solipsistic NATION No. 22: Quietus

I’ve touched on ambient music on solipsistic NATION in the past but I thought it was time to have an entire episode dedicated to this genre.

Ambient music is ambiguous and open-ended in scope, including everything from Erik Satie‘s Trois Gymnopédies suite to Brian Eno‘s atmospheric On Land album. My own definition of ambient music is a bit narrower in that I don’t think of pieces like Satie’s Gymnopédies as ambient music. While Gymnopédies is certainly a work of quiet genius I consider it more of an instrumental piece.

I think of ambient music as music that is near formless, something that is amorphous and nebulous. It’s more about sounds that evoke a mood than a series of rhythmic patterns.