The Ambient Pandemic

This last year there has been two pandemics underway.

One far quieter than the other – creeping in as slowly as First Light.

Ambient.

Touching every corner of the music world from country, in William Tyler’s ‘New Vanitas’, to jazz, in M Sage and the Fuubutsushi Boys’ seasonal drops. Thankfully these are shining examples. Thankfully these aren’t coasting on a single droning note.

M Sage's 'Fuubutsushi' series (L-R): Fuubutsushi; Setsubun; Yamawarau; Natsukashii.

Not that single droning notes, as an avid fanboy of Celer and Pallette, bother me all that much.

Maybe we’re in need of soothing. Maybe ambient artists have too much time. Does anyone care about the endless stream of music the genre puts out? Has anyone ever cared about the amount of ambient music that’s ever been released at any one time?

In all fairness, the genre’s mastermind, Brian Eno, even said ambient was intended to be as ignorable as it was interesting. Perhaps people are now just embracing that ideology even more.

With artists such as aforementioned Pallette releasing nigh on ten albums this year alone and labels such as Past Inside the Present putting out more than they ever seemed to have done, maybe ambient is simply testing this ethos to the extreme: artists and labels don’t care how many people their lilting tones reach; it’ll be put out in bucket-loads regardless.

I would never want to put anyone off of ambient. I would never want my favourite bedtime artists to be perturbed from sending out more gentle waves my way in future.

As a simple barometer of just how prevalent ambient is in the current musical landscape, I could give a glance into my own 2021 albums of the year list thus far which, at the time of writing, stands at no fewer than 130 albums. Of these, nearly 60 are ambient albums. Of these, 8 are Pallette albums. I have no problem with that.

All seven albums released by Pallette at the time of publishing this. All brilliant. Fall asleep to these records.

Although my tone might sound derogatory, I would just like to reassure that ambient is one of my favourites. I could never tire of the genre. I love the repetition. That, in fact, is one of the keys to successful ambient for me. Ambient should, most often, feel enveloping and familiar. Its intention should be to settle and to soothe.

Miles Davis at the Newport Jazz Festival, 1969: in July he would release his best album, In A Silent Way; a record not given enough credit for its foreshadowing of ambient to come.

I see no problem with nearly half a list of albums of this year being so filled to the brim with one genre. I’d simply like to know why there has been such an upshot.

Is it laziness? Is it ambient artists resting on their laurels, using the time that lockdowns afforded them to crank out content more hotly than KISS from ’76-78?

Who knows? Honestly, who cares? Maybe ambient is, indeed, just there: ignorable; never intended to be subject to such scrutiny.

King of Impossible Cool, Brian Eno (1975).

Pictured recording Discreet Music.

Ambient was officially born.