Dark ambient

Dark ambient
Stylistic origins	Ambient industrial dark wave drone musique concrète
Cultural origins	Late 1980s – early 1990s,Europe and United States
Typical instruments	Electronic musical instruments field recordings
Fusion genres
Funeral doom metal drone metal ambient black metal neurofunk darkstep martial industrial
Other topics
List of dark ambient artists List of electronic music genres

Dark ambient (in the 1980s also referred to as ambient industrial) is a genre of post-industrial music that features foreboding, ominous, or discordant overtones, some of which were heavily inspired by elements of ambient music. The term was coined in the early 1990s by Roger Karmanik to describe the music of Raison d'être and is strongly associated with the Cold Meat Industry record label.

Dark ambient has its roots in the 1970s, with the introduction of newer, smaller, and more affordable effects units, synthesizer and sampling technology. Early genre elements can be found on Throbbing Gristle's 1978 album D.o.A: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle. Important early precursors of the genre were Tangerine Dream's early double-album Zeit (1972), which was unlike most of their subsequent albums in abandoning any notion of rhythm or definable melody in favour of "darkly" sinuous, occasionally disturbing sonics, and also Affenstunde (1970) by fellow krautrock band Popol Vuh.

Projects like Lustmord,Nocturnal Emissions, Zoviet France, and Lilith evolved out of industrial music during the 1980s, and were some of the earliest artists to create consistently dark ambient music. These artists make use of industrial principles such as noise and shock tactics, but wield these elements with more subtlety. Additionally, ambient industrial often has strong occultist tendencies, with a particular leaning toward magick, as expounded by Aleister Crowley, and chaos magic, often giving the music a ritualistic flavor.

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Wikipedia