Ambient was formulated as a genre by Brian Eno in 1978 with the album Ambient 1: Music for Airports. The concept: music that must be “as ignorable as it is interesting” — music that does not demand attention but creates a mood.
Classics of the genre: Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Tim Hecker, Stars of the Lid, Nicolas Jaar. Today ambient influences pop (Bon Iver, FKA Twigs), neoclassical music (Max Richter's Sleep — an eight-hour work for falling asleep), and film scores (Jóhann Jóhannsson). The Ukrainian ambient scene: Heinali (a Kyiv composer who fuses ambient with Ukrainian folk), Monocube, Endless Melancholy. The meditative nature of ambient resonates with the tradition of Ukrainian sacred music.
