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music: march 26

ambient is having a comeback. tracks from brian eno, kmru & fennesz, voices from the lake, placid angles and more.

04 Apr 2026 / 4 min read

I love ambient. But for most people, it is just background music – something you put on while working or falling asleep. Ambient can be more than that: it can be deeply engaging, physical, emotional. It can take you on a journey and sharpen your attention. That is how Brian Eno composed his ambient music: to "accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting."

In the 90s, there was a whole scene built around ambient (the Bureau of Lost Culture podcast on Telepathic Fish is a great listen on this), with dedicated listening events where ambient became the main event. People lying on mattresses in decorated warehouses, projections on the walls, tea instead of alcohol.

Over the 2000s and 2010s, ambient got absorbed into wellness culture and mood playlists on streaming services. Ambitious ambient was drowned out by generic stock music. But it seems that ambient is having a comeback, and listening events are mushrooming everywhere.

"In some ways, ambient music has become pop music. That statement that would have struck me as patently absurd 10 years ago." – Chris Zaldua

There are more and more listening-focused gatherings around the world: in museums, galleries, bars, DIY spaces and in nature.

I am here for it. This feels underground, and like a new golden window for ambient events – the moment where these gatherings start appearing, but haven't been discovered by the mainstream yet. Enjoy them now, before they get overcrowded, before they become performative, before influencers starts posting about going to ambient listening sessions and record themselves lying down. Right now it's still people who genuinely care about the music, and that's when it's best.

Anyway, here is my listening journal for March. All tracks on Spotify.

Static

Album: Brian Eno – Thursday Afternoon (61 minutes of gentle, peaceful ambient with soft piano playing; listened to it twice this month since discovering it)
Track: KMRU, Fennesz – Blurred (KMRU's synth drones meeting Fennesz's processed guitar, a rising tide of sound, hazy and shoegazey)
Tracks: Nueen – 4U, To Eve (lush, calm, cosmic, shimmering ambient, atmospheric and peaceful)
Album: Hilary Woods – Night Criú (dark ambient, dreamy, ethereal, melancholic, a bit folky, slowcore – mixed by Dean Hurley, David Lynch's sound engineer; fav tracks: Voce, Faults, Endgames, Brightly)
Track: Max in the World & Kroba – My Life Is A Bubble (slow-mo ambient house with saxophone and clarinet over a dubbed-out groove, dreamy – not sure about the sax on its own, but together it sounds cool)
Album: Placid Angles – Canada (a very diverse release, between ambient, dream pop and breakbeat, very emotional, at times downtempo – beautiful pads, UK garage rhythms, hi-fi and detailed, lush and cinematic; John Beltran alias; fav tracks: I Want What I Want, Tides Alternative, Wildfire)
- "That's what I tried to bring back with Canada – I wanted it to feel like the '90s." – John Beltran, Tone Glow

Dyno

Tracks: Mattias El Mansouri – Disintegration (simple, not much going on, long intro, Traumprinz-like emotional deep house slowly building up – if you need more action, check Do You Have a Guestlist?, very very good!)
Albums: Voices from the Lake – Voices from the Lake, II (genre-defining ambient techno – the self-titled release was RA's Album of the Year in 2012; II arrived 13 years later and holds up beautifully)
- "It's made for a forest. If you are in a forest, and you watch all the plants, they will always be in the same place. But every time you see them, you will spot something different." – Dozzy, DJ Mag
Track: OK EG & Priori – Serpentine 1 (ambient techno, fast but weightless – hypnotic pulse, very precise, gives me Lola rennt vibes, someone is running somewhere; at the same time dreamy)
EP: Paul Claude – Burning Blue (every track takes a different direction – "Shifting Functions" and "Focus" are groovy techno, "August Evening" builds on melancholic pads and broken beats; the title track leans trancey, maybe a bit cheesy, but it works)
EP: Sam Goku – Yulun (percussive but warm prog house, sunrise energy, cool release)
EP: Carré – Hibiscus (140 dubstep, sharp and murky at the same time; not usually into dubstep but this is nice)
Tracks: Leod – Untitled 12 (reduced one-bar techno loop, still very hypnotic and groovy; Untitled 04 is even groovier, has a vocal sample, was a big summer 2024 track, played by Four Tet, Daphni, Jamie xx, Ben UFO and many more)