After all these years, I should be surprised about how few people really know anything about ambient music, but I’m not. While it’s getting more popular every year, we’re still talking about a small, niche genre when looked at in the context of the whole scope of modern music. Yet I truly believe that for several reasons, ambient music should be held in the same esteem as other time-honored genres such as progressive rock (which it shares a very healthy dose of DNA with).

For those reading this piece who may be among those with no exposure to ambient music and have only really heard the term, ambient is a mostly instrumental genre that is characterized by drifting, amorphous musical soundscapes with minimal melodic content (though this is not a rule by any means) and subtle (if any) percussive content. Ambient often sounds quite cinematic, and indeed the realms of film soundtrack music and ambient share many acres of common ground. It also frequently features nature sounds (birds dominate) and field recordings that create an alluring mental image of an imagined place.

As Brian Eno, the “godfather of ambient music” has said, ambient is a music form that can either be listened intently to or ignored as background, and functions very well in either mode. Personally, I often find myself in some kind of middle state between those, sort of simultaneously listening and ignoring. For me, ambient has a way of triggering subconscious imagery and abstract lines of thought despite it being very quiet and subtle — or perhaps because it is quiet and subtle. I can focus perfectly well on some other mental task while listening, and meanwhile the ambient is creating images and feelings in the distant corners of my mind.

Another great use for ambient is as a “musical palate cleanser.” If I’ve been listening to some heavy rock, vapid pop, or semi-frantic jazz and it’s become a bit too much, I switch to ambient and it instantly washes away all of the excesses from before and sort of resets my aural receptors.

There is something about the near-total lack of vocals in what I consider to be true ambient music that allows this kind of semi-detached listening experience. Vocals in music pull the ear and the mind in, and force one to pay attention. As humans we are wired to listen and respond to other human voices, so they are hard to ignore, even when they are singing. The deep, ambiguous soundscapes of ambient do not put any demand on the listener, yet if the listener is sensitive, those hazy and drifting musical vistas will quietly seduce.

Paradoxically, however, an element that does sometimes appear in ambient is weird recordings of voices such as NASA transmissions and disembodied, reverb-soaked utterances in Russian (interestingly, Russians have revealed themselves as having masterful ambient music skills).

Yet another intriguing attribute of ambient music is how vast the genre is in terms of subgenres and stylistic permutations. The many elements, styles, substyles and genetic twists possible in ambient are truly endless. And because the definition of it as a musical idiom is so loosely defined, an infinite number of musical sources and methods can be applied to create it as long as the proper genre parameters and feeling are met. Music that gets too far out of the bounds of ambient in terms of weirdness or vibe is usually known as “experimental electronic.”

Ambient music acts sort of as psychic salve for me a lot of the time, because it demands so little yet offers so much if I let it in. When I put on a streaming ambient station, it gives me calm background sounds that, if they start to get really interesting, will cause me to look at who the artist is and maybe write down the name so I can check other work of theirs later.

I’m an ambient recording artist myself, if you couldn’t tell from the passionate tone of this piece. I record under the artist name Rhizomorph. As a musician I feel lucky to experience the joys of creating my own ambient music, and have been influenced by a seemingly endless range of other ambient musicians. It’s something that I feel like I will probably be doing for the rest of my life.

I’m not quite sure whether I would like to see appreciation for the ambient genre keep growing as it has been, or have it level off so that it will always be a sort of underground, little-known music form for music nerds like me. In the spirit of the former, however, if anyone reading would like some recommendations for prominent and favorite ambient artists, I would toss out such names as Brian Eno (first and foremost!), Biosphere, Robert Rich, Alio Die, Steve Roach, C.P. McDill, Farfield, Na-Koja-Abad, Numina, and O Yuki Conjugate, just to get warmed up.

I hope I have inspired a few musical explorers out there to chill out tonight with the consciousness-enhancer of their choice, headphones, candlelight, and some good ambient. Go deep, my friends. Go deep.