15. Doc Platter
He has the introspective, “we all belong to the land” vibe that meshes pretty well with certain subtypes of dark ambient, and is well-positioned to create a YouTube channel called “Doc’s Ambient Montana Multiverse” or something, but once Maddy Platter got wind that he was doing something that didn’t involve livestock or currying favor with the Grammersdorfs, she put a stop to it REAL quick.
14. Rad Thibodeaux
As a self-proclaimed genius, Rad could do anything he wants and succeed spectacularly, and the pretentiousness of dark ambient definitely seems like it would be in his wheelhouse, but in the end he’s just going to be Chane Wassanasong’s manager until Ted has him beaten up by three thugs in an alley, “Cape Fear” style, for embezzling from Chane’s world tour income. Unlike Max Cady, Rad gets laid out hard, and it’s awfully hard to sustain an Em7 chord for 15 straight minutes with broken fingers.
13. Clark Peters
Clark feels deep-seated rage most of the time, whether due to his terrible hairdo or the fact that his school principal assumes he’s illiterate. And though he sometimes takes it out on his classmates, once he heard Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports” (his mom has an impeccable record collection), he realized that channeling your turbulent emotions into ambient music is even better than bullying.
12. Carl Moss
Carl’s experience as a public school administrator in Texas has basically turned him into a borderline-nihilist, but when he heard Blood Incantation’s “Timewave Zero,” he knew he’d found his calling. He can’t get his subscriber total into double digits to save his life, but he doesn’t even care. Making dark ambient is the only thing keeping him going.
11. Kahn Souphanousinphone
Usually, Kahn’s interests are limited to what will get his daughter into Harvard or get him into Nine Rivers Country Club, but there are some music genres, like redneck rock and dive-bar karaoke renditions of adult contemporary, that just grab his attention and completely change his worldview. He’ll keep a channel going for a year and a half, buying increasingly sophisticated equipment and getting more and more experimental until Minh points out that he’s been neglecting his job in favor of his music channel. He’ll brush this off at first, but as soon as she says “I don’t think Ted Wassanasong would like this,” he’ll abandon ambient music forever.
10. Chuck Mangione
He might have sold his soul to Mega-Lo-Mart, but when he records a sparse version of “Feels So Good,” slows it waaaaay down, adds a whole lot of phase-shift and reverb, and breaks out the high-quality weed that any jazz musician has easy access to (even in Texas), he feels like he’s slightly redeemed himself.
9. Cane Skretteburg
When this whole pop punk thing dries up, you know Cane is going to reinvent himself as a soulful, mysterious, dark ambient musician. You can’t go into your 40s trying to make it on a body of work whose most memorable moment is the repeated chant of “FUN CENTER FUN CENTER FUN CENTER FUN CENTER.” Cane might like to think he’s punk as fuck for life, but there’s just no way he doesn’t do a drastic pivot once his drummer ODs from huffing paintball fumes.
8. Reverend Stroup
Arlen’s most open-minded Methodist minister (except for when it comes to people trying to reserve pews, HANK) had the ingenious idea to add flanger and low-speed tremolo where most people would do a simple low-key phaser effect, and it’s made her the toast of the YouTube dark ambient community. She was invited to keynote a conference on instrumental home recording techniques, but alienated the entire lo-fi ambient community by insisting they try her homemade lutefisk and she’s been a controversial figure in the scene ever since.
7. Luanne Platter
Luanne recorded her Manger Babies show for YouTube and some prankster re-cut it to run at 1/10 the speed (mostly because he wanted to see her cleavage in slow motion, but we digress) and the resulting audio was some of the best dark ambient music this side of Tangerine Dream. Luanne doesn’t understand why this video has 100 million views, but the AdSense revenue brings in a whole lot more than cutting hair, so she’s fine with it.
6. Lucky Kleinschmidt
Lucky has a zen attitude and a lot of free time thanks to the settlement he got after his slip-and-fall at Mega-Lo-Mart, so his participation in the dark ambient scene was really more a matter of “when” not “if.” And since his wife Luanne is already an established star, he could fart into a microphone, add reverb, and get 5K views without breaking a sweat.
5. Bobby Hill
Bobby’s previous experience performing music was with a group whose sound could best be described as Limp Bizkit But For Evangelical Youth Group Kids, but then he stumbled upon a copy of Steve Hillage’s Rainbow Dome Musick at a yard sale—he thought the cover was pretty—and something about it spoke to him. Plus, the kid is a natural-born YouTuber, so his success was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
4. Connie Souphanousinphone
Connie started out contributing to Bobby’s recordings (see #5) as a mild form of rebellion against her overbearing father, but quickly came into her own and began recording violin-centric dark ambient that was, according to YouTube commenters, “an absolute game-changer.” She and Bobby are now fierce rivals in the genre, and are also married.
3. Bill Dauterieve
Bill needed something to channel his profound loneliness and depression into, and dark ambient was a natural choice. His most popular track, by far, is a morose 20-minute synth composition that features an eerie spoken-word performance of Poe’s “The Raven.” Bill tried his best not to start sobbing every time he said the word “Lenore”; fortunately, his legions of fans assume that that’s all part of the artistry.
2. Dale Gribble
Dale already has the synth/keyboard rig, not to mention an innate understanding of how to manipulate YouTube algorithms, so he’s successful from the get-go. He also realizes that dark ambient is the perfect place to insert subliminal messages about all his favorite conspiracy theories, which almost immediately makes him a cause célèbre with the Trump crowd. Fortunately, Dale is a good person, so he records a video of himself telling his fans that “MAGA is the feces produced when shame eats too much stupidity.” He loses almost all of his subs, and couldn’t care less.
1. Peggy Hill
OK, here’s what happened: Peggy knows all about Hank’s love song channel (see #29), and one night she opens one of his Audacity files and tries to figure out a way to change the vocals to be about “Sweet Lady Peg” instead of “Sweet Lady Propane.” Unfortunately, she accidentally slows down the tempo by 5,000% and, while trying to undo that, adds a bunch of delay and reverb effects. In a hilarious comedy of errors, this version gets uploaded to Hank’s channel and absolutely blows up. Thousands of views in the first few hours. Hank is baffled by his sudden success, while Peggy just keeps muttering that “this is Randy Travis all over again.”
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