Drone music, also known as drone-based music, drone ambient or ambient drone, dronescape or dronology, and sometimes simply as drone, is a musical style that emphasizes the use of sustained sounds, notes, or tones-clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmonic variations throughout each piece compared to other musics. For experimental rock music, see experimental rock. ... A musical instrument is a device constructed or modified with the purpose of making music. ... An electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces its sounds using electronics. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. ... In music, a drone is a harmonic or monophonic effect or accompaniment where a note or chord is continuously sounded throughout much or all of a piece, sustained or repeated, and most often establishing a tonality upon which the rest of the piece is built. ...

Pioneering explorers of drone music in the past 30 years have included Theater of Eternal Music (aka The Dream Syndicate), Charlemagne Palestine, Eliane Radigue, Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Robert Fripp & Brian Eno, Earth, Coil, Aphex Twin, and Biosphere. It was a mid-sixties experimental musical group featuring La Monte Young and John Cale. ... Charlemagne Palestine (born August 15, 1945 as Charles Martin in Brooklyn, New York, USA) is a minimalist composer and visual artist. ... Eliane Radigue (born 1932) is a French electronic music composer whose work, since the early 1970s, has been almost exclusivly created a single synthesizer, the ARP 2500 modular system and tape. ... Kraftwerk (pronounced [], German for power station) is a German musical group which has made significant contributions to the development of experimental and electronic music. ... Klaus Schulze is a German electronic art music composer and musician. ... Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. ... Robert Fripp (born May 16, 1946 in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England) is a guitarist, record producer and a composer, perhaps best known for being the guitarist for, and only constant member of, King Crimson. ... Brian Peter George St. ... Dylan Carlson of Earth. ... Coil (1982 - 13 November 2004) were a cross-genre, experimental music group who worked in such forms as industrial, noise, ambient and dark ambient, neo-folk, spoken word, drone music, and minimalism. ... Aphex Twin (Richard David James, born August 18, 1971 in Limerick, Ireland) is an electronic music artist, credited with pushing forward the genres of techno, ambient, acid, and drum and bass. ... Biosphere is the main recording name of Geir Jenssen (born 1962 in Tromsø, Norway), a musician who has released a notable catalogue of ambient electronic music. ...

Overview

Music which contains drones and is rhythmically still or very slow can be found in many parts of the world, including the Japanese gagaku classical tradition; Scottish pibroch piping; didgeridoo music in Australia, Hindustani classical music (which is accompanied almost invariably by the tambura, a four-string instrument which is only capable of playing a drone); and pre-polyphonic organum vocal music of late medieval Europe. Repeations of tones, as in Appalachain banjo music, supposed to be in imitation of bagpipes, are found in a wide variety of genres and musical forms. However, the lineage of stillness and long tones occurring in classical compositions during adagio movements, including, for instance, the third movement of Anton Webern's Five Small Pieces for Orchestra, as well as in Northern European folk musics in the form of "slow airs" has directly descended into modern popular and electronic music in a way which is directly derived from the mileau of La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, John Cale, Charlemagne Palestine and others in 1960s New York. In music, a drone is a harmonic or monophonic effect or accompaniment where a note or chord is continuously sounded throughout much or all of a piece, sustained or repeated, and most often establishing a tonality upon which the rest of the piece is built. ... Gagaku (雅楽, literally elegant enjoyment) is a type of Japanese classical music that has been performed at the Imperial court for several centuries. ... A pibroch (pė`brǒox) is an ancient type of music, native to the Scottish Highlands and performed exclusively on the Great Highland Bagpipe. ... A didgeridoo. ... Hindustani (हिन्दुस्तानी/ہندوستانی) Classical Music is an Indian classical music tradition that took shape in northern Indian subcontinent circa the 13th and 14th centuries AD in the courts of Delhi Sultanate[] from existing religious, folk, and theatrical performance practices. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Pandura. ... Organum (pronounced , though the stress is now sometimes incorrectly put on the second syllable) is a technique of singing developed in the Middle Ages, and is an early form of polyphonic music. ... Classical music is a broad, somewhat imprecise term, referring to music produced in, or rooted in the traditions of, European art, ecclesiastical and concert music, encompassing a broad period from roughly 1000 to the present day. ... Anton Webern (December 3, 1883 – September 15, 1945) was an Austrian composer and conductor. ... La Monte Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer whose eccentric and often hard-to-find works have been included among the most important post World War II avant-garde or experimental music. ... Tony Conrad (born Anthony S. Conrad in 1940) is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer. ... John Davies Cale (born December 4, 1942) is a Welsh musician, songwriter and record producer. ... Charlemagne Palestine (born August 15, 1945 as Charles Martin in Brooklyn, New York, USA) is a minimalist composer and visual artist. ...

