The release of Iron marks the sixth anniversary of Yann Novak relaunching Dragon’s Eye Recordings, the record label originally created by his father Paul Novak in 1989. In previous years, this anniversary compilation has been a chance to look forward to the coming year of artists and releases. With Iron, we will be looking backward at the previous 6 years.
The Dead Texan is an audio-visual musical duo comprising of Adam Wiltzie and video artist Christina Vantzou. Adam Wiltzie is known as one half of the ambient project Stars of the Lid (probably one of their albums will be covered in another Ambient Spotlight).
German composer Pete Namlook (real name: Peter Kuhlmann) released a lot of ambient and electronic music albums on his FAX label. Besides solo-albums, he collaborated with a lot of artists, like Biosphere (Geir Jenssen), Richie Hawtin, Dr Atmo and Bill Laswell.
“Widesky is the moniker of Seth Chrisman, experimental musician and multimedia artist from New Mexico. Extended techniques, field recordings, found sound and radio static are employed as source material, woven together through improvisation with DSP chains and looping software to create subtly undulating and centrifugal compositions.”
Boards of Canada are a Scottish electronic music duo consisting of brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin. Their music has a warm, analog feel and often processed vocal samples are used in combination with beats.
In 2010 my album ‘Good to see you’ got an update in iTunes with new album art and a remastered version of ‘The Forrest’. You can find it here:
“Burning of Wine’ is the debut album of Washington, D.C. based musician and composer Benjamin Dauer. The album is both spacious and subdued, and this is contrasted with moments of dense sonic intensity. 
A truly amazing ambient mix by Peter van Cooten from Ambientblog: Invisible ink
This album is one of the reasons for me to get interested in ambient music and to start making ambient music myself. I heard it at the end of a party when my friend TC was playing this album in the room where I and some other people slept over. The track ‘Prospero’ did it for me, but also tracks like ‘Moist Moss’ and ‘Still’ have an atmosphere that I really like.
Ambient Spotlight wouldn’t be complete with at least one album from the ‘godfather’ of Ambient music, Brian Eno, who is generally known for introducing the term ‘Ambient Music’ back in the 1970s.
One of my all-time favorite ambient albums is Substrata (1997) from Biosphere (Geir Jenssen), which was (and is) a big inspiration for my own music.
Going through my ambient music collections, I found this great album from the year 1994 by Global Communication, called ’76:14’, which is the total playing time of the album. All tracks are named after their songlength. Global Communication consists of Tom Middleton and Mark Pritchard. It’s a classic ambient album with nice downtempo grooves and beatless ambient.
