Ambient

Ambient music was named and theorised by Brian Eno in 1978, though its roots extend to Erik Satie's "furniture music" and the tape experiments of Musique Concrète. Eno's formulation was deliberately paradoxical: music that can be actively listened to or tolerated as atmosphere. Electronic ambient ranges from Eno's own pastoral drift on "Discreet Music" through the kosmische Musik of Tangerine Dream, the industrial dub experiments of The Orb, and the contemporary granular work of producers like Tim Hecker and Grouper. In club contexts, ambient appears in chill-out rooms — a tradition dating to the early Haçienda and the Peel Sessions — in afterhours cooldown sets, and as textures embedded in longer techno and house performances. Mixprism's ambient database captures a wide spectrum: from functional background music that appears in DJ mixes, to the focused listening experiences of specialist ambient sets, to the sustained drone compositions that bookend long electronic festivals.