The modern genre of drone music (differentiated by some as "dronology") is most often applied to artists who have allied themselves closely with underground music and the post-rock or experimental music genres. Drone music also fit into the genres of new age, found sound, minimal music, dark ambient, drone doom/drone metal, and noise music. Most often utilizing electronic instruments or electronic processing of acoustic instruments, they typically create dense and unmoving harmonies and a stilled or "hovering" sense of time. While the hallmarks of drone music are easy to recognize, the backgrounds and goals of the artists vary greatly. The term underground music has been applied to several artistic movements, notably to the early psychedelic movement of the mid 60s centred in Los Angeles. ... The term post-rock was coined by Simon Reynolds in issue 123 of The Wire (May 1994) to describe a sort of music using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbres and textures rather than riffs and powerchords. ... For experimental rock music, see experimental rock. ... New Age describes a broad movement characterized by alternative approaches to traditional Western culture. ... Found art, or more commonly and less confusingly, Found Object (French: objet trouvé) is a term used to describe art created from common objects not normally considered to be artistic (also assemblage). ... Minimal music is sometimes applied to classical music of the last 45 years which displays some or all of the following features: emphasis on consonant harmony, if not functional tonality; reiteration of musical phrases, with subtle, gradual, and/or infrequent variation over long periods of time, possibly limited to simple... Dark ambient is a subgenre of ambient music which emerged in the 1980s and 1990s with the introduction of new synthesizer and sampling technology in the electronic music genre and other technical advances in music. ... This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. ... Noise music is music that uses sounds regarded as unpleasant or painful under normal circumstances. ...

