Ambient One by The American Dollar

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Post rock-ish instrumental duo The American Dollar have done something interesting. They've taken a bunch of songs from their previous two releases and created "ambient" versions. It's kind of like a remix, except not really. Worth checking out. Cute title they picked, as well. "Our iTunes exclusive "Ambient One" is now available. Ambient One features Ambient versions of tracks from A Memory Stream and The Technicolour Sleep as well as a few soundtrack cuts. It's 14 tracks and more than 70 minutes."

Ambient One on iTunes Music Store

Ambient sounds coming to NYC Subway

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"The nature noises, which are pending final review by the authority’s staff, would be focused by directional speakers on small areas of the station, allowing riders to “walk through” the sounds." A Calming Presence Amid the Groans and Screeches

I'm looking forward to seeing/hearing how this turns out. I think maybe this is too literal for my tastes, but I appreciate the forward progress.

"Swine Flu Hemagglutinin"

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Not really what I'd call "ambient" music, but interesting nonetheless.

The algorithm I used is a bit complicated, but just in case you’re curious: since the gene is expressed as a surface protein antibodies can sense, it’s considered as a string of amino acids. Each beat corresponds to one amino acid, and the piece is in 3/4 time, so each six measures would correspond to five turns around the alpha structure.

“Swine Flu Hemagglutinin”: amino acid sequence as ambient music

(Live +) In Person

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Stars of the Lid Live Show in NYC I have to say, I find seeing ambient artists doing live shows to be pretty boring. I find the music to be pretty useless without some context for, well, use. I'm falling pretty hard here into one side of what an old literary theory professor of mine called the Kant/St. Augustine divide, and I think that's fine. Maybe you have other ideas, and I think that's fine as well.

But I'm also pretty interested in expanding the spirit of what this site has been doing for the last few years, and so I'd like to start thinking about some ways of getting the music I point to on this site out from under your headphones and out into the actual world for use. But in a way that's a bit more indirect than promoting live shows. That's not very interesting to me.

So consider this an invitation for artists, designers, and anyone else reading to collaborate on some kind of project that applies ambient music to the world. I really have no idea what that means, but I'd like to try to do something. If you have an interest, or ideas, or anything, leave a comment, shoot me an email at ambientmusicblog at gmail.com, or berate me via twitter.com/ambientmusic.