the postpandemic surge of interest in ambient & new age

I'm sure it's already been referred to many times across threads, most recently in pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

I know that there's a huge postpandemic surge of interest in ambient & new age, but every non-rock instrumental album can't be "ambient".

― waste of compute (One Eye Open), 28. februar 2024 14:43 (six minutes ago)

and Rolling Jazz Thread 2024

I'm all for beauty, but this current wave of chilled out ambient jazz just feels aimless and banal... over reliance on "vibes" but not much substance... I'm sure it's nice to put on while you do yoga, but Don Cherry it ain't!

Floating Points has a lot to answer for.

― Composition 40b (Stew), 28. februar 2024 14:40

the Andre 3000 album is obv symptomatic as is perhaps the resurgence of charles lloyd

are there good articles exploring the trend?

is it a streaming economy thing, adjacent to lo-fi study beats / rain sound playlists?

It has to be a streaming thing--Eno's top track by far is "An Ending (Ascent)" which happens to be the first track on Spotify's Ambient Essentials playlist.

Definitely New Age was being rehabbed before Covid, Laaraji and Beverly-Glenn Copeland were being feted almost 10 years ago.

I think video games have something to do with it too. At least a generation of kids grew up listening to ambient Minecraft soundscapes.

there was a good piece about this in pitchfork actually, couple years ago: Inside the Ambient Music Streaming Boom

for the record i'm very fine with the current wave of chilled out ambient jazz, but just annoyed at the slippage of "ambient" as a term to just mean "it gives vibes". cant fault labels & artists for stretching to use a very popular genre tag in marketing contexts tbh, but dismayed to see that usage uncritically filter into reviews & listeners everyday vocabularies

i don't know how you're defining "ambient" but the ambient electronic music of the '90s (e.g. klf's chill out) was fairly different from eno-era ambient and was already basically "it gives vibes." the battle over the pure definition of the genre was lost decades ago.

The popularity of mellow vibes on streaming platforms predates the pandemic. I'm reminded of this Liz Pelly essay from 2017:

Spotify loves “chill” playlists: they’re the purest distillation of its ambition to turn all music into emotional wallpaper. They’re also tied to what its algorithm manipulates best: mood and affect. Note how the generically designed, nearly stock photo images attached to these playlists rely on the selfsame clickbait-y tactics of content farms, which are famous for attacking a reader’s basest human moods and instincts. Only here the goal is to fit music snugly into an emotional regulation capsule optimized for maximum clicks: “chill.out.brain,” “Ambient Chill,” “Chill Covers.” “Piano in the Background” is one of the most aptly titled; “in the background” could be added to the majority of Spotify playlists.

As an industry insider once explained to me, digital strategists have identified “lean back listening” as an ever more popular Spotify-induced phenomenon. It turns out that playlists have spawned a new type of music listener, one who thinks less about the artist or album they are seeking out, and instead connects with emotions, moods and activities, where they just pick a playlist and let it roll: “Chillin’ On a Dirt Road,” “License to Chill,” “Cinematic Chill Out.” They’re all there.

These algorithmically designed playlists, in other words, have seized on an audience of distracted, perhaps overworked, or anxious listeners whose stress-filled clicks now generate anesthetized, algorithmically designed playlists. One independent label owner I spoke with has watched his records’ physical and digital sales decline week by week. He’s trying to play ball with the platform by pitching playlists, to varying effect. “The more vanilla the release, the better it works for Spotify. If it’s challenging music? Nah,” he says, telling me about all of the experimental, noise, and comparatively aggressive music on his label that goes unheard on the platform. “It leaves artists behind. If Spotify is just feeding easy music to everybody, where does the art form go? Is anybody going to be able to push boundaries and break through to a wide audience anymore?”

So it was Spotify that made experimental and noise music unpopular.

^like ugly music has never tried to be ambient sound

I didn't read the essay but the block quote from Pelly annoys me.

how long are we going to demand that artists recreate the armature of a 2 sided disc that isn't there

conventions like that & "music has to be the centerpiece" should always be questioned and challenged

It turns out that playlists have spawned a new type of music listener, one who thinks less about the artist or album they are seeking out, and instead connects with emotions, moods and activities, where they just pick a playlist and let it roll:

that... sounds awesome?

one step closer to permeable, interactive sound environments as a format

resurgence of interest in eg david tudor no coincidence imo

jaymc otm about this being older than the pandemic tho, feel like the backlash against unobtrusive music is a couple of years old at least

i feel like that light in the attic private press new age compilation is on this timeline somewhere, it came out in 2013.