The Influence of the Theater of Eternal Music

The Theater of Eternal Music is a multi-media performance group who, in its 60s-70s heyday included at various times La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Tony Conrad, Angus MacLise, Terry Jennings, John Cale, Billy Name, Jon Hassell, Alex Dea and others, each from various backgrounds (classical composition and performance, painting, mathematics, poetry, jazz, etc.) and brought with them concepts of the meaning of the music they were involved with as well as audiences who might not have otherwise attended. Operating from the world of lofts and galleries in New York in the mid-60s to the mid-70s in particular, and tied to the aesthetics of Fluxus and the post-John Cage-continuum, the group gave performances on the East Coast of the United States as well as in Western Europe were comprised of long periods of sensory-innundation with combinations of harmonic relationships, which moved slowly from one to the next by means of "laws" laid out by Young regarding "allowable" sequencies and simultinaeities, perhaps in imitation of Hindustani classical music which he, Zazeela and others the others either studied or at least admired. The group released nothing during their lifetime (although Young and Zazeela issued a collaborative LP in the early 70s and contributed to a flexi-disc accompanying Aspen magazine). The concerts themselves were influential on their own upon the art world including Karlheinz Stockhausen (whose Stimmung bears their influence most strikingly) and dozens of other composers many of whom made parallel innovations including Pauline Oliveros, Eliane Radigue, Charlemagne Palestine, Yoshi Wada, Phill Niblock and many others. However, the parallel work by several members of the group, particularly John Cale in the Velvet Underground along with songwriter Lou Reed became, along with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who, the Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan and the Yardbirds one of the most influential projects of 1960s rock music. La Monte Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer whose eccentric and often hard-to-find works have been included among the most important post World War II avant-garde or experimental music. ... Marian Zazeela (b, ca. ... Tony Conrad (born Anthony S. Conrad in 1940) is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer. ... Angus MacLise (March 4, 1938 - June 21, 1979) was a percussionist, composer, mystic, shaman, poet, occultist and calligrapher. ... John Davies Cale (born December 4, 1942) is a Welsh musician, songwriter and record producer. ... Billy Name (born 22 February 1940 in Poughkeepsie, New York, USA. Original name: William Billy Linich) is an American artist, photographer, film-maker and was a close friend to Andy Warhol and one of the Warhol superstars. ... Not to be confused with The Libertiness bassist John Hassall Jon Hassell (born March 22, 1937, Memphis, Tennessee) is an American musician and trumpet player. ... Fluxus (from to flow) is an art movement noted for the blending of different artistic disciplines, primarily visual art but also music and literature. ... John Cage For the character of John Cage from the TV show Ally McBeal see: John Cage (Character). ... Hindustani (हिन्दुस्तानी/ہندوستانی) Classical Music is an Indian classical music tradition that took shape in northern Indian subcontinent circa the 13th and 14th centuries AD in the courts of Delhi Sultanate[] from existing religious, folk, and theatrical performance practices. ... Karlheinz Stockhausen (born August 22, 1928) is a German composer, and one of the most important and controversial composers of the 20th century. ... Pauline Oliveros (born 1932 in Houston, Texas) is an accordionist and composer who currently resides in Kingston, New York. ... Eliane Radigue (born 1932) is a French electronic music composer whose work, since the early 1970s, has been almost exclusivly created a single synthesizer, the ARP 2500 modular system and tape. ... Charlemagne Palestine (born August 15, 1945 as Charles Martin in Brooklyn, New York, USA) is a minimalist composer and visual artist. ... Yoshi Wada (b. ... Phill Niblock (born 2 October 1933, in Anderson, Indiana) is a minimalist composer, filmmaker, videographer, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York. ... The Velvet Underground and Nico (from left to right: John Cale, Nico, Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker) The Velvet Underground (Affectionately known as The Velvets, or V.U. for short) was an American rock and roll band of the late 1960s. ... Lewis Allen Lou Reed (born March 2, 1942 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American rock singer-songwriter and guitarist. ... The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 as part of their first tour of the United States, promoting their first hit single there, I Want To Hold Your Hand. ... This article is about the rock band. ... The Who are an English rock band who first came to prominence in the 1960s and grew to be considered one of the greatest[1] and most influential[2] rock bands of all time, in addition to being possibly the greatest live band ever. ... Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band from San Francisco, a pioneer of the LSD-influenced psychedelic rock movement. ... Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, musician, and poet who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. ... Yardbirds album cover The Yardbirds were an early British rock band, noted for spawning the careers of several of rock musics most famous guitarists, including Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. ...

The Influence of the Velvet Underground

It is, above all, the combination of Cale's grinding viola drone with Reed's two-chord guitar figure of the Velvet Underground's song "Heroin" on their first album (1967) which laid the foundation for drone music as a Rock music genre in close proximity to the art-world project of the Theatre of Eternal Music. In a time when garage bands bubbled up and receded with incredible long-term results, the Velvet Underground and few other peers shone brightly for a moment for their literacy and intelligence. And the lyrical brilliance of "Heroin" threw down a gauntlet which many others wish to touch over the next thirty years or more. Cale's departure from the group in 1968 blur matters considerably, as Reed continued to play primitive figures (sometimes in reference to r&b), while Cale went quickly on to produce the Stooges' debut (1969), generally considered one of the prime antecedents to punk and including his viola drone on the track "We Will Fall" and Nico's The Marble Index (1969) which also included Cale's viola drone on "Frozen Warnings." Reed, meanwhile, issued a double LP of multi-tracked electric guitar feedback titled Metal Machine Music which credited Young as an antecedent in its notes. Not to be confused with The Three Stooges. ... For the prequel to Ico, see Shadow of the Colossus. ... Metal Machine Music is a two-disc LP (now audio CD) by Lou Reed. ...

