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Comment by tastysandwich | Hacker News Reader

I just quickly scrolled through my collection and here are some random, but fantastic instrumental albums I've used while "in the zone":

  - Miles Davis: In a Silent Way
  - Brian Eno: Ambient 4: On Land
  - Godspeed You! Black Emperor: F♯ A♯ ∞ (one of my favourite albums. listen with your best headphones. HD650s are good)
  - Aphex Twin: Selected Ambient Works Volume II
  - Mozart: Requiem (my first proper introduction to classical. I was absolutely blown away)
  - Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children
  - Sun O))): Black One (extremely experimental doom metal. the musicality of it is questionable at times but it's fantastic to study to)
  - Sleep: Jerusalem (occasional vocals but trust me they're not distracting)
  - Tim Hecker: Harmony in Ultraviolet
  - Bill Evans: Sunday at the Village Vanguard

The worst part about these sorts of things is that 30 seconds after posting I'll remember all the awesome albums I forgot and kick myself for it.

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  > - Sleep: Jerusalem (occasional vocals but trust me they're not distracting)

I'm sure you're probably aware, but for posterity, Jerusalem is the cut down version that the record label released when they didn't know what to do with a 63 minute long song. Dopesmoker is the full song, along with Sonic Titan or Holy Mountain depending on which release you're listening to.

You may also be interested in the piece NPR did on Matt Pike a while back: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/19/1080581581/can-matt-pike-face...

Brian Eno's got some great ambient stuff (although Ambient 4 is not one of my favorites).

Some I'd recommend:

* Ambient 1: Music for Airports

* Ambient 2: Plateaux of Mirror

* The Pearl

* Thursday Afternoon

* Discreet Music

If you like any of those, there's lots more to explore. I don't care for all Eno's ambient works, but I really enjoy some of it.

The Pearl gives me strong rainy october nostalgia from my time in high school

Music for airports is my favorite ambient Eno. I have this part of my brain that notices odd (to me) choices, and some of his ambient stuff has sounds/patterns that break me out of the zone, but music for airports works as intended. Love Eno, and I think this is a "me" problem, rather than an issue with his work.

Unless I need a sense of urgency, random recordings of bird songs (especially mockingbirds) are my go-to for background noise for work.

I also love Music for Airports but it's not one I see people talking about often.

Besides his work with Roxy Music, I think I see more discussion about Music for Airports than anything else he's done.

But maybe I exist in strange circles.

To be fair it could be me who’s in those strange circles :)

Outside of music critics, I don't see him talked about much at all. I love his work as a producer for John Cale, David Bowie, and the Talking Heads in particular. Iirc he also worked on the two Iggy Pop records (the Idiot and Lust for Life) that Bowie produced. I also like his solo (non-ambient) work and work with Roxie Music, but the style of singing isn't my favorite. I know he didn't do vocals for Roxie, but the style of singing is similar to me.

He had a great conversation with Rick Rubin on the Broken Record podcast.

Thanks! You have a really interesting taste in music I think. I just skimmed through every album.

I saved the album from: Tim Hecker, Sunn 0))), Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin and Brian Eno

With Mozart and Bill Evans I am familiar.

The Godspeed You! album I found not as straigt forward and distinct as I like my music. But don't take this as proper critique. Even though I hear lots of music, I have no 'intellectual' base to say anything substential about music else than wether it clicks with me or not. For some music I think I get the (an) 'idea' and other music just feels all over the place and I can't get hold of the (an) general idea.

Sleep: Jerusalem I didn't found on spotify. Seems like a very generic name... Are you sure this is the full name of artist and album?

If you have more to share, I'm happy to listen to just a bit more. Don't you go over board, I have other things to do as well ;)

> Sleep: Jerusalem

Look for "Sleep - Dopesmoker". It’s the re-release of the same thing.

> The Godspeed You! album I found not as straigt forward

The better GY!BE album for working/studying is Luciferian Towers.

Yep, the band is definitely called Sleep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_(band)

As other have pointed out, there's also a near-identical release called Dopesmoker, but it's all one long track so a bit less convenient.

They also have a 2018 release called The Sciences which is pretty damn good too.

Some other albums:

  - Antônio Carlos Jobim - Wave (bossa nova is one of the most underrated genres I reckon)
  - Jon Hopkins - Singularity (ambient electronic)
  - Electric Wizard - Dopethrone (doom metal. similar to Sleep)
  - Sigur Rós - Ágætis_byrjun (there are vocals but they're Icelandic)
  - Chopin - The Complete Nocturnes (I've got a double-album of Roger Woodward playing them)
  - J Dilla - Donuts (instrumental hip hop)

I've tried to cover as many genres as possible to pique people's interest in branching out (you'd be surprised by what you enjoy when you give it a chance). Happy to give even more recommendations - I'm a music nut haha.

You can add Haircuts for Men to that list

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