Ambient favorites

How is it I don't see William Basinski on any of the lists? An excellent addition to any collection of ambient!
Labradford comes to mind, too. Same label as Stars of the Lid if memory serves me correctly.

Not sure what counts as ambient and what doesn't, but here are some suggestions for "music that is there, but not getting in the way of reading, talking etc. ..."

Steve Roach, particularly his CD Structures from Silence (once you hear it, you'll know how perfect the name is)
Music of Alan Hovhaness, especially the selections featuring harp
Bill Laswell, Ambient Compendium

Just about any good solo acoustic guitar recording. Several of the guitar and lute recordings on MA Recordings are favorites of mine for this type of listening.

Labradford comes to mind, too. Same label as Stars of the Lid if memory serves me correctly.

Yep - Kranky and they just re-issued and remastered Prazision last year.

Although listeners may claim falling asleep, any Liquid Mind CD is about as landscape ambient as you can get. I also like

Amethystium
Any Hearts of Space
Cusco
David Whaler "Antiquus"
Deuter
Fredrik Karlsson
Giles Reaves "Sea of Glass"
Jim Chappel
Karl Maddison
Karunesh
Kitaro
Ludovico Einuadi
Mark Isham
Michael Brant DeMaria
Michael Dulin
Michael Gettel
Michael Whalen
Any Narada artist
Patrick O'Hearn
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Takashi Suzuki
Thierry David
Tron Syversen
Vangelis
Zeus Faber

OK - some may think all here NOT ambient but it's what I think. Just a sampling from my library. Keep listening!

Nice list Bohicaman.

Here's one of my favorites, the soundtrack is excellent.