August 10, 2014

Post Rock III: The American Dollar (Ambient Albums I, II & III)

All the American Dollar (Ambient) albums are great ambient music for me to study and think on matters.  Ambient music includes forms of music that put an emphasis on tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. Ambient music is said to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality. To quote one of Ambient's pioneera, Brian Eno, "Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.

It is this diverse but "ignorable" quality that allows it to be useful for meditative and memorization purposes when reading my Bible. I personally have found that it allows me an almost photographic recollection (eidetic memory) of what I have read and studied in the Bible. Most people that know me know about my eidetic memory. Many of them have asked me how I retain everything and this is the best explanation I have been able to arrive at. It seems that when I have some form of audible punctuation or reinforcement things "hook" into my memory. There are additional visual/stimulation associations connected to the music also that aid my memory retention. I believe this was a rabbinic method used by the Jews with the teaching of children of the Hebrew Bible. 


I hereby acknowledge that this methodology has worked with me wondrously and has helped me retain much of what I read, the Greek language I've learned and memorization of Scripture. It's an indispensable aid in my learning and has allowed me a near supernatural level of retention in certain areas like Scripture. Other areas like systems of the world...not so much. This type of music is critical to my studies and it is why I've chosen to tell others of my methods of study.


I stumbled across American Dollar while surfing Pandora. The style is a purely instrumental mixture of indie rock, post-rock, and electronica. Some of the songs can be epic sonic odysseys of eight minutes or more. Some are a bit more concise. Either way, its good stuff. 

 
  
I provide you with a video of the song Signaling Through The Flames from Ambient One.

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