Ambient Music in the Age of Distraction
In the busy times of the digital age, ambient music has emerged as the soundtrack of those seeking calm and focus. In recent years, the genre has seen higher levels of streaming than ever, which can be largely attributed to the rise of mood playlists, or playlists themed around a specific mood or taste. Due to its propensity to seamlessly fade into the background, ambient music has proven to be an ideal fit for placement on work, relaxation and sleep playlists and thus become an integral part of the growing background music industry, which was valued at 1.5 billion dollars in 2022. Revenue generated from editorial playlists has also become proportionally higher than any other source of income for ambient artists. Between 2016 and now, top ambient artists have seen notable growth in their inclusion on Spotify editorial playlists.
While it is hard to discount the financial value for ambient artists who are benefitting from an increase in regular listenership, perhaps it is also worth asking: if people are only listening to ambient music while working, in transit, or as the “save progress” sound while playing video games, to what extent are they engaging with the music? Unlike genres like hip-hop or rock which are relatively attention-commanding by nature, ambient is “music that is as ignorable as it is interesting,” in the words of ambient pioneer Brian Eno. Is it possible that as a result of modern listening habits, the ‘ignorable’ elements of ambient are outweighing appreciation of the “interesting” ones?
Chartmetric spoke to ambient musician William Basinski, who noted his belief that many people use ambient music as an antidote to a common problem. “So many people have all this stuff going around in their heads all the time, what I like to call feedback loops, oftentimes bad feedback loops. And they like to have something distracting them from that.”
What is Ambient?
“It’s sort of a different kind of silence,” described William to Chartmetric about his conception of ambient. “You’re in another world. I call it the bubble of eternity.”
Before its modern founding as a musical genre in the 1970s, the term ambient was first used more than one hundred years ago by biologist Jakob von Uexküll in order to describe “the spatial adjacency of objects or organisms,” or the way in which a living creature is reflected in its environment and vice versa. In the 1990s, French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari also explored ambient through the concept of immanence, referring to humanity’s undivided relationship with the world and its objects. Ambient also has roots in visual arts and architecture, formats that strive to achieve a certain subtlety or seamlessness to the tone of the work’s environment.
The first appearance of ambient in music culture is often attributed to Erik Satie, whose concept of “furniture music,” or sounds designed as a part of an environment, led to the 1917 recording of “Tapisserie en fer forgé” (wrought-iron tapestry).
Innovative classical composer John Cage has also been cited for his contributions to modern ambient, including in 1952 with the highly controversial “4’33”.” “4’33” is a silent composition intended to highlight ambient sound, such as the sounds of a confused audience, as an experience also constituting music. It was deemed controversial due to the fact that many audience members ‘felt cheated’ by the absence of composed sounds. Despite decades of fielding off critics, the track has seen a recent increase in popularity and has more than quintupled its Spotify streams over the past three years.
Contemporary artists have since continued to expand the ambient philosophy, such as Lawrence English in his manifesto-esque 12 Notes Towards A Future Ambient, which details prospects for ambient as a musical practice, including descriptors such as “a music of lived moments,” “never only music for escapism, [but rather] a zone for participation” and “never finished, an experiential process of becoming.”
In his corresponding essay on modern ambient, English, the composer behind recent album release Selene alongside pianist Akira Kosemura, also describes his belief that ambient as a genre has recently lost its way in its middle age, as it has in the past with its prior misassociation with New Age music. “Genres, like human beings, can undergo periods where direction and clarity are lacking.”
While a singular definition of ambient proves evasive, a collection of associations emerge: spatiality, subtlety, presence, personal power, environment, and connection. Perhaps one of the most distinctive descriptions of ambient music differentiating it from other genres comes from music journalist Simon Reynolds:
“Ambient is un-rock'n'roll because it's built up by layers, whereas rock is about jamming: instruments fit together like cogs, forming a rhythmic engine that kicks your ass. Ambient is kind to your ass. It's sofa rock, Erik Satie's 'furniture music.'”
Regardless of a precise meaning, it is evident that ambient has more to offer than the blanket term of background music suggests.
The Influence of Music for Airports
Brian Eno, who was the first to coin the term ambient as a musical genre, famously arrived at the inspiration for Ambient 1: Music for Airports on a Sunday morning in the Cologne, Germany airport in 1977, while waiting for a flight. “The light was beautiful, everything was beautiful,” Eno told Smithsonian Magazine in 2012, “except they were playing awful music. They spend hundreds of millions of pounds…on everything. Except the music.” It was this that compelled him to begin composing music for public environments, which resulted in the groundbreaking album.
When Music for Airports was eventually installed in LaGuardia Airport in 1980, it was met with its fair share of critics. “It sounds like funeral music,” one terminal worker said. Other early reviewers reported the album as “bland,” with Michael Bloom from Rolling Stone calling it “unfocused…aesthetic white noise, and NME’s Lynden Barber suggesting that the “white-tiled atmosphere” and “simply ignorable” sound could have merited the title “Music for Toilets.”
