I'm a sucker for good pads.
I'm looking for something that may or may not have a beat to it, since I'm fine with both cases (altho beatless can be less interesting if the artist isn't creative enough). Ambient music with alot of revolving pads but not just plain sustained pads, rather unique pads that change over time.. Maybe that's asking too much, but I guess what I'm looking for are artists that are really creative with their pads, or that at least use alot of them while they seemlessly melt with each other.
Non-commercial music is welcome, but typically I've found that it's not as much creative when it comes to pads. Just pastin a bunch of different pads with each other doesn't ensure the music will be interesting to listen to, so I need something that will not neccesarily bore me out at the first listen (like the average drone stuff thats out there).
There are pads in psybient/electronic music aswell, but they're typically set in the intro's and very short. A recent example is VA Future Memmories - Track 7: Snakestyle - Neutral Buoyancy - it has a really sweet pad in the beginning. A good example would be Carbon Based Lifeforms - Gryning which has the most awesome pads I've heard in a while - it has a nice beat to it aswell.