

     For rave musicians, pledging allegiance to 'ambient' is 

a revolt against a different kind of hardcore: manic 

breakbeat-driven 'ardkore, which has alienated droves of 

burned out ravers, encouraging them to abandon speedy E for 

dope.  Ambient techno is dance music for the sedentary, for 

oldsters who want to chill out rather than shake that butt. 

     And the future? Well, the anti-grunge guitar-based 

experimentalists, and the post-rave sampladelic artists seem 

to be merging into a single, seamless continuum of 

progressive music.  I have seen the future, and it's flat on 

its back. 

OPEN MIND/TELEPATHIC FISH: THE AMBIENT TEA PARTY 

    "Basically, what we're trying to create at our events is 

a massive bedroom. After raves, we used to chill out in each 

others' bedrooms. Now we've turned the bedroom into a party." 

     So says Kevin Foakes of Open Mind, the organisation 

behind the 'Telepathic Fish' series of 'ambient tea parties'. 

He and colleagues/flatmates Chantal Passamonte, David Vallade 

and Mario Tracey-Ageura formed Open Mind last summer, after 

becoming disillusioned with rave culture's "harder, faster" 

ethos.  The first party was in their East Dulwich flat, and 

featured DJ-ing by ambient ally Mixmaster Morris of The 

Irresistible Force. It was a huge success, obliging them to 

holding the sequel outside the flat. There've been four so 

far, and the fifth is taking place this Sunday in Brixton 

(for details, see below). Open Mind hope to turn Telepathic 

Fish into a monthly event by Xmas, despite problems in 

finding suitable venues. 

    "Traditional clubs just don't work," say Chantal.  Most 

promoters are interested in people getting overheated so they 

buy overpriced drinks. "We're into tea rather alchohol!". 

The flyer for one event even incorporated a tea bag! 

    So what is an average tea party like? 

    "There's an abundance of mattresses. Lots of soothing 

lights - strictly ultraviolet, no strobes.  Lots of oil 

projectors, computer graphics." Where your standard 'ardkore 

rave is stress-makingly staccato (cut'n'mix beats, epileptic 

strobes), Telepathic Fish is all undulating ebb-and-flow , a 

wombadelic sound-and-light-bath.  The last event was styled 

after a fish-tank, and Sunday's party will boast "deep sea 

decor".  The music ranges from post-Orb ambient to Dead Can 

Dance and Main. And the punters?  Some do floaty dancing, 

most simply get recumbent and spliff up. 

    "We went clubbing a lot last year," says Kevin, "and by 

the end it got so fast, it was like you had to work to have a 

good time." Where 'ardkore's slogans often mimic the language 

of graft and toil ("get busy", "work it up", "shovelling 

tunes"), Open Mind don't like the 'work hard, play harder' 

mentality (where you're a slave to the rush hour, then rush 

your nut off at the weekend).  "People who can afford to go 

to a 15 quid rave have all this aggression to get out of 

their systems from working all week.  The crowd we attract is 

more laidback and bohemian".  The feud between 'ardkore and 

ambient is like the split between the mods, who were 

city-loving, insomniac amphetamine-freaks, and the hippies, 

who were into dope, pastoral indolence and sleep, and 

declared 'speed kills'.  And so Mario will refer derisively 

to "gurning E-heads", while Chantal talks of the ambient 

thing as being "more organic.  Our parties are as close to 

getting it together in the country as you can get in London." 

     Of course, ravers have been chilling-out informally 

since the early days of rave, inventing their own rituals to 

enhance the post-E afterglow and cushion the come-down. 

"People are doing this in their bedrooms all round the 

country," says Chantal. "But we decided to do it for 300, 500 

people, not just 10".  And they're not alone. There are 

similar outfits all over Britain: Sonora in Glasgow, Sunday 

nights 8 til 12; Oscillate in Birmingham, every second 

Friday; London's Zero Gravity (every other Wednesday at 11 

Wardour St) and Dream Time Environment (midnight Friday right 

through to midnight Sunday, at 67, West Yard, Camden Lock). 

    Open Mind have larger ambitions. They're bringing out an 

ambient magazine, Mindfood, whose first issue contains 

articles on Terence McKenna and floatation tanks.  And 

they're linked with an ambient specialist record shop, 

Ambient Soho (5 Berwick St, London).  For idlers, they're 

pretty fucking busy. 