It was not long however before Music for Airports found an audience of admirers, and other artists began to draw inspiration from the seminal album, even thirty years later. In 2010, influential English electronic group The Black Dog released Music for Real Airports, an album derived from 200 hours of field recordings from real airports captured on the band’s smartphones. It was performed to a sold-out audience in the same year.
“Airports promise travel, exploration and excitement but endlessly break that promise with their stale, tedious pressure,” says the album’s Bandcamp page about the project. “This record is not necessarily a comfortable listen. But it captures the spectrum of emotions stirred by airports.”
Despite warnings of potential discomfort from the band, the ambient album has made its way onto a fair share of playlists, with additions continuing even 14 years after its release.
Following Music for Airports, Eno released Ambient 4: On Land in 1982, which included a note on the back of the album which explained an alternative immersive listening method for those who were unable to afford a “quad” system setup (the precursor to surround sound). Eno suggested that listeners attach a third speaker behind them to form a triangle with two other standard speakers, in order to create the ideal ambient listening experience on a budget.
Small details like Eno’s speaker guide served to further engrain ambient as an intentional listening philosophy experience, beyond its classification as a musical genre.
A Conversation with William Basinski
“I’m a blue baby. I was born with the blue. I have a melancholic tendency, but thank god I have a sense of humor,” William told Chartmetric.
The influential ambient artist, known for his melancholic compositions and analog work with tape loops, has been active since the late seventies. His big break was in 2001 with The Disintegration Loops, a four-volume album, the first of which came to fruition whilst attempting to restore old tape loops to a digital format. During the process the tapes began to crumble, leaving behind a haunting recording, the release of which coincided with the fall of the Twin Towers. William dedicated the album to the victims of the attacks, and an image of the New York City skyline after the collapse was used as the cover artwork. In 2016, Pitchfork named the four volumes as the third-best ambient record of all time.
“Disintegration Loops took off and gave the critics and everybody somewhere to go. So the destruction of my early work launched my career after 20 years,” described William. “There’s a lot more people interested in [ambient] now. What do they say — the rising tide raises all boats.”
William has since released dozens more studio albums, as well as collaborated with many artists including Lawrence English, Richard Chartier, and Janek Schaefer. He is also a member of the electronic group SPARKLE DIVISION. William’s new record September 23 comes out later this year.
Three of William’s tracks can be found on Spotify’s Ambient Essentials, an editorial playlist with over 203k followers. The track "dlp 1.1.3" has maintained a position within the top ten since it was added to the playlist in 2021.
When asked about the difference between the format of Disintegration Loops between Spotify and Bandcamp (on Bandcamp, the recordings are available by volume, with DLP 1.1 at about an hour’s length, whereas on Spotify they are segmented into individual tracks), William noted it was done by his record company in order to boost listenership. “Spotify and YouTube don’t pay much, and they’re trying to start paying less.”
William also described his process during live performances, which involves working with tape loops in real time, which can be unpredictable. “Some of them are 40 years old. You never know what’s going to happen with tape loops. You’ve got to be really careful, as you don’t want them to get chewed up in the machine. And it’s [a different show] every time.”
Each performance also includes a detail-oriented sound check, as many venues’ modern equipment is not ideal for the medium. “A lot of places have big subwoofers. We just don’t use subwoofers…anything that’s coming out [of them] is tape rumble and all kinds of horrible noise.”
William is also known for his lively energy and talkative spirit on stage. “I always talk when I get on stage. [I like to] let the audience know I’m a human being, make everyone comfortable and know that we’re all here together, that we’re going to just chill out.”
Ambient in the Age of Distraction
Considering ambient’s rich and varied history, maybe it is unsurprising that some of its accomplishments as a genre have faded into the woodwork. It could be argued that acceptance of the manner in which people choose to listen is in fact in alignment with the philosophy of the genre. However, in its tradition as a listening practice that stems from attunement with one’s environment and appreciation of subtleties, what chance does it have in an attention economy that rewards the fast-paced, flashy, and distracting? Should the irony be addressed, that a musical form designed to connect us to the surrounding world is being used to disassociate from desk jobs and doing the dishes?
As Lawrence suggests, ambient is facing a sort of crossroads in the age of distraction. By embracing ambient’s roots in and sensitivity towards “a radical and relational space,” musicians and listeners alike can begin to reconnect with the genre. He models this well in his recent Instagram post concluding his recent tour: “I watched lava spill from the mouth of a volcano while surrounded by 1000 singing frogs…”
Others may consider engagement with the genre to be a matter of perspective. When asked about his thoughts on the modern condition of ambient, William mainly spoke about his appreciation of how his fans benefit from his music in their own unique ways.
“They tell me about how it helped them during a very difficult period of their life, or when their mother was dying, these kinds of things. Or people studying in university or writing their thesis, and [my music has allowed them to] fall into a place where they can focus.”
He also expressed his gratitude for his fans’ awareness around supporting creators financially.
“[My fans] are some of the most smart, most beautiful people I’ve ever met in the whole world. When they get out of school and get a job, they can go to Bandcamp and support the work. And they do.”
Visualizations by Nicki Camberg and cover image by Crasianne Tirado. Data as of Aug. 23, 2024.