Ambient - instrumental in my wellbeing...

I spoke briefly about ambient music and Soundscapes a few weeks back. Sat here on a Sunday morning with a bit of a headache (from being in front of a screen too long) I’m listening to one of the pieces that helps me relax and achieve a stiller mind. Robert Fripp’s ‘At the End of Time’.

The best version of this, in my view, was from a performance, better a recital, at Wulfren Hall Wolverhampton in December 2005. One of the things that I find with Fripp’s Soundscapes is that they are “immersive”. You can lose yourself in them and come out refreshed, and for me at least, approaching the world in a calmer, more reflective state.

“Robert Fripp's "Music for Quiet Moment" series… will be releasing an ambient instrumental soundscape online every week for 50 weeks. Something to nourish us and help us through these Uncertain Times.” I was surprised to find this is up to week 28. If you’ve bought all of these (as I have) then you have something like 3 hours of music that does exactly what it says on the tin. I have had M.E. in varying degrees of severity for the last 25 years, and one of my strategies for helping with pacing my life is music like Soundscapes. I remember playing the ‘At the End of Time’ mentioned above when my Dad passed away and finding a measure of consolation from allowing this music to wash over me.

It’s not just Fripp though. Bill Nelson has produced some fine ambient albums, but his music tends to be more “active” than Fripp’s. ‘Altar Pieces’ is a fine ambient album, although the found sound voices disrupt the mood a bit for me. ‘Model Village’ and ‘All That I Remember’ are probably the places to start with instrumental Nelson, and then just get all the rest.

The found sound aspect of Bill’s work is also there in Virginia’ Astley’s ‘From Gardens Where we Feel Secure’ where the sounds of the English countryside mix with piano and clarinet to produce something surprisingly rich and textured. I mentioned Cloudland Blue Quartet’s recent ‘4^th May 2020’ previously, and it remains a favourite on the iPod at present. I haven’t explored as far into David Reilly’s work as I would like yet, but having auditioned several of his albums on Bandcamp, ‘Through The Day’,  and the “guitarscapes” of ‘Disquietmusik’ feel like the places to start. They seem to combine the immersive quality of Fripp and the slightly harder edge of Nelson, which works for me. There is another more song-based aspect to his music that I have yet to touch at all.

Cloudland Blue Quartet’s music drifts into the world of Modern Classical music at times, something I’m fairly new to but finding things like Philip Glass’s ‘Low Symphony’ interesting. I have an album of Steve Reich’s Six Pianos & Terry Riley’s Keyboard Study #1 which , this area feels like a subject for further exploration. As does Brian Eno. I saw a concert by Brian Eno and Joanna MacGregor, possibly 10 years or more ago at Bath Abbey where he did part of Music for Airports. I’ve tried Fripp and Eno’s albums, but not Eno’s ambient albums on his own. Where to start?