Deep Voices #93

Ambience music

Deep Voices #93 on Spotify
Deep Voices #93 on Apple Music

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Deep Voices is me (Matthew Schnipper) writing about music alongside a one-hour playlist. One influences the other. I’ve been doing some version of this project, collecting notes on how music and art can change and define you, personally and/or professionally, for most of my life. I’m going to guess, if you’re reading this, you have too. I’ll turn some of those ideas into a book soon. I finished a draft and now begin the long process of revision. If you can support that project or this project (same project) with a paid subscription, please consider doing so. Thank you for reading and listening :)

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An email from a reader posed the question if being moved is too high a bar to expect from art. Yes, I think, it probably is. But art has to do something. Humor, disgust, puzzle, frighten. Action is needed. I’ve been thinking about this question in the context of ambient music, then, which has a stated purpose as a utility. I like Jon Pareles’ definition in a 2020 piece about listening to ambient music’s architect Brian Eno in the height of the pandemic: “Music designed to maintain a subliminal, atmospheric presence while evading the foreground.” As if it’s there to keep you company. Or more specifically, it’s there to make sure you know you’re not alone. 

I’ve needed that support from music. Music that doesn’t ask too much of me while helping confirm my existence. Good writing music, good walking in the rain music, good driving a long way and a long way back music. All things I’ve had on the agenda. So I put together this week’s mix of ambient music as accompaniment. All told, it feels like a nice, utilitarian hour of music. It has presence, as desired, but not too much. But individually, there is a great array of sounds and thus emotions. Several songs, yes, are moving (Willie Ruff’s solo French horn piece in particular; discovering that album is the motivation for this mix), but some engender other feelings: curiosity, titillation, anxiety. John Zorn’s choral piece manages to be both freaky and relaxing; Federico Durand’s dusty chimes make me want to garden, get elbow deep in peat. 

I wonder if this genre of music was misnamed; if it’s not ambient music so much as ambience music. Too often ambient music has been lumped together because of a sound, primarily the long tone of a synthesizer. But these songs have widely varied texture while still delivering on a similar promise of companionship. All of these do this in a way that unfurls slowly, as if after a long time walking together, the person beside you taps you on the shoulder. They’ve been listening, but now it’s their time to speak.