Defining the “best” ambient album is difficult because ambient can be so many different things. Since ambient is about a mood rather than being driven by lyrics or even rhythm, the best ambient album will not only be different depending on the listener but can be different for the same listener on a different day. Because of this inherent difficulty, this list will have a few parameters placed on it.
Rather than meaning the objective “best” album, this list will include some of the albums that best encapsulate the genre for an era. Ambient will be defined using Brian Eno’s famous quote that it is “as ignorable as it is interesting”, so no ambient house music or genre-bending. These are albums that won’t take over the conversation when you play them at a dinner party but have enough musical interest that you will also want to play them when you are alone.
Ernest Hood “Neighborhoods”
This 1975 meditation on childhood Americana from a midcentury west coast jazz instrumentalist sounds exactly like you think it would, and nothing like you think it would. Starting with gentle jazz piano, Hood masterfully layers in synthesizer and zithers with the sounds of nature like crickets and rainstorms. The result is something soothing, without being somnolent.
Brian Eno “Ambient1: Music for Airports”
Any list of Ambient albums should include the album from which the genre got its name. Any list of the best ambient albums could probably be made up entirely of Brian Eno records, so influential is he to the genre. This 1978 meditative album utilizes time-lapse and passive recording, interlaced with piano and orchestral pieces to produce something that is soothing and centering. If this were the music played in the airport, people might ride a little less stressed.
Microstoria “snd”
If your concept of ambient music is soothing elevator music, this is not the album for you. “snd” uses tonal glitches, random sounds, low escalating bass lines, and the occasional background cry to create a distinct mood of discomfort that is simultaneously disconcerting and hypnotic. It is something that grows on you as you listen, and with repeat listens you can find melodic themes to follow in the tonal chaos.
Ekkehard Ehlers “Plays”
This is the album that breaks the mold of ambient melodic lines, by breaking the mold of what a cover album should be. On this album Ehlers dismantles multiple artists, sometimes sampling lines directly while mixing them with screeching cello notes, looped drums, or ambient noise. On other tracks, there is no discernible connection to the source material at all. It plays like a fever dream of someone who had heard the work of a diverse set of artists, but couldn’t (or wouldn’t) put the songs back together in the way they were originally intended. It is hard to call it ambient because it demands you stop and pay attention to it, in ways that most ambient music tries actively to avoid.
Julianna Barwick “The Magic Place”
Layering a synth with looped vocal tones and little else, Barwick creates a soothing tonal space where you can almost imagine fairy folk hiding being the trees. Tracks sound completely different from each other, yet flow seamlessly from one into the next. This is a perfect album for your creative time, inspiring positive energy and hope.
There is any number of other ambient albums that could have made this list. The beauty of ambient is that it will mean different things to any number of listeners. The best ambient albums will inspire repeated deeper listens to find the nuance that is there, and each album on this list does just that.