Yeah, in 2014 Pitchfork had an article on New Age music

https://pitchfork.com/features/secondhands/9312-new-age/

Forget the crystals, the mandalas, the inner sanctum: The much-maligned genre known as new age now appeals to many who once may have identified as punks.

yeah i mean it was like 2009/2010 at the latest when other music started hyping laraaji & iasos reissues

As with everything, it depends what circles you travel in. For some people this is a 2020-and-after thing, for others it's been something they've been enthralled or annoyed by since 2010. I've always been aware of it without paying it any serious attention — my idea of relaxing is Sunn O))) on low volume, or Morton Feldman — but it's kinda like how when I and thousands of other grown-out-of-punk types discovered free jazz in the 90s, only to get heckled by graybeards at shows. "Man, you shoulda been around to see Ayler at Slugs in 1965!" Yeah, thanks for that tip, grandpa. I'm 25.

well 'when did it start' is significant re the claim this is an offshoot of tumblr/tik-tok style "curation of vibes"

ambient music has never really been unfashionable or uncool as far as i remember, but new age music was def "corny"; it's overtly emotionally manipulative, because fundamentally it is music about change

thinking of suzanne ciani audio interview where she talks about her interest in synthesis, not in the color of sound but in the way it evolves over time

Had hoped to see her last Saturday here but alas, funding/timing.

Having interviewed Steve Roach for something upcoming (more on this in the very near future), he had some thoughts about his early paths to acceptance vis-a-vis the emerging New Age subculture in the late 70s/early 80s, though he clearly was on more of a 'I'm just exploring my interests no matter the label I get stuck with' mode -- explains how the Projekt/goth connection happened.

All these things are true, the ongoing reclamation of new age & ambient, Spotify encouraging 'functional' wallpaper music, and the pandemic accelerating these trends.

I know the pandemic definitely shifted my listening, although of course I was listening to only the most refined hipster shit and would never use an algorithm or click on a 'chill vibes' playlist.

Also I always think of the L.A. beat scene in relation to this (including Leaving Records who have an explicit interest in the new age revival, particularly the psychedelic/meditation/spiritual dimension). Seeing in real time the explosion of music with sharp edges and personality getting gradually sanded down, from Soulection to "lo-fi hip-hop" to beats that sound like Teebs running on ads on the gas station pump.

lotta this ties into general internet lifestyle techno utopian stuff as well, there's a good amount of overlap between the la ambient world and crypto ppl

but new age music was def "corny"; it's overtly emotionally manipulative, because fundamentally it is music about change

can you say more about this deflatormouse, the "music about change" part in particular?

https://i.imgur.com/17CcFcq.jpeg

my youngest kid was definitely listening to *lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to* when he was younger. but that was before the pandemic.

I think there's room for both and it needn't be an either/or situation. There's plenty of good skronk about (current/historical) and I'm really interested in the scope for more ambient & ECM style jazz. It'll burn itself out soon enough. Or it won't.

It's interesting how Covid has become a kind of useful idiot for codifying trends and organising currents in behaviour that pre-date the pandemic, often by decades.

Love jazzy modal ambient, glad it’s having a moment. Hate weepy sentimental “ambient”

"new age" is a cool ass genre name imho. like everything i came at it via this board lol.

kind of interested in tracking my own (slowly) increasing tolerance for music i would once have found repellent - is like Windham Hill audiophile-friendly “just great players” tasteful muzak redeemed yet? I go there sometimes and still find the schmalzy positivity vibes tough going - but every time i try i find the instrumentation and recording quality just a little more beguiling - i guess it is partly to do with being able to dispassionately view these things as artefacts of a historical moment - i remember my dad used to play new age dolphin-y shit to relax and it actually made me writhe like a vampire in sunlight

These chill-out/lo-fi study beats playlists just feel like the modern equivalent of the "beautiful music"/easy listening/Muzak radio stations that were popular in the 60s and 70s.

Also some of those YouTube videos of department store or grocery store background music from the 1970s are pretty good!

the difference is kids in high school are listening to the beautiful music and not senior citizens raised on lawrence welk.

ambient can be all kinds of weird. so many different sensibilities to express through it, like any genre. i remember when ilm had like a hundred threads started by tuomas that had "ambient" in the title that were about 90s chillout haha. i came at it through like 90s electronic stuff and the kranky label and post-rock. don't mind my grandpa-ing.

