Dark ambient is a genre of downtempo music. Brian Eno's original vision of ambient music as unobtrusive musical wallpaper, later fused with warm house rhythms and given playful qualities by The Orb in the 1990s, found its opposite in the style known as dark ambient. Populated by a wide assortment of personalities, dark ambient features toned-down or entirely missing beats with unsettling passages of keyboards, eerie samples, and treated guitar effects. Dark ambient is intentionally disturbing, unlike ambient, which seeks to soothe and relax the listener.

Like most styles related in some way to electronic/dance music of the 1990s, it's a very nebulous term; many artists enter or leave the style with each successive release.

More successful artists of the style, who have made the genre well-known, include such projects as Lustmord, Shinjuku Thief, and Robert Rich.

Other artists in the genre include: Ashtorath, Dreamstate, Darkened Soul, Liquid Morphine, Penitent and Sephiroth

Ambient
Ambient house - Illbient - New Age - Dark ambient
Other electronic music genres
Ambient | Breakbeat | Electronica | Electronic art music | House | Techno | Trance | Industrial | Synth pop