At the heart of it all

The discovery of ambient music at the turn of the millennium was my first brush with any form of minimalism, indeed, the first ambient track i heard was aptly titled 'At the heart of it all' by Aphex Twin.

As a big Nine Inch Nails fan during my student days I bought everything by NIN that i could get my hands on, one of those records was Further Down the Spiral, a remix album of the now classic industrial album released in 1995, The Downward Spiral. This included the aforementioned track 'At The Heart Of It All', a stripped back, atmospheric, industrial droning beast of a song... at the time, unlike anything i had ever heard. Where were the vocals? Where was the chorus? Where were the drums and guitar? This was a soundscape, not a song and i absolutely loved it, excited to hear more i grabbed everything i could that Aphex Twin had produced... next being blown away by Selected Ambient Works Vol II, which is my most listened to album of all time and one of my favourite albums of all time.

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Volume II

As ever with exciting discoveries, they inevitably lead to the snowball effect... i've since discovered Brian Eno, Biosphere and various other ambient artists and it has become my favourite genre of music.

However like i said in my previous post, this was only ever really at the periphery of my life and never extended further than simply my enjoyment of listening to this music... it was maybe the seed that was planted, it's just taken a while to grow.