Krautrock

In the late 60s and early 70s German rock musician including Can, Neu and Faust drew from the heritage of experimental 60s rock like the Beatles at their most collagic and jamming as well as from composers like Stockhausen and La Monte Young. These groups became influential on art-rock contemporaries in their own day and punk-rock and post-punk players subsequetly. Tony Conrad, of the Theater of Eternal Music, notably made a collaborative LP with Faust which included nothing but two sides of complex violin drones accompanied only by a single note on bass guitar and a bloody-minded percussion accompaniment. A single-note bass-lines were also featured on Can's "Mother Sky" (Monster Movie, 1969) and the entirety of Die Krupp's first album (1979). Can was an experimental rock group founded in Germany in 1968. ... Neu! (pronounced noy) is a Krautrock band. ... Faust is a German krautrock band, originally composed of Hans Joachim Irmler, Werner Zappi Diermaier, Arnulf Meifert, Jean-Hervé Péron, Gunther Wustoff and Rudolf Sosna working with producer Uwe Nettelbeck and engineer Kurt Graupner. ... The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 as part of their first tour of the United States, promoting their first hit single there, I Want To Hold Your Hand. ... Karlheinz Stockhausen (born August 22, 1928) is a contemporary composer. ... La Monte Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer whose eccentric and often hard-to-find works have been included among the most important post World War II avant-garde or experimental music. ...

New Age, Cosmic and Ambient Music

Parallel to Krautrock's rockist impulses, across North America and Europe, some musicians sought to reconsile Asian classicalism, austere minimalism and folk music's consonant aspects in the service of spiritualism. Among them was Theater of Eternal Music alumnus Terry Riley whose 1964 In C had refuted Western classical music's insistance on altonalism and who had become a disciple, along with Young and Zazeela, of the Hindustani classical singer Pandit Pran Nath. In parallel, Klaus Schultze, for example, formerly of the Krautrock groups Ashra Temple and Tangerine Dream moved toward a more contemplative and consonant harmonic music. Meanwhile, as increasingly elaborate studio technology was born during the 70s, Brian Eno, an alumn of the glam/art-rock band Roxy Music postulated ambient music drawing, in part from John Cage and his antecedent Erik Satie's 1910s concept of furniture music) as "able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting." While his late 70s ambient tape-music recordings are not drone music per se, his acrediation of Young ("the daddy of us all") and his influence on later drone music made him an undeniable link in the chain. Pandit Pran Nath (1918–1996) was an esteemed Hindustani music vocalist and teacher of the Kirana Gharana who placed emphasis on the alap section of a raga performance. ... Klaus Schulze is a German electronic music composer and musician. ... Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. ... Brian Peter George St. ... Roxy Music are an English art rock group founded in the early 1970s by art school graduate Bryan Ferry (vocals and keyboards). ... Ambient music is a loosely defined musical genre that incorporates elements of a number of different styles - including jazz, electronic music, new age, rock and roll, modern classical music, reggae, traditional, world and even noise. ... Selfportrait of Erik Satie. ... Furniture music, or musique d’ameublement, was French avant-garde composer Erik Saties theory of minimalist background music. ...

Shoegaze and Indie-Drone

In the UK a crop of 80s rock bands appeared who who greater or lesser debts to the Velvet Underground, Krautrock and subsequent droning trends (although many would be as likely to credit Phil Spector's music as La Monte Young's as an influence). The Cocteau Twins, Coil, My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Loop (who covered Can's "Mother Sky") and Spacemen 3, (who used a text by Young as text for the liner notes to one of their records), for instance reasserted the influence of the Velvet Underground and its antecedents in their use of overwhelming volume and hovering sounds, even as they asserted rockist and propulsive rhythms. Sonic Youth uses a large amount of guitars with alternate tunings to emphazise the drone in almost all of their songs. They also quiet often prolong notes in their songstructures to add more droning in their song. In New Zealand the Dead C. expanded the pure-drone passages between songs futher, while in the US Pelt and Charalambides expanded them further still while referring to 80s and 90s noise music, Metal Machine Music-derived perfomers like Merzbow, C.C.C.C. and KK Null. Ambient electronic musicians related to more to raves than rock clubs like Aphex Twin also continued to present drones. Harvey Phillip Spector (born December 26, 1940) is an American musician, songwriter and record producer. ... Cocteau Twins were an influential and prolific British band formed in 1980, their music becoming nearly synonymous with their record label 4AD. Their trademark sound of layered, ethereal guitar and indecipherable vocals inspired the 1990s shoegazing genre, which included numerous bands such as Lush, Slowdive, Pale Saints, and My Bloody... A coil is a series of loops. ... My Bloody Valentine were an Irish-British shoegazing band best known for their creative use of guitar distortion, tremolo, and digital reverb. ... The Jesus and Mary Chain were a Scottish alternative rock band that revolved around the songwriting partnership of brothers Jim and William Reid. ... // A loop is generally something that closes back on itself such as a circle or ring. ... Spacemen 3 were an English space rock band who formed in 1982 and whose career spanned from the post-punk to Acid House eras. ... Sonic Youth is a seminal American alternative rock group formed in New York City in 1981. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Open tuning. ... A pelt is the skin of a (generally) wild animal. ... Charalambides are a musical group originally from Houston, Texas, USA and lately of Austin, Texas. ... Noise music is music that uses sounds regarded as unpleasant or painful under normal circumstances. ... Metal Machine Music is a two-disc LP (now audio CD) by Lou Reed. ... // Merzbow (Japanese; メルツバウ) is the name used by Japanese musician Masami Akita (秋田昌美 Akita Masami) for most of his experimental noise records, and is considered by many to be the earliest project among others in what has become known as the Japanese noise scene. He has released many CDs, LPs and cassettes... C.C.C.C. is a noise band from Japan, one of the original bands in this genre, alongside such bands as Merzbow and Incapacitants. ... KK. Null (born Kazuyuki Kishino (Japanese; 岸野一之), September 13, 1961 in Tokyo) is an experimental multi-instrumentalist. ... Aphex Twin (Richard David James, born August 18, 1971 in Limerick, Ireland) is an electronic music artist, credited with pushing forward the genres of techno, ambient, acid, and drum and bass. ...

