Why the curious mix of Ambient and Exotica music on this website? They don't have too much in common, do they? After all, you've maybe heard of genre blendings like PopRock, BluesRock, BritPop, CelticMetal, CountryRap, DiscoHouse, HipHouse, JazzBlues, PunkJazz  – if so, then please take my sincerest congratulations! Thankfully, AmbientExotica isn't yet another genre subdivision, but simply two separate genres I love to listen to very much, hence their coalescene on AmbientExotica.com. 

   

   

It is true that both genres on their own can be quite contrastive: eerie, suspenseful electronic Ambient music is very different from calm Exotica moonshine serenades. And again, the same sharp contrast goes for thick, synth-laden, repetitive Ambient dreamscapes on the one hand and exotic, bongo-driven fake ritual dramas in unknown deep jungles on the other hand (if the other hand wasn't chopped in that jungle, mind you). Therefore, this website is segmented into two sections, namely Ambient and Exotica, so you don't ever need to take a glimpse at each respective section if you don't want to. However, in rare cases, Ambient and Exotica music melts or is composed similarly. Suddenly, calm Exotica pieces with sparse or nonexisent percussion can count as Ambient music, and likewise, predominantly Ambient music which contains bird noises, field recordings of cascades or Hawaiian chant samples might offer an excitingly new addition to the Exotica lover's song archive. Occasionally, I allow myself a treat and review albums or songs that neither belong to the Ambient nor the Exotica genre – but come damn close. Whenever I present such conspicuous entities, I always make clear why I'm pestering you with these choices.

   

   

Conceptually, I'm taking a deep bow towards Aaron's almostcool.org, possibly the best one-man music review archive the internet has ever seen and which features a tremendously vast collection of all kinds of music. While I cannot compete with anything Aaron has accomplished both stylistically and in terms of his broad selection, I am nevertheless even more inspired by his website. Sadly, almostcool.org isn't updated anymore, but Aaron keeps the archive up for everyone to enjoy.

 

   

So who is the ideal reader of AmbientExotica.com? Well, everybody is, right? But if you want a more precise analysis, here it goes: I'm aware of the fact that I am serving two diverse audiences here, sophisticated Ambient listeners and avid Exotica collectors. Fans of both genres can already choose between a variety of websites that suit their needs respectively. And yet, I'm confident of each reader's open-mindedness in terms of these two genres, and that's why I try as best I can to present them equivalently. And who knows, maybe there are way more people out there who adore both genres than I've ever imagined! Whatever main interest led you to this site, you are more than welcome to look around and, as I've stated before, you will always be able to completely ignore the respective counterpart and solely focus on either the Ambient or the Exotica section of this site. Please note that comments are deliberately disabled on all sections of AmbientExotica. You can reach out to me way more efficiently via Twitter, despite the service's 160-character limit. My Twitter account @AmbientExotica is monitored more often by me and is much less of a hassle than filtering spam comments or unlocking the useful bits on a comment system. This may change in the future, but for now, this is the way it is, I'm afraid.