Tag: Ambient

Certain Creatures – Nasadiya Sukta

I find it incredibly difficult to describe ambient music. It seems so understated to me as to offer as little musical information as possible, and I’m more often left with vague feelings than precise thoughts. Luckily, the Certain Creatures themselves (or himself, Oliver Chapoy) offers some context to the music on his bandcamp site. He describes the album as “a study in timelessness — crystalline, heartfelt ambient music designed to push light through shadow.” Aha, now it all makes sense!

Even the creator of this music seems limited to ambivalent feelings as he attempts characterize the music in words. This is because the music is very inexpressive for the most part, leaving much of the work to the listener to follow along on the listening journey. I think this is why discussion of ambient music is often so fantastical (Chapoy calls it “music for space travelers”). It does offer its moments, but they seem to blend into one another in a way that can’t be traced. Even the tracks lack much distinction from one another, as each new moment seems to swell out of what came before it. It’s an altogether different listening experience, for a very special kind of listening journey uninterrupted with the normal distractions of contemporary life. I do like it, but often find I just don’t have the time for it.

EDD-989 – Journey to the Core of the Galaxy

Picture yourself in elementary school, on a school field trip to the local planetarium. Hear the faint ambience of “space sounds” as a half-sedated man does his very best to convince you just how insignificant you are in the grand scheme of things. Now imagine you’re at a nightclub, with those same sounds pounding a steady beat somewhere, but certainly not where you are. No, the beat is somewhere lightyears away from here, at an astronomical distance to the order of magnitude that exceeds even the number of atoms in your puny human brain. And yet its sounds still reach you, pulsating from billions of years ago. You know they say that if the history of Earth was a 24 hour clock, human existence would begin about a minute before midnight. The universe is at least three times as old. Don’t you realize how small your problems are now, kid? Now get on the bus, it’s time to go back to school!

Long story short, this kind of space music has to be some sort of memo from a place a long time ago, in a galaxy far away (totally punintentional). Without the images of stars and planets to display the sheer wonder and magnitude of space, though, the music takes on a more tame identity. Ambient music isn’t meant to command the listener’s full attention, anyway.