I forgot to put my favorite instrumental album. That being:

Broken Social Scene - Feel Good Lost

you guys have mentioned plenty of awesome 'instrumental' albums, but where exactly do you draw the line with such music? i mean, can any album without vocals be considered instrumental? if so, does madlib deserve mention? do the lyrics have to be discernible, ie. air conditioning?

jan jelinek - tierbeobachtungen
the psychic paramount - gamelan into the mink supernatural
any stars of the lid
what about tim hecker?

I'm pretty sure to qualify as instrumental, the music definitely does not have vocals. I mean most vocal music has instruments of some kind unless it's acapella, but to use the term "instrumental" to describe something usually denotes a lack of vocals. Whoever mentioned The Appleseed Cast's Low Level Owl albums, they definitely have vocals, very prominent ones on most of the tracks with some instrumentals distributed throughout both volumes so it wouldn't qualify. Orchestra of Bubbles by Ellen Allien & Apparat has vocals too so whoever mentioned that also would be incorrect in calling it instrumental. Stuff like Lightning Bolt and Air Conditioning are debatable. There are definitely vocals on almost all Lightning Bolt albums from Ride the Skies on up through the present. They're filtered through a distortion pedal, but the liner notes to Hypermagic Mountain even includes some of the lyrics.

But if the vocals serve as an instrument...

Everything by Do Make Say Think and Explosions in the Sky.
Broken Social Scene- Feel Good Lost

Fennesz: Endless Summer
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew
Godspeed You Black Emperor!: F♯A♯∞
Explosions in the Sky: The Earth is Not a Cold, Dead Place
Talk Talk: Laughing Stock/Spirit of Eden
Brian Eno: Here Come the Warm Jets

talk talk? i defanitely wouldn't label them an instrumental band and eno's here come the warm jets is full of vocals.

and as far as vocals being used as an instrument.. the only person i think you'll get to agree with you would be peter frampton.

Vocals are used as instruments all over the place.

What other purpose do they serve on Einstein On the Beach?

I consider Battles Mirrored as an instrumental album.

And you are right about Appleseed Cast having vocals. I guess over time I have just completely ignored the songs with vocals in favor of all the songs without vocals.

If we are getting technical. Can you say Godspeed! doesn't have vocals if they have a guy preaching a sermon over top of the song? I'm not being aggresive, I'm really asking.

quote:

Originally posted by Shadrach:
I consider Battles Mirrored as an instrumental album.

And you are right about Appleseed Cast having vocals. I guess over time I have just completely ignored the songs with vocals in favor of all the songs without vocals.

If we are getting technical. Can you say Godspeed! doesn't have vocals if they have a guy preaching a sermon over top of the song? I'm not being aggresive, I'm really asking.

I think that that would make that song not instrumental.. since they could be considered lyrics.

I'm so surprised (and glad) nobody has brought wiki into this.

Do Boards of Canada's albums count as instrumental? I mean I know they use tons of spoken word samples and children laughing and shit but I don't think many of their songs have actual singing on them.

I think that if a voice is in a song to aide it's structure rather than to actually sing (or speak) lyrics, then it is no more than another instrument in the song. So, it would still be instrumental.

So, songs with spoken word are not instrumental, songs with a sermon, not instrumental- those are trying to convey a message and are not just aiding the structure of the song.

Chanting, humming, whistling, babbling, mumbling, repetition of a word, laughing, things like that can work.

Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians.

Nothing new here, but I also love Battles' Mirrored. I also picked up God is an Astronaut's Far From Refuge, based on a last.fm recommendation. I really like it, and am surprised it hasn't gotten any mentions here.

quote:

Originally posted by kendocubano:
Nothing new here, but I also love Battles' Mirrored. I also picked up God is an Astronaut's Far From Refuge, based on a last.fm recommendation. I really like it, and am surprised it hasn't gotten any mentions here.

God Is An Astronaut are very good.. check out the band Gregor Samsa (I first checked them out because the excellent band name, Metamorphosis is tight).

And Mirrored isn't instrumental, it has vocals!

quote:

Originally posted by Jglass:
And Mirrored isn't instrumental, it has vocals!

Sorta. I mean,sure, if you want to call those oompa-loompa sounds vocals!

Well, I consider Battles to be an instrumental band. They are so good! I'd love to see them live.

quote:

Originally posted by jaychuck:
Well, I consider Battles to be an instrumental band. They are so good! I'd love to see them live.

you can think they're instrumental if you want
but they'll still have vocals.

but yeah they would be great live.

quote:

Originally posted by kendocubano:

quote:

Originally posted by Jglass:
And Mirrored isn't instrumental, it has vocals!

Sorta. I mean,sure, if you want to call those oompa-loompa sounds vocals!

It was a joke.. I agree that they are instrumental.

I said earlier:

quote:

I think that if a voice is in a song to aide it's structure rather than to actually sing (or speak) lyrics, then it is no more than another instrument in the song. So, it would still be instrumental.

So, songs with spoken word are not instrumental, songs with a sermon, not instrumental- those are trying to convey a message and are not just aiding the structure of the song.

Chanting, humming, whistling, babbling, mumbling, repetition of a word, laughing, things like that can work.

So, Battles are an excellent example of what I'm saying.

Dirty Three - self titled
Dirty Three - Horse Stories
Dirty Three - Ocean Songs
Dirty Three - Whatever You Love, You Are