Introduction To Ambient Music

Ambient music is born of a rather simple premise: switching the foreground with the background. Sonically, there are many “backgrounds” upon which our lives carry out, the most common of which is simply the collective sound of nature itself: wind, rain, the roar of the ocean, flowing water, thunder, the chatter of insects, birdsong, the rustle of leaves. While there is nothing sophisticated or evenly orderly to the sound of nature, most people nonetheless find it pleasant and even comforting. Andy Stott’s “Time Away” is a series of surging, overlapping drones which mirror the background sounds of nature, albeit with references to the pleasing background sounds of civilization, like the distant hum of traffic.