Electronics and Metal

In the late 90s and early 00s, drone music would be (and in some sense, perhaps is) hopelessly intermixed with rock, ambient, dark ambient, electronic and newage musics, but for a few extremists. Many drone music originators, including Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue and La Monte Young are still active and continute to work exclusively in long, sustained tones. Meanwhile, however, younger musicians tied to electronic composition like Jliat and Ian Nagoski remain dedicated almost exclusively to drone music, while improvisors like Hototogisu and Sunroof! play nothing but sustained fields which are close to drones. Sunn O))), a drone metal band, exclusively plays sustained tone pieces, and their peers Merzbow and Boris released a collaborative 62-minute drone piece called Sun Baked Snow Cave in 2005. Phill Niblock (born 2 October 1933, in Anderson, Indiana) is a minimalist composer, filmmaker, videographer, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York. ... Eliane Radigue (born 1932) is a French electronic music composer whose work, since the early 1970s, has been almost exclusivly created a single synthesizer, the ARP 2500 modular system and tape. ... La Monte Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer whose eccentric and often hard-to-find works have been included among the most important post World War II avant-garde or experimental music. ... Hototogisu can refer to either: A bird native to Japan A literary magazine External links Hototogisu (bird) Hototogisu (magazine) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Sunn O))) (pronounced simply sun) is an American drone metal band, in its broadest sense; however, it incorporates elements of the dark ambient, metal and drone doom genres as well. ... Pioneered by the band Earth, Drone metal, also known as drone doom, is a subgenre of doom metal that takes the heaviness and slowness of its progenitor to a new extreme. ... Boris is Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian language name of Bulgar origin, common in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia and Slovenia. ...

Examples

Some notable examples include, chronologically:

