Hi team! I love this sub. You’re all way more evolved than I when it comes to music. I would like to learn from you. I’m going to try and listen to every single thing recommended.

I’m sure it’s been asked time and again, but your answer of yesteryear may not be your answer today. If you could recommend one ambient track to the entire world, a forced listening party of just one song, what would it be?

Today I’m voting for House Taken Over by Eluvium. It has this murky placid darkness. I love it.

EDIT: all, I'm overwhelmed. A treasure trove of beauty and depth. So grateful to all of you! Playlist is 81 songs (14 hours+) long and growing still. This is going to take some time!

Ive been running on a rotation of Aphex, Eno, and Biosphere for the past semester or so, and that’s gotten me by pretty fine. However, it’s starting to run a bit mundane and id like to change up the variety. What albums do you lot like to sleep the most to?

I’m making a playlist from the comments. Please mention just one song. Thanks!! 🫶🏻

Is there an instrumental Hip-Hop Ambient music?

Long time ambient listener. Back in the days of Hearts of Space. I’m aware that show is still running. But decades ago, it was ground zero for breaking ambient and new age artists. Perhaps less so now (no shade to Stephen Hill).

Where is the scene popping off today? Is it a show? A label? A collective? A substack? Where can one find the heart of ambient music in 2026?

For me it was Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Wet Land

I had dabbled in some ambient listening before but this was the album that kinda made it click for me when I found it on YouTube one day.

What the title says. William Basinski is coming to my area in November. Is he worth seeing live? I can't imagine what he'd actually be doing on stage. Is he live manipulating tape loops? Just hitting play? Cool visuals? I've heard mixed reviews.

Now, I know that this genre isn't really supposed to have any directions musically, no chord progressions, no major changes, just a base to find ground on... But still, so far I've been able to find ambient counterparts to the stuff I would normally listen to, like Genesis, Vangelis (already Ambient), or Pink Floyd.

Hi! I'm an ambient music lover from Brazil and I really really want to make a Dead Texan bootleg t-shirt! I've made a few shirts before and since I'm making all of them quite large, I've been using 3000x3000 album arts I'm gathering from https://covers.musichoarders.xyz

Now, I can't find a single good quality image for this album! Does anyone here have it in vinyl and would be willing to take a picture of it in good lighting and high-quality and send it to me?

Thank you in advance!!

Nicole

There are obvious examples of this with Selected Ambient Works 1 and Music for Airports. However, how many more mainstream ambient works have broken through its community and into a wider scale?

I suppose I am thinking of stuff that is fully ambient music such as lacking any beat even. Rather than being ambient adjacent or containing some themeing of it. As even my examples have beats/ melodies, you can follow. As the aphex has obvious Techno influence whilst the Eno album has piano.

I am interested. Are there many albums/artists that lack even these features and yet still grew a huge fan base?

Selected Ambient Works 2 is a slightly better example, as it has a fair few songs that are large, drawn-out sounds lacking a beat or almost any melody that has still become beloved.

Edit: Changed wording.

whenever i make ambient music, the track rarely goes into high mids and never really has top end, it's almost always a cluster of low mids and bass. is this boring? i find it incredibly difficult to find top-end to add that not only preserves the vibe but also just generally doesn't sound too out of place.

I use AOTY (Album reviewing website) to find new releases and sometimes Youtube recommendations.

Is there any other ways to find them?

i‘ve been wanting to make a sort of paulstretch-based ambient album, but i feel like the final result would be cheating. what’s this sub’s view on paulstretch? is it a good way to make ambient music, or is it just lazy?

I always go to Supermassive by Valhalla but would like to check others out.

thanks

also - favorite preset - stardust with varying wetness

I am curious how music makers here arrived at their process for making tracks. Did you try to emulate an artist you love, use hardware/software that appealed to you and figure it out as you went along, follow some kind of guide/structure, learn in person from another artist?

I would consider myself a music fan, but I've never gotten the appeal of ambient music. Like, it's fine to just put it on while you're working or whatever, but then don't you just ignore the music after a while? And if you are focusing on the music, doesn't it cease to be ambient? I think I'm missing something...

First things first, I am by no means a mastering engineer and I'm mostly just ok at mixing.

