Music is an essential part of almost every form of media, and it permeates all that we do and create in such a way that it would be unrecognizable without its existence. This fact is usually acknowledged situationally, such as when an art gallery is accompanied by live music with a certain genre associated with the works’ time and subject matter or when a dramatic film scene has a gorgeous orchestral accompaniment. However, one genre of music forms the backbone for musical addition to other media that not only goes unnoticed by the average person when they consume these other forms of media but is also disregarded as a form of art. This genre of composition is ambient music, and it is one of the most introspective forms of art there is.
To understand the influence and beauty of ambient music, we should look back at its history. It was preceded by a different genre called “furniture music” that was created by Eric Satie, as he says, “a music which will be a part of the noises of the environment and will take them into consideration.” This is one of the foundational principles of early ambient, creating beauty in background noises. The term “ambient music” was coined by Brian Eno in 1978 when he released the first ambient album titled “Ambient 1: Music for Airports.” The album was characterized by reverbed piano and incremental changes that occurred over tracks spanning ten to twenty minutes in length. This sparked a trend in ambient music of exceedingly long runtimes on songs and albums, and it is not uncommon for a record to be anywhere from 2-3 hours in length. Eno defines what makes ambient beautiful exceedingly well in the liner notes for his album, “Ambient music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.” This genre is one of a kind in that it is incredibly adaptable and can be listened to actively or passively, and many people who discredit it as a valid medium of art do not make efforts to truly sit down and appreciate the complexity in the simplicity of its structuring.
Ambient is not only a phenomenal form of media to listen to by itself, but it also accompanies other forms of art more effectively and frequently than any other genre of music. One of the most dramatic scenes in recent movie history, the black hole scene at the end of Interstellar, is accentuated with a phenomenal ambient composition by none other than Hans Zimmer that takes melodies from early parts of the film’s soundtrack and flips them on their head to make them less whimsical and more soul-crushing due to their new context. Another notable contribution to ambient in film would be the soundtrack to Ex Machina, which is able to captivate the vast variety of moods and emotions displayed throughout the movie’s runtime while still having a certain eerie air that constantly shadows the movie’s ambiguous and ominous conclusion. It is immoral to dismiss any form of art as irrelevant without truly giving it a fair chance, and the vast plethora of diversely talented ambient musicians fall victim to this unjustified scrutiny more than any other genre of music. Before you call ambient simple and unimaginative, truly take the time to immerse yourself in the different soundscapes the genre has to offer. I can guarantee that you will change your mind and understand its deep significance in modern art.
