Ambient

Амбіент

Audio: Ambient

Ambient is a genre of atmospheric electronic music without a distinct rhythm or melody. It creates sonic environments for meditation, reflection, and background listening. Founder: Brian Eno.

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.

Cultural Versus

Ambient

Sub-category:: electronic

Ambient is a genre of atmospheric electronic music without a distinct rhythm or melody. It creates sonic environments for meditation, reflection, and background listening. Founder: Brian Eno.

44%similarity

Expressionism

Sub-category:: classical

Expressionism (1900–1930s) is the music of extreme inner states — anxiety, terror, ecstasy. Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern — the “Second Viennese School” — abandoned tonality as the basis of musical language.