Not all music for chilling out falls under the heading of trip hop. In that swnse, the term ‘ambient’ suits better. Its emphasis is more on the creation of an atmosphere than on message, melody or rhythm. Ambient has a calming effect or brings you in a contemplative mood. Pioneers of this style include Jean-Michel Jarre, Brian Eno, Vangelis, Mike Oldfield and the band Kraftwerk.
Listen here to ‘Oxygene’, a composition by Jean-Michel Jarre from 1975
Brian Eno is credited with putting ‘ambient’ on the map in 1978 with the album Ambient 1: Music for Airports[1]. For him, ambient is a style that remains exciting and unpredictable even as background music. Ambient music aims to create peace and a space for reflection and meditation. You can listen to it in various ways, ranging from ignorance to becoming captivated. Listen to this album here.
Variants
Ambient has several variants, which I shall briefly outline:
New age
‘New age’ refers to forms of ‘ambient’ that are explicitly composed to support meditation and relaxation exercises. Consequently, this music has a repetitive dynamic and texture and avoids rapid changes in tempo, rhythm and timbre. Compositions are minimalist in design and instrumental rather than vocal. Common instruments include piano, strings and flute, often emulated by a synthesizer. It is mainly used in alternative medicine, yoga and meditation.
Drone
‘Drone’ is a minimalist form of ‘ambient’ music in which the emphasis is on the use of sustained sounds, notes or clusters of notes, known as drones. This form of music typically features long compositions with relatively little harmonic variation. La Monte Young, one of the pioneers in the 1960s, defined ‘drone’ as “the sustained tone branch of minimalism”. Listen here to a composition by La Monte Young from 1960.
Speace
‘Space’ is a ‘variant of ‘ambient’ that creates a celestriall timbre. This style is mainly used as background music, particularly in films, but also for conscious listening, relaxation, contemplation and inspisoms ration. The style is experienced as soothing and peaceful.
Ambient techno
‘Ambient techno’, ‘intelligent dance music’ or ‘armchair ambient’ border on electronic dance music (EDM), which was popular around the turn of the century. Some tracks were less suited to dancing and much more to daydreaming at home or unwinding. This type of music came from artists such as Boards of Canada with the track ‘Music is Math’, and Secede Outran, which you can listen to below:
Recent examples
Spotify and YouTube playlists with names such as Chilled Folk, Chill Hits, Evening Chill, Chilled R&B, Indie Chillout, Chill Hop, Lo-fi Hip Hop and Chill Tracks still have millions of followers today. Due to their enduring popularity, at the start of the 21th century various artists ventured into the realm of ambient and trip-hop, with the two genres being blended. Think of artists and groups such as Björk, Bowery Electric, Everything but the Girl, Anomie Belle, Alpha and Lamb. Some of these are discussed below. You can listen here to ‘Rhubarb’ by Aphex Twin from the album *Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 2* (1994)
Björk
Björk is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, composer, record producer and actress. Her vocal range spans three octaves. She has developed an eclectic musical style, incorporating elements of electronica, pop, dance, trip-hop, jazz and avant-garde. The development of her style has been influenced by composers such as Arnold Schönberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Philip Glass and Sun Ra, as well as groups like Kraftwerk and singers such as Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush. She was inspired by the music scene in London, where she lived for a time. That scene was partly defined in the 1990s by the trip-hop of Tricky, Portishead and Massive Attack.
Björk’s album Debut (1993) is one of the first albums to introduce electronic music, and in particular ‘dance’, to mainstream pop. Critics regard her albums Post (1995) and Homogenic (1997) as highlights of trip hop. You can listen to ‘Venus as a Boy’ from the latter album here.
Elsiane
Elsiane is a band with strong trip-hop influences, which released its first album, Hybrid, in 2007. The group creates a warm, hypnotic atmosphere, comparable to the sounds of Massive Attack and Portishead in the 1990s. Listen to the title track of the eponymous album here.
Lana Del Rey
Lana Del Rey is the stage name of Elisabeth (‘Lizzy’) Grant (born 1985), under which she released her first songs. She made her own music videos, thereby drawing attention to herself. Many of her songs are melancholic and draw on 1950s America. Her style is classified as ‘alternative pop’ and, certainly at the start of her career, she was influenced by psychedelic rock, hip hop and trip hop. This influence is clear on her debut album, Born to Die (2012). It topped the charts in eleven countries, including Australia, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, and sold 3.4 million copies. The album remained on the US Billboard 200 for 520 weeks.
Tracks from this album include: Summertime Sadness, Videogames, Blue Jeans and the title track Born to Die, which you can listen to below.
The sound, themes and production of Born to Die had a major influence on popular music. In 2019, The Washington Post named Del Rey one of the “five people who have helped shape the culture of the past decade”. Al Horner of Red Bull described Born to Die as “[a] blueprint for a new musical world”. Like other artists discussed here, she has charted a new course alongside the ubiquitous electronic dance music (EDM).
Anomie Belle
Finally, I’d like to mention Anomie Belle, an American multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and composer. You can hear her here in the track Sleeping Pattern.
Film music
Many films make use of ‘ambient music’, in all its forms. Examples include Blade Runner (1982), Dune (1984), Titanic (1997), The Passion of the Christ (2004), Chernobyl (2019) and Dune Part 2 (2021). Here you can listen to ‘Beginnings are such delicate times’ from the Dune: Part Two Soundtrack (2021).
The group Massive Attack has also written soundtracks for films, such as Danny the Dog (2005) and Bullet Boy (2005). Three more followed in 2007, namely for the films In Prison My Whole Life, Battle in Seattle and Trouble in the Water. The instrumental track Herculaneum from the film Gomorra won the award for best song in Italy. Watch and listen to the track Babel from this film, recorded during the Melt Festival in 2010.
Neoclassicism
Of a completely different nature, but worth mentioning in this context, is a movement that harks back to 19th and early 20th century romantic music. Rather than referring to it as neo-romanticism, this movement is called neoclassicism. The most prominent contemporary representative – with millions of downloads – is Ludovico Einaudi. His compositions are popular, both as background music and for listening to, presumably due to their simplicity: Almost all Einaudi’s compositions are based on the first, fourth and fifth chords. That is why they sound so similar. Listen here to one or more of his compositions on his album 10 pieces by Ludovico Einaudi
One composer who can truly lay claim to the term ‘neoclassical’ is Erik Satie, a French composer from the early 20thcentury. He used Dada-inspired harmonic and formal experiments to create an early form of ambient music which he called ‘musique d’ameublement’. His aim was to create a suitable atmosphere for specific activities, such as a dinner party, without drawing attention to the musician. Thanks to the variation in rhythm and timbre, his compositions lend themselves also to attentive listening, whether at home or in the concert hall. You can listen to his Gymnopédie No. 1 here
[1] This music was trialled in airports for a while. Staff were largely negative about it. They found the composition sombre and associated it with death and mourning
Music: Listen, Look and Enjoy 