• La Monte Young's 1960s drone-based pieces, solo and with John Cale, Tony Conrad, Marian Zazeela, Terry Riley, Angus MacLise, Terry Jennings and/or Billy Name in the Theater of Eternal Music (aka The Dream Syndicate). Young has claimed that his 1958 "Trio for Strings" is the first piece to have ever been created using nothing but long, sustained sounds.
• Giacinto Scelsi's 1959 piece Quattro Pezzi Su Una Nota Sola for one pitch and numerous subsequent pieces by himself and his followers and contemporaries in the realm of spectral composition, including Iannis Xenakis whose earlier 1958 "Concrete Ph" is a tape work comprised of superimposed recordings of smoldering charcoal which form a near-static field of sound, while not a strictly "drone" work operates with a similarly minimal-souce and stilled-time sensibility, as well as Romanian composer Iancu Dumitrescu and many others.
• Yves Klein's 1961 performance art piece, The Monotone Symphony, which included an unvarying 20-minute drone as its first movement.
• Late 1960s - 1980s work by minimal composers and gallery artists Yoshimasa Wada (The Rise and Fall of the Elephantine Serpentine), Tony Conrad and Faust (Outside the Dream Sydicate), Terry Fox (Berlino), Harry Bertoia, Jon Gibson (Two Solo Pieces), Charlemagne Palestine (Four Manifestations on Six Elements), David Hykes (Hearing Solar Winds), Pauline Oliveros (Horse Sings From Cloud), Alvin Lucier (Music on a Long, Thin Wire), Harley Gaber (The Wind Rises in the North), Stuart Dempster (In the Great Abbey of Clement VI), and Remko Scha (Machine Guitars), to name only a few. All used long, sustained and timbrally dense harmonic material for the entirety of various of their pieces.
• Kraftwerk's experimental/drone self-titled first album Kraftwerk (1970): the 4-minute intro to "Stratovarius", the organ drone on most of "Megaherz", the first half of "Vom Himmel Hoch".
• Klaus Schulze's early "organ drone" albums Irrlicht (1972), and Cyborg (1973).
• Tangerine Dream's ambient drone album Zeit (1972), and to a lesser degree Phaedra (1974).
• Fripp and Eno: the 21-minute drone ambient of "The Heavenly Music Corporation" on No Pussyfooting (1973), the 28-minute drone ambient of "An Index of Metals" on Evening Star (1975).
• Jon Hassell's Vernal Equinox (1977)
• On Miles Davis' Agharta (1975): the last 6 minutes of the last track, especially the last 2 minutes.
• Coil's drone music albums such as How to Destroy Angels EP (1984) and LP (1992), Time Machines (1998), or ANS (2003). Plus many tracks on non-drone albums, such as "Tenderness of Wolves" on Scatology (1984), "Wrim Wram Wrom" on Stolen and Contaminated Songs (1992), "Cold Dream Of An Earth Star" and "Die Wolfe Kommen Zuruck" on Black Light District: A Thousand Lights In A Darkened Room (1996), "North" on Moon's Milk (1998). (Plus many semi-drone tracks such as "Her Friends The Wolves...", "Moon's Milk Or Under An Unquiet Skull Part 1", "Bee Stings", "Refusal Of Leave To Land", "Magnetic North", etc.)
• On Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II (1994): especially "[spots]" and "[tassels]", and to a lesser degree tracks such as "[tree]", "[parallel stripes]", "[grey stripe]", and "[white blur 2]".
• Gescom (a side-project of Autechre): the experimental album Minidisc (1998) is half drone ambient (tracks "Cranusberg [1-3]", "Fully [1-2]", "Shoegazer", "Polarized Beam Splitter [1-5]", "Dan Dan Dan [1-4]", "A Newer Beginning [1-2]", "Go On", and to a lesser degree "Interchangeable World [1-3]", "Yo! DMX Crew", "New Contact Lense", "1D Shapethrower", "Inter", "Of Our Time", or the drone techno of "Pricks [1-4]").
• Biosphere : half of his ambient/drone album Shenzhou (2002), and his drone album Autour de la Lune (2004).
• Boards of Canada : the drone ambient of "Corsair" on Geogaddi (2002).
• Melthair and the Loverats debut album "Sex Wrangler" contains numerous drones (www.myspace.com/melthairandtheloverats)
• Wilco's album A Ghost Is Born (2004) contains "Less Than You Think", a 15-minute-long track containing ~12 minutes of droning ambience after a brief piano-based melody.
• contemporary drone composers Phill Niblock, Jliat, Ian Nagoski, Leif Elggren, Eliane Radigue, etc.
• Dark Ambient, Noise Music, post-Industrial Music and Improvised Music bands and projects involved with drone music include Autopsia, Die Krupps, KK Null, Pelt, Zoviet France, Hototogisu, Double Leopards, C.C.C.C., Merzbow, Trockeneis.
• Other contemporary bands representative of this genre include Maeror Tri, Stars of the Lid, Children of the Drone, Windy & Carl, Troum, House of Low Culture, Growing, Cisfinitum, Klood, Melek-Tha, Raagnagrok, Alp, Controlled Bleeding, and Laminar. Some important hearths for bands in the genre include Soleilmoon or Drone Records.
• Most of Bethany Curve's songs are drone-based, made only with guitars.
• Radiohead's "Treefingers"

