Photo credits: Holger Schulze, 2020
The conference introduction explicitly asks, 'Why is everybody listening to ambient music these days?'. While the genre has existed for decades, what was the specific catalyst or breaking point that made both of you realize a formal, international academic conference was necessary right now?
Holger Schulze: There were many incidents that provoked us. Personally, I especially remember one day when, by chance, I realised that three very different friends and colleagues, representing different demographics, social classes, cultural environments and biographical backgrounds, had mentioned in passing: "Yeah, I love listening to ambient music." One of them appeared to belong to hardcore and straight edge culture, one might have been categorised as representing cottage core with performative choices leaning towards tradwife drag, and the third clearly represented the cultural niche of avant-garde, third stream or "Echtzeit" music performers and composers. In short, three very different people, four including myself, agreed that they liked a style of music that, forty years ago, would have attracted only rather nerdy, highly specialised aficionados. I wondered: Had a marginal and fringe genre finally become mainstream?
Ulrik Schmidt: Yes, I think what struck me was the feeling that not only had ambient music become more popular, but it had also become strangely normal. Earlier, it occupied a relatively specialized niche. Now, it appears everywhere: it’s on streaming platforms, in film and television, and in gaming and wellness cultures and experimental music scenes. Ambient music has become a significant cultural phenomenon. At the same time, we wanted to broaden the perspective beyond the familiar Western narrative of Satie, Cage, and Eno. If “everyone” is listening to ambient music, what does that mean from a global perspective? What kinds of ambient music are emerging in different places, and what do they have in common?
The conference presentation mentions that ambient 'oozes' into countless other styles, from Krautrock and Gamelan to hauntology and lo-fi hip hop. If ambient music has its roots in everything from radiophonic composition to neoclassic film music, is 'ambient' still a distinct genre, or has it simply become a universal production technique?
Holger Schulze: Indeed, this is a hunch we both had too! However, it's clear that all of these genres, styles and music cultures are crucial constituents of what we might call ambient music today. We were both wondering what you are wondering: how can this be, and how can a musical practice that covers so many other genres be considered one coherent genre in itself? We hope to learn a lot from the local music scenes in Eastern Europe, Japan, South America, and selected African countries at our conference. Do their production techniques differ significantly? Or might we detect some surprising continuity across regions, continents and musical cultures?
Ulrik Schmidt: It’s probably both: a distinct genre and a “universal technique.” Ambient music is still a recognizable genre with its own history, artists, labels, listening traditions, and aesthetic values. But it has also become a way of organizing attention on a much broader scale. Ambient approaches to texture, repetition, atmosphere, and duration can be heard across countless musical forms. What fascinates me is that radically different musical expressions can produce a surprisingly similar mode of listening. A gamelan recording, a piece of industrial drone music, a film soundtrack, and a “sleep” playlist may have little stylistic common ground, yet they might all encourage a certain kind of immersive, peripheral, environmental listening. Whether this observation holds up is one of the questions we hope the conference will address.
What drove this massive cultural reappraisal of ambient music? