I know so little about it that I didn't even know any popular drone albums to use for the pic related to this thread.
I'm curious: What about drone appeals to you? I'm a scrub to it, so I don't really understand the point behind this genre. Is it similar to ambient in that it sets a mood and you can either have it in the background or actively listen to it and be rewarded either way? If you do actively listen to it, what do you listen for, considering it's kind of just a long sustained noise with few changes (again I'm new to the genre so that might not even be an accurate description of the music)?
Who would you recommend to someone who is interested in the idea of drone and wants to get into it but has no experience with it? And who are your favorite artists in general, even if they aren't the most accessible?
It can be more ambient e.g. SotL. Natural Snow Buildings are great but they combine it with folk and Post-Rock so I guess they aren't pure drone. Hiss Tracts are good too. Haven't really looked into the genre more than that though.
Adam Roberts
This is probably a good place to start. >Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid youtu.be/MaSi7Gut7xM
Jonathan Miller
Cheers guys, I'll look into all of these recs. Natural Snow Buildings, if they combine it with folk and post-rock, maybe that'd be a good way to ease into it then.
Can't find them through Apple Music though, so I'll give Stars of the Lid a listen while I find their music on Soulseek or something.
Really appreciate it!
Christian Lee
No problem man. For NSB I'd start with the Dance of the moon and the sun cause that's the one everyone knows. Shadow kingdom is more folk. The winter ray and ghost folks are more Post-Rock. Can't go wrong really and their discog is huge.
Christopher Gray
Perfect, Moon and Sun is the one I started downloading. Didn't know it would be so crazy fucking long but should be interesting to hear, and I love a good really long album, so I'm looking forward to it!
Christopher Fisher
I don't know about other people, but sometimes listening to rhythmic music just gets tiring. Listening to more minimalistic, textural music can be calming, even if it's dark, dissonant, or atonal. This is one of my favorite drone groups: youtube.com/watch?v=JqF9Fc0peP0
Mason Jackson
Yeah all the ones I mentioned are pretty fucking long. DotMatS gets compared to soundtracks for the blind quite a lot here so if you're into that you'll probably like it.
Samuel Wood
One thing that makes NSB so great is that they alternate between long instrumentals and short melodic folk bits. Acts as a real nice palette cleanser between the droney parts. But then again there's a few releases where they just go full bore like Night Coercion youtube.com/watch?v=Iwk0CtLMV6A&t=8841s
The solo projects are great too. NSB is two people: Mehdi (TwinSisterMoon, the singer, also a dude funny enough) and Solange (Isengrind). I've found that Mehdi is responsible for a lot of the actual drones as well as guitar parts, while Solange seems to be all about the rhythm and her sound feels a lot more ancient / tribal. Regardless, it is a truly collaborative project without leader and they make some beautiful stuff
Luke Cruz
Cool rec, definitely will look into them. Can't find them on wikipeda though, do you have a favorite album of theirs I could look up?
Fucking creepy music video too btw.
Nolan Foster
Damn, I'm getting lots of stuff to download today -- going to be a few days to get through just NSB haha. That one I'll definitely give a listen to as well. Thanks again folks!
Alexander Morales
Som Sakrifis. BTW if you want to research more obscure artists' discographies, use Discogs or RYM.
Carter Jones
>they alternate between long instrumentals and short melodic folk bits Yeah that's what I love about them too. When the 20 minute drone section at the start of shadow kingdom ends and gives way to the acoustic guitar and vocals is fucking beautiful.
Liam Reyes
>but sometimes listening to rhythmic music just gets tiring. Listening to more minimalistic, textural music can be calming, even if it's dark, dissonant, or atonal
Literally this. Sometimes you just wanna float out, don't care about anything and think about life. Drone can heal your wounds, OP. Here's a good one imo:
This actually sounds pretty great to me. I'll definitely have to find this one as well.
And I totally get what you mean about rhythm being able to wear on you after a point. I only just recently got into ambient music which has been a good antidote to that. Hopefully I can get into drone just as easily.
Christian Allen
For more electronic sounding drone try:
Celer Tim Hecker Eleh Jacob Kirkegaard's 4 Rooms Coil's Time Machines
Dominic Perez
Thanks for the recs! Will check them out
Joshua Baker
There's also an instrumental album from the Neutral Milk Hotel crew (released under the OTC)
Ik it's technically dark ambient but any albums like this?
Carson Perry
I don't know that album but for dark ambient Ben Frost is king. This stuff isn't all really too dark, but other ambient recs would be Emeralds, Stephen R. Smith, Loscil, Cerberus Shoal, Six Organs Of Admittance, Brian Eno
