disclaimer: this post is all induced by multiple doses of Havana Club especial rum
The overarching centres are the ashram and the academy. Everything can be mapped in relation to those two poles.
^ I thought
@droid was sort of astute here...., although in reality it gets mixed up:
like, my favourite, Eliane Radigue, is from the academy ( GRM ), but her best works sound like they were recorded in an "ashram"... splutter... that's doing her a disservice, they sound like an electronic Tibetan ritual ( and I'm undecided if it's Buddhist or Bon-Po - she'd say Buddhist, but there's something darker and more prime-evil lurking there )
Eliane Radigue - Trilogie De La Mort
her masterwork takes us outside our body, just like the best "space" music, because who needs a body in a zero gravity environment just like you don't have a body when navigating the Bardo after physical death
this is ambient electronic "music" in it's purest sense, just tone and sensation ( as I said in
@wektor's seminal thread "
the final chapter of sound", it works on ALL levels )
* but, then in the world of "ambient" we also have
dark <--> light
serious <--> fluffy & frivolous
cold <--> warm
space <--> earth
interior <--> exterior
evil <--> good
and combinations and permutations thereof...
in that my favourite ambient musics have a hint of menace, nay, evil about them
true story: once a friend asked if I had ever heard, i.e., hallucinated, music while on "breakthrough" DMT trips and I had to admit that on one occasion it sounded like this, like a soundtrack to a new age crystal shop:
Steve Hillage - Rainbow Dome Musick
( this was the album that set The Orb on their journey to a record deal, etc., )
but at other times the DMT world sounded like this, pure evil
Dalek control room ( 1963 )
( what I heard was my heartbeat & DMT entities chattering, but this BBC Radiophonic Workshop production gives a slight taste of being unable to move due to inhaling for the third time from a glass pipe and stuck in another dimension while still being conscious of reclining on a couch )
yin & yang, innit