     'Telepathic Fish IV: The Fishing Trip' is this Sunday, 

October 3, from 12 noon to 10 pm, at Cooltan, 372 Coldharbour 

Lane, Brixton. For info, call 081 693 9903 

MAIN 

    Mick Harris, who left Napalm Death to form ambient dub 

terrorists Scorn (plus his own pure ambient side project 

Lull), claims that "if you play early Eno records from the 

70's and turn them up really loud, there's a darker edge to 

it all, it becomes really quite unnerving." It works the 

other way round, too: Gibby the Buttholes once said that if 

you play thrash-metal really quiet, it sounds ambient. 

     It's this zone of un-easy listening over which Main 

currently rule supreme.  Formed by Robert Hampson of Loop, 

Main explore the kind of post-catastrophic soundscapes that 

always seemed the logical aftermath for Loop's apocalyptic 

trance-rock.  Shifting the emphasis from riffs towards 

guitar-generated and environmental timbres, Main owe a fair 

amount to Eno's original ambience, although Robert insists 

"we take it a lot further." 

     Robert's pretty scornful of the current vogue for 

ambient. He's never liked hippies, always preferred the 

proto-punk nihilism of The Stooges or MC5 or the post-punk 

gloom'n'doom of The Pop Group and Mark Stewart.  "I can't go 

along with the hippy attitude, you do need a bit of ugliness 

and confrontation.  'Cos we don't all love each other, we 

don't want to embrace everything." 

     And yet he talks of how Main "want to embrace our 

environment, not retreat from it like ambient techno. Main 

music reflects the way we're surrounded by noise, all the 

hums and buzzes of traffic, planes, road drills, the constant 

clatter you can never really escape".  The band use what The 

Young Gods' called 'urban sonorities": a new track is based 

around a backing drone, "the sound of a main road, processed 

through an effect so that it's sounds really beautiful." 

Robert describes the recent Main instrumental EP "Firmament" 

as "musique concrete dub", reflecting his love of 

drone-theorists like La Monte Young, Terry Riley and 

Karlheinz Stockhausen (Mains' first EP "Hydra" was dedicated 

to the Kraut electro-acoustic composer). 

     Kevin Martin has coined the term 'Isolationist Music' to 

describe the likes of Main. "I dunno about that," says 

Robert. "But I do feel isolated musically.  Rock is getting 

really stale again".  If he has one "comrade in arms", says 

the Main-man, it's Thomas Koner, maker of austerely beautiful 

meditational music, that's often inspired by Antarctica. 

"Emotionally, his music stabbed its mark on me, just the fact 

that such extremely minimal music could stir so many visual 

feelings. I thought 'Nunattak' was the most beautiful thing 

I'd heard in ages.  Then 'Permafrost' took the minimalism to 

its logical extreme." A Main/Koner collaboration looks set to 

happen next year.

     Main's twin EP's "Dry Stone Feed" and "Firmament" are 

out now on Beggars Banquet. 

SEEFEEL 

   "Ambient's lost its definition," reckons Mark Clifford of 

Seefeel. "Now it just means anything that's droney and 

drifting, anything that isn't too bothered about songs. But 

it's good that there's so many different meanings to 

'ambient' now.  The term's either been emptied of meaning, or 

it's been filled up with lots of meanings." 

     Seefeel's billowing bliss-rock tapestries illustrate how 

'ambient' has become a sort of horizon for post-Cocteaus/ 

post-MBV bands, or as Mark puts it, ""any band that want to 

go beyond the constraints of 3 minute punky pop, beyond 

choruses".  So is 'ambient' the final death of punk? 

     "We did a gig where we played one truly ambient piece, 

almost like a whale song, and this old punk shouted 'bring 

back the Sex Pistols'. It seemed such a negative and old- 

fashioned comment. That really inspired us to go even 

further. Anyway, someone like Richard James is modern punk, 

his music has that DIY, lo-fi naivete. That said, most 

ambient techno is really safe and boring." 

     On their latest EP "pure, impure", Seefeel got Aphex to 

remix "Time to Find Me", and a full-fledged collaboration is 

in the pipeline. With "Time to Find Me", Richard James paid 

them a rare compliment, in that, rather than junking almost 

all of the original track as usual (see Curve, Jesus Jones) 

all the sounds he used came from Seefeel's song. 

     Seefeel are also highly influenced by ambient's cousin, 

dub reggae. But does this mean that today's ambient, like 

dub, is 'just' music to get stoned to? 

    "I'd be upset if the only way you could get into Seefeel 

is to get wasted. A lot of the mediocre ambient techno is 

like that. Actually, a good litmus test for ambient is: if 

it's good, you don't need to get stoned to enjoy it". 

     Seefeel's "pure, impure" EP is out now on Too Pure. 

Their debut LP "Quique" is out in late October. 

