To quote myself:
"For example, a whole lot of "beatless ambient" records that have been released during the last decade are actually closely associated to the Black Metal movement, or to industrial".
Seeing it appear only in the context of techno - or its variants - is very shortsighted. Many "beatless ambient" artists do not even want to see themselves being linked to techno in any context (many loathe it, rather). The original comment by Yatmandu only referred to "beatleass ambient" in his own post, I responded to that expression used as it was put in too narrow context.
OT: As far as the ambient records associated with black metal and industrial go, it's far from a small movement. It's quite obvious that something like that would escape the radar of most folks who post on this forum, but there's been more Dark Ambient released during this decade than anyone could possible have time to listen through. Industrial artists were making ambient records long before anyone had even thought about associating Ibiza with electronic music. There are also ambient tracks included on.
I would say, most industrial records released these days. The first ambient works by black metal artists were done around 1992-1993, so they came later on. Releases by labels such as Cold Meat Industry, Cold Spring and Loki Foundation seem to attract both audiences - there's tons of CD-R / tape and free myspace material around as well. Some would link my own more recent musical escapades to this genre.
Back on topic: This probably underlines how people are more inclined to interpret certain concepts strongly from their own immediate experience: when someone says "ambient" my own first associations would be Eno type of material and the dark ambient -end of things. When someone simply says "synths" they are inclined to think of it primarily in the context that they personally favour - I surely don't hear a 303 sequence or a Virus trance lead as the first thing in my head when I hear that word. Likewise, "disco" to some refers primarily to Moroder or something similar, not the more popular form of soul / funk music from the late 70s mixed with an open hihat.
By the way, wikipedia articles for genres are pretty notorious. I wouldn't link them in order to try to prove anything, although doing a page search for the word "ambient" on that specific page link only resulted in two hits for "ambient techno" and one additional on the references. What was the intention of providing this link again?
Of course, techno has had a big influence on the interest of analog synths, but people interested in these genres have usually a very narrow-minded view of the history of the use of electronics in music. I've listened through academic presentations where they have linked even the goddamn theremin pretty efforlessly to dance music because it was "basically the first electronic instrument". Nice.