La Monte Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer whose eccentric and often hard-to-find works have been included among the most important post World War II avant-garde or experimental music. ... John Davies Cale (born December 4, 1942) is a Welsh musician, songwriter and record producer. ... Tony Conrad (born Anthony S. Conrad in 1940) is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer. ... Marian Zazeela (b, ca. ... Terry Riley – (Portrait by Betty Freeman) Terry Riley (born 24 June 1935) is an American composer associated with the minimalist school. ... Angus MacLise (March 4, 1938 - June 21, 1979) was a percussionist, composer, mystic, shaman, poet, occultist and calligrapher. ... Billy Name (born 22 February 1940 in Poughkeepsie, New York, USA. Original name: William Billy Linich) is an American artist, photographer, film-maker and was a close friend to Andy Warhol and one of the Warhol superstars. ... It was a mid-sixties experimental musical group featuring La Monte Young and John Cale. ... It has been suggested that List of works by Giacinto Scelsi be merged into this article or section. ... Iannis Xenakis Iannis Xenakis (Ιάννης Ξενάκης) (May 29, 1922 Brăila – February 4, 2001 Paris) was a Greek composer and architect who spent much of his life in Paris. ... Iancu Dumitrescu (born 1944) is a Romanian composer and the father of the Acousmatic movement in contemporary music. ... Yves Klein (28 April 1928 - 6 June 1962) was a French artist and is considered an important figure in post-war European neo-Dadaism. ... Yoshi Wada (surname Wada; born Yoshimasa Wada, Japan) is a sound installation artist and musician living in the United States. ... Tony Conrad (born Anthony S. Conrad in 1940) is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer. ... Terry Fox on his Marathon of Hope cross-country run. ... Harry Bertoia (b. ... There are two Jon Gibsons who are known throughout the world. ... Charlemagne Palestine (born August 15, 1945 as Charles Martin in Brooklyn, New York, USA) is a minimalist composer and visual artist. ... David Hykes (1953 - ) is a musician, composer, author, experimental filmmaker and meditation teacher, and a principal pioneer in the modern harmonic, healing sounds and contemplative chant movements. ... Pauline Oliveros (born 1932 in Houston, Texas) is an accordionist and composer who currently resides in Kingston, New York. ... Alvin Lucier Alvin Lucier (born May 14, 1931) is an American composer of music and sound installations exploring acoustic phenomena, especially resonance, as well as a former member of the Sonic Arts Union along with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. ... Stuart Dempster (born 1936 in Berkeley, California) is a trombonist, didjeridu player, improvisor, composer, author of The Modern Trombone: A Definition of Its Idioms (1979), and on the faculty of the University of Washington. ... Remko Scha is a professor of computational linguistics at the faculty of humanities and Institute for Logic, Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam. ... Kraftwerk (pronounced [], German for power station) is a German musical group which has made significant contributions to the development of experimental and electronic music. ... Kraftwerk is the first album by Kraftwerk. ... Klaus Schulze is a German electronic art music composer and musician. ... Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. ... 1996 reissue Zeit (meaning time in German) is a 1972 album by the German electronic music group Tangerine Dream. ... Phaedra (1974) is an album by the German electronic music group Tangerine Dream. ... Robert Fripp (born May 16, 1946 in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England) is a guitarist, record producer and a composer, perhaps best known for being the guitarist for, and only constant member of, King Crimson. ... Brian Peter George St. ... Fripp & Eno (No Pussyfooting) (1973) is an album by the British musicians Robert Fripp and Brian Eno. ... Evening Star (1975) is an album by the British ambient musicians Robert Fripp and Brian Eno. ... Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was one of the most distinguished jazz musicians of the latter half of the 20th century. ... Coil (1982 - 13 November 2004) were a cross-genre, experimental music group who worked in such forms as industrial, noise, ambient and dark ambient, neo-folk, spoken word, drone music, and minimalism. ... How to Destroy Angels was the first produced album by Coil as a collective of John Balance and Peter Christopherson. ... Time Machines is Coils landmark drone music album, released under the alias Time Machines. ... ANS was an box set created and produced by Coil. ... Balance and Christopherson during Scatology era Scatology shirt, an official Coil product Scatology was the second album produced by Coil. ... Stolen and Contaminated Songs was the first of two albums in the year 1992, that was recorded and produced by the band