STEREOLAB 

     The first of Stereolab's two albums of 1993, "Space Age 

Bachelor Pad Music", paid homage to an earlier genre of 

proto-ambient easy listening: the 'exotica' and stereo- 

testing records of the Fifties/early Sixties, artists like 

Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman. 

     "I've been into stereo test, sound effects and Moog 

albums for a while," says the Lab's Tim Gane.  "I like the 

pseudo-scientific language on the sleeves.  Our name actually 

comes from a hi-fi testing label, Stereolab, an offshoot of 

Vanguard.  We liked the name 'Stereolab', cos it's 

yesterday's idea of 'futuristic', but today it seems quaint 

and kitschy.  With Martin Denny & Co, I like the idea of 

taking something that was utilitarian and very much part of a 

specific era, and taking it out of that context so that it's 

this alien music.  Plus, it fucks up the official history of 

rock, the fact that amazing records came out in 1961!" 

     So is 'exotica' a sort of illegitimate father to Eno's 

ambient? "Well, those were the first records designed to make 

you sleep. But Stereolab are more into minimalism than 

straight ambience". By minimalism, Tim means everything from 

John Cage and La Monte Young's Theatre Of Eternal Music to 

the Velvets to Krautrock (he's a big fan of Neu and Cluster's 

"meditative doodling").  Stereolab followed one of the more 

obscure Krautrock tangents by linking up with Nurse With 

Wound, whose Steve Stapleton has a massive archive of German 

avant-rock.  For the recent "Crumb Duck" 10 inch, Stapleton 

Faust-ified a Stereolab song using tape-manipulation 

techniques. 

     Then there was their homage to the grand-daddy of 

ambient, the 7 inch single "John Cage Bubblegum".  "That was 

just a way of saying you can like avant-gardists like Cage 

and you can like bubblegum like The Archies, and you can even 

combine the two.  Because they're both extremes in their own 

way." Similarly, on the 'Bachelor Pad' album, Stereolab's 

titles are meant to evoke imaginary genres that really should 

exist, e.g. "Avant-Garde MOR" . Another fictional genre that 

Gane & Co are currently hatching is 'ambient boogie': "I like 

the idea of taking an almost Status Quo bass-riff but looping 

it, making it just go on." Generally, Gane says the band are 

interested in making "rock music without rock dynamics, no 

solos, just ebb and flow", as on their brill new LP 

"Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements". 

     Stereolab have a peculiar, rarified approach to music - 

they really are like boffins in a soundlab, gene-splicing 

in order to create mutant styles. But so long as the results 

are captivating, who gives a tinker's cuss? 

     Stereolab's latest LP is out now on Duophonic. 

PROPHETIC MOMENTS IN AMBIENT'S EVOLUTION 

JOHN CAGE - "4' 33''" . Erroneously known as 'Silence', 

Cage's composition instructs the pianist to do nothing, 

forcing the audience to listen to the barely audible noises 

of the environment. 

TERRY RILEY - "In C" . A symphony in one note, sifting and 

shifting layers rather than developing melodically. 

JIMI HENDRIX -"1983, A Merman I Should Turn To Be/Moon, Turn 

The Tides...  gently gently away" ("Electric Ladyland, 1969). 

MILES DAVIS - "He Loved Him Madly" ("Get Up With It", 1975). 

Teo Macero's soundscape production is cited by Eno as the 

inspiration for "On Land". 

NEU! - "Leb Wohl" -("Neu! 75).  Krautrockers switch off the 

motorik engine and bask in a seaside idyll. 

KING TUBBY -"King Tubby's Special 1973-1976".  Along with 

Perry, Pablo, Far I etc, this dub-meister paralled Eno in the 

use of echo to create spatial, sacrosant, meditational music. 

JON HASSELL -"Dream Theory In Malaya" LP (1981).  Trumpeter 

pal of Eno's and pioneer of "Fourth World" ethnodelia. 

JAN GARBAREK - "Paths, Prints" LP (1982). Or anything else on 

cooler-than-thou jazz label, ECM (motto: "the most beautiful 

sound next to silence"). 

BRIAN ENO - "On Land" LP (1982).  Uncle Bri's ambient 

pinnacle: no pitches, just timbres, plus sounds of sticks, 

stones, and insects. 

ARTHUR RUSSELL -"Let's Go Swimming" (1987). Aqua-funk by NY 

avant-gardist who loved disco's hynpnotic repetition. 

MY BLOODY VALENTINE -"Instramental" (bonus 7inch with "Isn't 

Anything", 1988).  Erik Satie-esque glide guitar drifts like 

a disconsolate ghost over junglistic hip hop beats. 

RECENT PARAGONS OF AMBIENT 

POM MI RU - "Koh Tao" (from Infonet CD comp. "Beyond the 

Machines").  Bandalu + hippy guitarist = pastoral bliss. 

