evil homer: "yellow dawn" by the green man is definitely timeless. one of my favourite atmospheric tracks of all time. did you come to the intimate productions' party when the green man played?
atmospheric: the question of what atmospheric music is can be confusing. anyone who listened to ambient music or had the opportunity to chill out in the ambient tents/rooms at any given event in 1994 knows what atmospheric music is. and atmospheric drum&bass borrows most of its driving force, atmospheric elements, from this genre. going back further I'd assume ambient music was born when the first sampling technology allowed us to sample and play back natural sounds at a random or controlled rate of interval so that we could make "music" from it - I'd assume the first thing people sampled were natural atmospheric sounds and noises ie waves, birds, wind, etc.
unfortuneately, a lot of atmospheric purists think atmospheric drum&bass is a completely original form of music that was created in a vaccum by LTJ Bukem in the early 90's.
while he definitely has conquered and "owns" the atmospheric drum&bass genre, he did not "invent it." many producers (both dnb and non-dnb) from 1992-1995 (and even well before) were using both dark and light atmospheric elements married to hardcore breakbeats ie sons of a loop de loop era's "let your mind be free," satin storm's "I think I'm going out of my head," jungle pirate's "drug me," most of omni trio's tracks, many of acen's tracks, rythm for reasons' track "music in search of light," flynn and flora's "dream of you," lemon d's "deep space 'i see sunshine' original drum+space mix," rogue unit's "dance of the sarooes," AND EVEN orbital's "are we here" all incorporated atmospheric elements in drum&bass music.
it definitely seemed at the time that most music we heard contained some kind of atmospheric synth/keyboard/sampling, which is probably why oldschool djs like sniper have tonnes of this kind of music stored up: not because they were atmospheric heads or they only played atmospheric music (the kind of tunnel vision which is mostly the case today). they just played everything and everything that was good, and that evoked a physical and emotional reaction from the crowd. today, a guy versatile enough to flip back and forth between so many styles or preferences would be called a bandwagon jumper or a fence sitter. that's just fucking nonsense, but I guess you'd have had to be around to know that, considering nowadays, you are defined by one sound and one sound alone unless you want to be ridiculed by the narrow minded mentality that is now so dominant in the scene.
anyway. again, many tracks from the 92-93 era contained atmsopheric elements all the way through, OR had atmospheric intros, outros, or breaks halfway through or scattered throughout the track ie flat 47's "hideaway," skanna's "nightstalker" and "heaven," the undergraduate's "into da future," naz aka naz's "organized crime," andy c's "something new pt 2." (halfway through the track just before the drop), killerhertz' "distant dream," noise factory's "we can," remodon's "wonderful," on remand's "controllin'," aka's "farside."
green buddha's "the chamber" from 1993 is a great example of a what I consider to be the kind of (dark) atmospheric track that got many people from the oldschool into jungle music. something about the balance of uncontrollable frenzied drums layered under by the antithesis pulsing atmospheric synths and samples definitely got me into it. since that time, I have gone through many phases in my choice of jungle music (considering we all change and the music changes so often with us), but I've always ended up right back where I started: appreciating the deeper and more intelligent sounds of drum&bass.
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