It all started with the death of Pharoah Sanders. In September 2022 while browsing the BBC News website, I came across the obituary of an American saxophone player named Pharaoh Sanders who had died aged 81. Previously unknown to me, Sanders, I read, was widely regarded as a jazz legend who had recorded with John Coltrane in the 1960s.
Shortly before his death, the pioneering Sanders had collaborated with British electronic music artist Floating Points (aka Samuel Shepherd) and the London Symphony Orchestra to make an instrumental album that had been almost universally applauded and nominated for the UK’s prestigious Mercury Prize.
More of an experimental piece than a conventional album, ‘Promises’ is a 46-minute stretch of music that is broken up into nine movements. I listened to a few minutes online and was immediately intrigued. Stuck in a rut with the electronic and indie music I usually listened to, I was ready for a change of direction and downloaded Promises.
What followed was one of the most profound musical—or indeed artistic—experiences of my life. I was swept along a dreamy path into what I can only describe as a hypnotic state. I became utterly transfixed by the soaring orchestral strings, Sanders’ charismatic tenor saxophone, and Shepherd’s short phrase of notes that are repeated throughout the entire record.
Arguably the crescendo of the album is ‘Movement 6’. When I reached the end of that track I sobbed. I often cry at TV and movies but rarely music. What was happening to me? Promises had apparently unlocked something inside me. A build-up of emotion after listening to the previous tracks on the record? A release from the tensions of the Covid lockdown perhaps? Or just a pure, unguarded emotional reaction to an overpoweringly beautiful piece of music? Who knows. But I urge you to stop reading this and listen to ‘Movement 6’ right now [Editor: well, maybe finish reading this, and then listen]. It might be the best eight minutes and 50 seconds of your day.
Going Higher
After experiencing this musical epiphany I explored other artists and albums in the ‘ambient’ category. An early breakthrough was Selected Ambient Works 85-92 by Aphex Twin. Unwittingly, I had already downloaded an ambient album years before: Brian Eno’s Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks, released in 1983 as a soundtrack to a documentary about the 1969 Moon landing. When my first daughter was born in 2018, I used to play one of the tracks—‘An Ending (Ascent)’—just before her bedtime to lull her into a deep slumber. It worked a treat and often sent me off to sleep, too. Movie fans may recognise the piece as the soundtrack of the poignant closing scene of Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 film Traffic.
Now aged six, my daughter often asks me to play ‘her song’ and, while it doesn’t make her fall asleep, it definitely calms her mood. My second daughter, born in 2020, also has a Brian Eno song for her bedtime, ‘First Light’ from his 1980 album Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror. Parents frustrated at putting their wakeful children to bed every night, take note.
As I listened to more ambient music I discovered a universe of new and exciting sounds that seemed to creep into my innermost thoughts and stay there. It became a kind of mental balm. Identifying music that fits into the ambient genre can lead to heated disagreements online, which is ironic considering the point of ambient music is supposed to calm people down. I came across terms such as ‘minimal techno’, ‘intelligent dance music (IDM)’ and ‘drone’ as alternatives to the term ‘ambient’. Whatever your chosen phrase to describe the music, one characteristic that seems to be widely agreed upon is that ambient music shouldn’t have lyrics.
Some people can work while listening to music with lyrics but I’ve always found that the words distract me. If I plug into a purely instrumental album, however, the outside world disappears, my focus sharpens and my thoughts begin to flow. While writing this, I’m listening to the 2020 album Peel by Kenyan musician KMRU, a record described by famed music website Pitchfork as “obsidian-coloured lakes that beckon the listener to sink into their lightless depths.” The article later likens the music to a “homeopathic treatment” which, for many devotees, is one of the most significant benefits of ambient music.
It’s certainly a view echoed by Adam Blake, one half of British electronic duo Zoot Woman, who have been making dance music since 2001 and recently released their seventh acclaimed album Maxidrama. For Blake, ambient music is a way to bring his emotions back down to earth.
“I listen to instrumental music when I feel overwhelmed by what’s going on around me or when I start to think that I’m forgetting to feel,” explains Blake. “When you’re hungry you feel the need to eat, but when you need music it isn’t as easy to identify. I make music for a living, so that need is possibly more on my radar.” As someone who plays live across Europe, Blake sees how music can transform the emotion of an audience.
Surrounded by noise, traffic and concrete, living in the UAE can be overwhelming. Leading frantic lives where the separation between work and personal life no longer exists, we are bombarded by technology all day long. Escaping into a meditative place, therefore, has become a thing of supreme value. For some this can be achieved in a kickboxing class, for others it’s yoga. For Ivan Minuti, it’s ambient music that takes him to a different psychological environment.
Based in Dubai, the Italian DJ and music curator says, “I do not use ambient music for entertainment, I play it when I am alone to align with a certain mood. Try getting a massage with heavy metal music playing and see if you can relax, or conversely, see if you can party all night long with Tibetan music.”
Minuti uses ambient music when seeking “a higher level of consciousness,” he explains using meditation and writing as examples. “The specific frequency range of ambient music helps people tune into a higher level of concentration.”
Currently Minuti is enjoying Ghost by Berlin-based pianist Hania Rania (“a superb example of the beauty of contemporary classical music blended with electronic elements,” he says) and New Blue Sun by Outkast rapper André 3000, an album that “showcases new artistry in the experimental use of the flute, with some tracks as long as thirteen minutes.”
An extension of ambient music is sound healing, a form of therapy on the rise in Dubai. Linda Chambers co-founded Underdog Boxing, a high-tempo fitness class, but believes a similar kind of physical and mental boost can be achieved through sound in workshops at Kanvas Dubai. Seva in Jumeirah also runs sound healing sessions using crystal bowls, Tibetan singing bowls and gongs. “Places like Seva are genuine examples of the fast-growing awareness people have for sound healing,” adds Minuti. “These practices help people focus and disconnect from noisy city life.”
If you’d prefer not to sign up for a class then just invest in a good pair of headphones and
listen to ambient music. Saad Naamani co-founded The Good Narrative and The Good Trip,
a company that curates musical experiences that accompany live events in the UAE. A fan
of ambient music, he lists Jon Hopkins, Portico Quartet, Max Richter, East Forest and the
legendary Brian Eno as among his favourite artists in the genre. Eno’s 1978 album Ambient 1: Music for Airports is considered by many to be the birth of ambient music.
Minuti calls the album “a perfect example of how music can have a purpose beyond
entertainment, using more sounds rather than melody to engage with the listener.”
Talking about the album, Eno explained, “Ambient music is intended to induce
calm and a space to think. It must be able to accommodate many levels of listening
attention without enforcing one in particular. It must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”
Eno developed his interest in ambient music in the 1970s while in Germany working on David Bowie’s classic 1977 album Low. Waiting in an airport in Cologne, Eno became frustrated with the background muzak playing around him and began to concoct the idea of a kind of music that could blend in with any situation. With synthesisers becoming more common, Eno was excited at the “new sonic worlds” waiting to be explored. In his diary, A Year With Swollen Appendices, Eno writes, “Immersion was really the point: we were making music to swim in, to float in, to get lost inside.”
For me, this is the power of ambient music—sounds and melodies that can truly transport your imagination to otherworldly places and alter your mood for the better. Our lives are so hectic, structured and rigid these days that we rarely find time to let our thoughts swim, float, or get lost. “Music can be overlooked as a healing power,” says Blake from Zoot Woman. “Sometimes it can be the music you least expect that heals.”