THE IRRESISTIBLE FORCE - "Flying High" LP (Rising High) 

THOMAS KONER - "Permafrost" LP (Baroni) 

Wanna chill out? Try these hypothermic wastelands. 

METALHEADS - "Angel" (Synthetic 12").  Ambient ardkore?! 

Hyped up jungle beats collide with lush, languishing jazz- 

tinged melancholia worthy of David Sylvian's "Gone to Earth". 

ORIGINAL ROCKERS -"The Underwater World of Jah Cousteau" 

(from 'Ambient Dub II', Beyond). Oceanic dub: Zion = 

Atlantis. 

PETE NAMLOOK -"Air" LP (Rising High) 

SANDOZ - "Digital Lifeforms" LP (Touch) 

Ambient the Buzzword of 1993 

Christmas 1993 overview mini-essay

Melody Maker, December 1993

by Simon Reynolds

    Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works 1985-92" wasn't just the

most sheerly beautiful album of '93, it was also the most

significant. It signalled a Zeitgeist-shift, pointing the way to a

whole new future.  First, by being so accomplished, it gave credibility

to the then emergent genre of ambient techno (a.k.a intelligent

techno, electronic listening music etc). It singlehandedly won over

many indie fans who hadn't really listened to much techno, thus

encouraging them to seek out more.  Second, it's had a profound

effect on the more progressive elements in British indie-rock, the

results of which will really BLOSSOM next year.  The fact that bands

as diverse as Curve, Jesus Jones, Saint Etienne and Seefeel rushed

to submit their songs to Richard James' remix-mutilation showed how

keen the smarter indie popsters are to get in on the NEW THING.

     

"Selected Ambient" and James' other releases (Polygon Window's

"Surfing On Sine Waves", AFX's "Analogue Bubblebath 3" etc) weren't

the only proof that techno has matured into an aesthetically (and

commercially) viable album-based genre.  There were splendid

offerings from Sandoz, Orbital, Bandulu, Reload, Black Dog, Pete

Namlook, Mixmaster Morris and more.  But inevitably, the ambient boom

has also opened the floodgates for a deluge of mediocre spliff-and-

sofa muzak (B12, Sven Vath and droves more Vangelis-with-a-beat

types).  Another dubious development was 'ambient dub': sometimes

wonderfully spacey (Higher Intelligence Agency, Original Rockers),

more often vaporously insipid sub-Orb stuff.  Like trance, ambient

techno has reached something of a dead end; hopefully the sharper

operators will step sideways into more interesting territory.  Aphex

Twin's long-awaited sequel "Selected Ambient Works 2" - a double-CD

of sombre minimalism and music concrete sound-paintings -will blow a

lot of the competition out of the water.

     As for the indie avant-garde, 'ambient' is useful as a loose

umbrella term for any band that deploys the studio-as-instrument and

sampling in order to imagine some kind of FUTURE for rock (one that

doesn't rely on blues-rock riffs, glam postures or punky-pop

choruses).  Perhaps the most techno-affiliated of these bands were

Insides and Seefeel (who actually linked up with Aphex on the sublime

"pure, impure" EP).  Both bands demote the guitar to just another

iridescent thread in their swoony tapestry of sampled and sequenced

sound.  Disco Inferno ditched their axes for samplers, while the

art/cosmic rock of Bark Psychosis and Papa Sprain is also ambient-

tinged.  On two superb 1993 LP's, "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music" and

"Transient Random Noise Bursts", Stereolab explored the unlikely

links between early 60's muzak and late 60's drone-rock (Velvets, La

Monte Young).  The 'Lab also imagined 'impossible' but desirable

genres like "Avant-Garde MOR" and "John Cage Bubblegum".  Other bands

took Eno's legacy in a chilling, as opposed to chill-out, direction.

This "isolationist music" or "uneasy listening" ranges from Ice and

Scorn's post-apocalyptic dub-metal, to Main and Thomas Koner's

lustrous, meditational soundscapes.

     The upshot of all this is that British avant-rock and left-field

dance are coalescing into a single, seamless vanguard of progressive

music.  The zone in which they commingle is the fertile hinterland

between the dreampop of MBV, A.R. Kane and 4AD (so many techno

artists cite the Cocteaus as an influence!), the

Kraftwerk/Detroit/Warp techno lineage, and dub reggae's echo-drenched

expanses.  The resultant halcyon, herbalistic sound is the fulfilment

of Erik Satie's fantasy of "furniture music": sound that enhances and

tints your life like a fragrance.