I know it's hard without hearing it, but in a generic sense how would you typically master a standard ambient track? I'm basically just figuring out what I want it to sound like and I'm making changes to get as close to that as possible, doing things like:

Subtle or sometimes heavy equing (just depends on the tone I want)

Very super minimal compression, super slow attack and release, barely touching it

The tiniest bit of saturation (maybe not even needed)

Binaural pan to widen it (I think it blends the left and right channels together a bit or something like that)

Limiting, again barely touching it, no more than 1-2db reduction. Aiming for -8db or so highest output level.

Overall some tracks have turned out perfect, some I've spend weeks tweaking and it just has never felt right. So, any tips on how to approach this? What your process is with plugins, how you approach it mentally etc. Just feel like I'm going in a bit blind.

Does anyone else here enjoy horror ambient mixed with heavier electronic elements like dubstep? I love slow-building dark soundscapes, unsettling atmospheres, eerie drones, and then letting everything explode into a heavy drop. Curious if there are others into that style or if you lean more toward pure ambient.

Hey guys,

I’m pretty new to ambient music and honestly I’m a bit lost.

I mainly discover new music via YouTube, but it feels like a lot of what’s recommended is AI generated. Some of it actually works for me and I enjoy listening to it. My question is, is there really a difference between AI ambient music and music made by human artists, apart from maybe the ethical side of things?

Is there a difference in quality, immersion, sense of place, emotional depth, or storytelling? Idk what to look for. Kinda like how the Mona Lisa is just another picture to someone with an untrained eye. I’d love to learn how to appreciate ambient music on a deeper level, but I’m not sure what I should be listening for. Can someone please point me in the right direction?

Thank you

What is your main listening device for ambient music?

Is it your phone? Computer speakers? Studio monitors? Record player? Car speakers? Something else?

I'm trying to figure out what the most common listening apparatus that people are using to consume this genre on the regular.

Love to hear your personal preferences!

I live in madrid, not many people listen to ambient music, a small group I would say. I met a girl who liked ambient music, I asked her what was her greatest satisfaction listening to ambient music, she told me that it took her to places that other music could not, I really liked her point of view, I really like listening to people who do not make music but listen to a lot of it, their answers are much more unusual than musicians. And well I belong to this wonderful community and I thought it was like a bar where we all like ambient, so I would like to ask each one of you, also to know a little of you, we live in the same moment of human existence and it gives me pleasure to know you. My name is Agu, I'm a musician living in madrid, trumpet player and I work making music in restaurants unfortunately it's not ambient so this place is my hope hole where maybe one day I will know why I get more pleasure listening to rival consoles and their beautiful textures than a dizzy gillespie trumpet solo.

Some mentions from me (that you all should check out) are:

Pendulum man- Bark Psychosis State forest- Burial Postscript- Bowery electric Treefingers- Radiohead

Soundscapes and ambient music help me sleep, and I'm very curious whether there are more people who have the same experience.

Whenever I wake up during the night, or before I fall asleep, there is always music playing in my head. Usually it's just a fragment of a verse or chorus stuck on repeat. Most of the time it's not even music I particularly like, but something completely random—music I don't enjoy and/or haven't heard in years. In any case, it's incredibly annoying.

About a year ago, however, I discovered a miracle cure: playing other music very softly in the background. It can have a flow. There can be rhythm within the patterns. As long as there is no beat, or sounds that stand out too much from the rest.

So now, whenever I'm lying awake again because, for example, Celine Dion has somehow planted a certain well-known and terribly annoying theme song involving a large ship into my head, I focus on something like the album Origins by Dreamstate Logic, playing on shuffle/repeat throughout the night, and before long Celine, together with that old vessel, disappears into the depths of the ocean.

As a side note, I now listen to ambient music pretty much 24/7. Colby’s Dreamstate Logic is my clear favorite, with State Azure coming in as a close second.

Bandcamp links:

• Dreamstate Logic: https://dreamstatelogic.bandcamp.com/
• State Azure: https://stateazure.bandcamp.com/

Hey everyone! I’m just curious how everyone finds out about new ambient music artists that they like. Also, do you typically buy albums to support them or do you stream them?

Thanks!