I am an ambient music devotee, and also (maybe not coincidentally), a Buddhist. Like Buddhism-derived forms of meditation, ambient music has radical potential - a space to renegotiate your relationship with nuts'n'bolts material reality. Corporate wellness culture has co-opted both - warping them and serving them back to us as palliatives to numb and acclimatise us to structural / social injustices, rather than as a space to see beyond and eventually conquer them. Corporate ambient streaming slop belongs in the same bin as the Palantir chore coat or the Amazon warehouse "meditation" booths - they need to be resisted as bastardisations of the fine traditions they represent!
I do not believe this is an Ambient problem, though as you said it is especially vulnerable to AI grifters, but is in fact an Algorithmic Playlist problem.
All algorithmic playlists, even for more “noisy” genres are bland as hell, destined to be background music and never anywhere you can meaningfully engage or discover new music. You can still get most of the “ritual” of music from streaming, but you need to select an album, and listen in full, then select another. Even if it is just background for your work or chores.
Or, there are hundreds of excellent ambient radio shows on nts.live and other streaming radio stations. All music selected by humans because they wanted you to hear it. If you want to listen to ambient music, as I do while I wind down reading before bed, I recommend their “Slow Focus” station.
Damn. This is good / hits close to home. The capitalist streaming ecosystem has repurposed ambient music into a machine for creating passivity —> you just D&G’d (not the brand) ambient.
Gotta say every time I put Yoshimura on, I feel lifted about how singular the music is, like it really is the final frontier for human spirit for me somehow.
Recently I was in the home of a wealthy person and I was having a similar thought along these lines, but about the effect that Sonos-type speaker systems have on one's relationship with music. The same music was playing in every common area of the house, as well as outside. The only music that "works" in every type of domestic space is necessarily on the ambient side. It took away all the deliberate choice out of listening to music. The person cooking in the kitchen might want to listen to something different than the person chilling on the deck, but the plush affordance of the everywhere-speakers means no one has to make a decision but also everyone has to listen to the same mellow playlist. Brain-deadening vibes, the home an imitation of a high-end retail environment.
I am an ambient music devotee, and also (maybe not coincidentally), a Buddhist. Like Buddhism-derived forms of meditation, ambient music has radical potential - a space to renegotiate your relationship with nuts'n'bolts material reality. Corporate wellness culture has co-opted both - warping them and serving them back to us as palliatives to numb and acclimatise us to structural / social injustices, rather than as a space to see beyond and eventually conquer them. Corporate ambient streaming slop belongs in the same bin as the Palantir chore coat or the Amazon warehouse "meditation" booths - they need to be resisted as bastardisations of the fine traditions they represent!
I do not believe this is an Ambient problem, though as you said it is especially vulnerable to AI grifters, but is in fact an Algorithmic Playlist problem.
All algorithmic playlists, even for more “noisy” genres are bland as hell, destined to be background music and never anywhere you can meaningfully engage or discover new music. You can still get most of the “ritual” of music from streaming, but you need to select an album, and listen in full, then select another. Even if it is just background for your work or chores.
Or, there are hundreds of excellent ambient radio shows on nts.live and other streaming radio stations. All music selected by humans because they wanted you to hear it. If you want to listen to ambient music, as I do while I wind down reading before bed, I recommend their “Slow Focus” station.
Damn. This is good / hits close to home. The capitalist streaming ecosystem has repurposed ambient music into a machine for creating passivity —> you just D&G’d (not the brand) ambient.
Gotta say every time I put Yoshimura on, I feel lifted about how singular the music is, like it really is the final frontier for human spirit for me somehow.
Thanks for this.
blessed spyplane with the blessed YHWH shoutout
Recently I was in the home of a wealthy person and I was having a similar thought along these lines, but about the effect that Sonos-type speaker systems have on one's relationship with music. The same music was playing in every common area of the house, as well as outside. The only music that "works" in every type of domestic space is necessarily on the ambient side. It took away all the deliberate choice out of listening to music. The person cooking in the kitchen might want to listen to something different than the person chilling on the deck, but the plush affordance of the everywhere-speakers means no one has to make a decision but also everyone has to listen to the same mellow playlist. Brain-deadening vibes, the home an imitation of a high-end retail environment.