Ambient House
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| Cultural origins | Late 1980s, United Kingdom and Japan |
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Ambient house is a subgenre of house music that first emerged in the late 1980s, combining elements of acid house and ambient music. Tracks in the ambient house genre typically feature four-on-the-floor beat patterns, synth pads, and vocal samples integrated in a style classed as "atmospheric".
In 1989, Paul Oakenfold ran the acid house night at Heaven, and Dr. Alex Paterson ran a chill-out counterpart in the White Room. There, Paterson (soon to be front man in The Orb) spun Brian Eno, Pink Floyd, and 10CC songs at low volume and accompanied them with multiscreen video projections. Around the same time, in the East End of London, so-called spacetime parties were held at Cable Street. These parties, organized by Jonah Sharp, were designed to encourage conversation rather than dance, and featured Mixmaster Morris.
The ambient house movement began in the late 1980s largely due to the demand for post-rave "come-down" music. It was founded mainly by The Orb members Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty. They drew from various influences, particularly Yellow Magic Orchestra (active since the late 1970s), an electronic music group frequently cited as a pioneer of ambient house music, in addition to influences from Steve Reich, Brian Eno, reggae music, and 1970s psychedelic rock, including Pink Floyd. Inspired by the house music played by DJs such as Larry "Mr. Fingers" Heard, Paterson and Cauty began DJ-ing and composing experimental music. The Orb established the genre in 1989 as DJs during night-club events called The Land of Oz, based at the night-club Heaven. After a recording session with John Peel later that year, The Orb released the twenty-minute "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld", which featured "bright, translucent sounds" and "tinkl[ing]" keyboards, as well as heavily sampling Minnie Riperton's "Lovin' You". Out of Paterson and Cauty's sessions at Trancentral studio, came Cauty and Bill Drummond's KLF album Chill Out (which featured no credit to Paterson). As one of the first ambient house albums, The Grove Dictionary of Music describes it as "a 1980s pop culture version of musique concrète". After splitting from The Orb, Cauty finished work on his own album Space, and Paterson's Orb went on to create the single "Little Fluffy Clouds" – both important works of ambient house. In 1991, The Orb released the album The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, featuring both of their previous singles. Combining Moog synthesizers with religious chorales and audio clips of the Apollo 11 rocket launch, The Orb popularized the "spacy" sound of ambient house.
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