I've been really gravitating toward the post-ECM Scandinavian jazz end of things, mostly documented here: Thread of Jakob Bro (Danish jazz guitarist, maker of floating minimal ballads)

oo that thread looks cool, thank you

Would rather study to lofi house

re lofi study beats

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HcFMUvwtOE

can you say more about this deflatormouse, the "music about change" part in particular?

as in changing your mind, changing yourself- mainly i was saying that unlike a lot of ambient music, it's actually very dramatic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HcFMUvwtOE

the way a track like this builds^
how much more ridiculous and intense can you make it and still have it be soft wallpaper music?

where i imagine a lot of the resistance to this music came from, it's very self-aware and directs attention inward because of the way that it modulates.

i don't have a ton of stuff to add, sorry to disappoint lol

you know what's funny? i have been running myself ragged here and there for work and getting ready for this record show and i got up insanely early this morning so this afternoon i decided to take a nap in my little office in the back of my store - maria was up front dealing with people - and i turned the lights off and put a coat over my head and played harold budd's avalon sutra - the title of which i of course had to sing to the tune of "babyon sisters" before napping - and it worked like a charm. i woke up at 3pm feeling refreshed and ready to keep going. and then i went on the ilm and here was this thread. i never do stuff like that. must be in the air.

okay, that might not be that funny, but its thread-appropriate.

i finally got a super-clean original copy of this. so good. hard to find too.

https://www.discogs.com/master/239321-Edward-Larry-Gordon-Celestial-Vibration

In our local paper:

How a Roosevelt teacher uses sound baths to aid her students: Tara Zinger wanted to ease students’ heightened stress from the pandemichttps://t.co/HOqCuUGaFR

— Wednesday Journal (@OakPark) February 29, 2024

see that larajj album does not chill me at all, feels like I’m constantly banging into the walls of the universe which are made of vibraphone mallets

I agree that the best ambient music does not sounds self aware or intentional… maybe

i am feeling synergistic! i was just going to mention to y'all that my pal jamie bunny who was in my brother's band bunnybrains for years runs an awesome space in an old church in brattleboro vermont with a huuuuuuge pipe organ and she has been having really trippy shows there with people like laraaji and william basinski AND THEN i was going to mention that the old new age thread on ilm is really good for recs from ilxor milton parker and i just looked at their calendar and milton is playing at epsilon in june! what a world i live in.

i saw an awesome show there that was roger miller + william parker. talk about reverberations. they do the live score silent movie thing too which is all the rage with you kids. suzanne ciani played there recently.

https://www.epsilonspires.org/

Interesting thread. I am currently at a poetry/ambient/noise minifest that I co-organized with a friend. Someone just read a poem about this very topic— it wasn’t very good but I feel weirdly similar to to skott— who knew this would come up so much in one day.

so i decide to read last night before bed and i pick up the Albert Ayler biography i bought the other day and within five pages Albert Ayler IS IN A MARCHING BAND WITH HAROLD BUDD!!!

spooky...

add lil wayne's upcoming guided meditation record to the mix ...

https://hypebeast.com/2024/2/lil-jon-guided-meditation-album-reports

thanks for linking that Pelly piece. i went and saw Khruangbin in 2022, was *stunned* at how many people were there to see them (and had traveled 3+ hours to see them), and have been trying to figure out how they got so big ever since. i had theories, but that block quote above goes a long way toward crystalizing it for me.

um Lil JON not Lil Wayne. very different

oops, lol yes

More like oops, lol YEA-YUH

Inhale deeply....
Let your consciousness expand from the windows to the walls....

Okay I'll post this here because I've been waiting to share this news! My debut piece for The Wire is an extensive interview feature with the mighty Steve Roach, so if that means I'm adding to the interest...

https://www.thewire.co.uk/issues/482

very very cool, ned! you have your finger on the pulse of the zeigeist's something something! i will totally seek out that issue and buy and read.

not my kind of music, but I'll read it, 'cause it's Ned!

i hope you asked him about his contribution the 1979 album by the group Moebius. i just bought the record yesterday at the record show. from 1979. this is one of his tracks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV2ItS8EO60

No time for it but if we'd gone even deeper I definitely would have asked!

curse god for making me this way but I instantly recognised that thumbnail as sourced from the paperback cover of Tanith Lee's The Electric Forest

Inhale deeply....
Let your consciousness expand from the windows to the walls....

― m0stly clean (Slowsquatch), Monday, March 4, 2024 6:48 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lollllll