     "Ambient" is the rallying cry of those in revolt against two

different kinds of 'hardcore'. For indie-rockers, it's a revolt

against grunge (hardcore punk gone metallic and bluesy); for techno-

heads, it's a revolt against 'ardkore's manic frenzy.  After the

false start of 1991's ambient house craze, chill-out clubs and events

made a comeback this year, thanks to outfits like London's Open Mind.

The latter are responsible for the 'Telepathic Fish' parties:

"massive bedrooms", strewn with mattresses and bathed in wombing

lights, where burned-out ravers recline, spliff up and mellow out.

Open Mind's DJ's mix Irresistible Force and Pete Namlook with Main

and Dead Can Dance.  Where grunge offers crude catharsis and ardkore

ravers find release through going mental at the weekend, the ambient

response to our increasingly grim, anxiety-wracked world is to seek

refuge in a sacro-sanctuary of sensuously spiritual sound.  Ambient

caresses where grunge/ardkore concusses.  (That said, one of the most

interesting developments of late '93 was 'ambient ardkore', bands

like Metalheads and Foul Play who fuse jungle beats and langorous

textures to bizarrely beatific effect.)

   Yes, it's all a bit hippy. Is ambient the final death of punk?

Does quiet music = quietist politics (Stereolab would say no).  Given

given the choice between Rage Against The Machine and soft-machine-

music, though, there's only one response: BLISS ON!

sidepanel to some kind of big feature package on ambient in Melody Maker

In the UK right now, avant-rock and left-field dance are

coalescing into a continuum.  On one side, there's the likes of

Seefeel, Disco Inferno, Main, Stereolab, Moonshake, Papa Sprain,

Insides (formerly Earwig), Ice, et al, truly independent bands who

have very little to do with the trad connotation of "indie" (i.e.

scrawny Luddite grot).  On the other side, you have post-rave

innovators like The Aphex Twin, Orbital, Sandoz, etc, who are

reaching beyond the dancefloor to a new audience of disenchanted

ex-indie fans.  In this new state-of-play, an "indie" band like

Seefeel patently has far more in common with a "techno" artist like

Aphex than either has with its supposed genre-peers. Which is why

they've collaborated with each other rather than, respectively,

Slowdive or Sven Vath.

     For better or for worse, the word that's come to crystallise the

merger of neo-psychedelia and post-aciiied is "ambient".  For bands

looking to transcend indie rock, "ambient" signifies going beyond

riffs; for the techno-heads, "ambient" means leaving behind the dance

beat.  But ambient isn't inappropriate, because all this post-rock

and post-rave stuff (the stuff worth cherishing in '93) does

ultimately descend from Brian Eno (with a few extra genes spliced

from dub reggae).  The original soundscape gardener, Eno pioneered

the techniques that are the foundation of progressive Nineties music:

the studio-as-instrument, tape loops (or its easier, quicker modern

equivalent, sampling), the use of effects and treatments so that

timbre and texture is more important than chords or riffs.  Any music

that exploits the studio, that doesn't sound "naturalistic" (i.e.

like you're five rows from the front at the Falcon) is in some sense

Eno-ite. To put it another way: ambient is the polar opposite of

grunge.

     Of course, the likes of Papa Sprain and Stereolab probably have

only an indirect relationship to Eno, as mediated through A.R. Kane

and My Bloody Valentine, who themselves drew more from the sources

that inspired Eno (Can, Velvet Underground, Hendrix, dub) than the

man himself.  MBV, in particular, paved the way for the sampladelic

non-rock of Seefeel and Moonshake (whose last record featured

virtually no guitar).  Kevin Shields said that it was "the weird

noises on hip hop records" that goaded them towards "Isn't

Anything"'s guitar-reinvention.  Then MBV fell under the spell of

rave: "Loveless" saw them sampling their own feedback and looping

beats and basslines.  Along with the Primals' "Higher Than The Sun",

MBV's "Soon" showed that it's the subliminal influence of rave

culture that gives British avant-rock the edge over its US

counterpart.  The Krautrock deluges of Mercury Rev, the epileptic

eclecticism of Thinkin' Fellers and Pavement, are great, but they're

hidebound by garageland, by the Luddite limits of bass/gtrs/drums. US

avant-rock is crippled by the abiding delusion that "disco sucks".

   

  Because they both inhabit a Eno-ite universe, the UK's

avant-rock and neo-techno units are inevitably merging into a single

phalanx of progressive whatever-you-wanna-call-it. For this kind of

music, 'ambient' is a sort of horizon: the outer limit of

form-dissolving halcyon chaos that it strives for, but doesn't

necessarily reach.  Because sometimes it's better to travel than to

arrive.