Coil. ... Aphex Twin (Richard David James, born August 18, 1971 in Limerick, Ireland) is an electronic music artist, credited with pushing forward the genres of techno, ambient, acid, and drum and bass. ... Selected Ambient Works Volume II (SAW2), released in 1994, is an ambient double album by Richard D. James under his Aphex Twin moniker. ... Gescom is an electronic music project based in England with close ties to the band Autechre. ... Autechre are an English electronic music group consisting of Rob Brown (born c. ... Biosphere, the recording name of Geir Jenssen, is a Norwegian musician who has released a large catalogue of ambient electronic music. ... Boards of Canada is a Scottish electronic music duo comprising Michael Sandison (b. ... Geogaddi, released February 2002, was the second widely distributed album by the enigmatic electronic music duo Boards of Canada. ... Wilco is an American rock band based in Chicago, Illinois. ... A Ghost Is Born is an album by the band Wilco. ... Phill Niblock (born 2 October 1933, in Anderson, Indiana) is a minimalist composer, filmmaker, videographer, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York. ... Leif Elggren is a Swedish artist who lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. ... Eliane Radigue (born 1932) is a French electronic music composer whose work, since the early 1970s, has been almost exclusivly created a single synthesizer, the ARP 2500 modular system and tape. ... Dark ambient is a subgenre of ambient music which emerged in the 1980s and 1990s with the introduction of new synthesizer and sampling technology in the electronic music genre and other technical advances in music. ... Noise music is music that uses sounds regarded as unpleasant or painful under normal circumstances. ... Industrial music is a loose term for a number of different styles of electronic and experimental music. ... Autopsia:Song Of The Night / Le Chant De La Nuit Autopsia is depersonalized art project dealing with music and visual production. ... Die Krupps is a German electropunk-, ebm-, crossover- and heavy metal band, formed in 1980 by Jürgen Engler and Bernward Malaka in Düsseldorf. ... KK. Null (born Kazuyuki Kishino (Japanese; 岸野一之), September 13, 1961 in Tokyo) is an experimental multi-instrumentalist. ... A pelt is the skin of a (generally) wild animal. ... Zoviet france (also known as Soviet France, and also written as :zoviet*france:) is a fairly prolific industrial music group from Newcastle upon Tyne in Northern England. ... Hototogisu can refer to either: A bird native to Japan A literary magazine External links Hototogisu (bird) Hototogisu (magazine) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... C.C.C.C. is a noise band from Japan, one of the original bands in this genre, alongside such bands as Merzbow and Incapacitants. ... // Merzbow (Japanese; メルツバウ) is the name used by Japanese musician Masami Akita (秋田昌美 Akita Masami) for most of his experimental noise records, and is considered by many to be the earliest project among others in what has become known as the Japanese noise scene. He has released many CDs, LPs and cassettes... Maeror Tri is an ambient noise band from Germany founded in the 1980s which consisted of Stefan Baraka H Knappe, Martin GLIT[s]CH Git and Helge Siehl. ... Stars of the Lid is a band specializing in drone-based ambient music. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion, because: not a web directory If you disagree with its speedy deletion, please explain why on its talk page or at Wikipedia:Speedy deletions. ... Windy & Carl is an indie rock group based in Dearborn, Michigan. ... Please wikify (format) this article as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... Growing Growing is a band from Olympia, Washington that was formed by Kevin Doria, Joe Denardo, and Zack Carlson (who left the band following the release of their first album) in 2001. ... Soleilmoon Recordings is an experimental music record label, which began in 1987. ... Drone Records is an independent record label from Germany specialising in drone/ambient/noise music. ... // Bethany Curve Bethany Curve is a Shoegaze/Dream-Pop band from Santa Cruz, California. ... Radiohead are an English rock band from Oxfordshire, initially formed by school friends in 1985. ...

See also

• Drone doom (aka Drone metal) - a subgenre of doom metal
• A list of drone artists

This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. ... The following is a list of artists who play, compose, have played, or have composed Drone music. ...

External links

• A history of drone music (February, 2005) - Definition, history, further reading, records list, links.
• Review of a 1960s drone album by The Dream Syndicate
• Aquarius Records page claiming to have coined "dronology" - Bottom of page: " Here at Aquarius, we've coined such neologisms as "dronology" and "fuckery", simply because we hope that such words offer enough connotation even without a lot of context. "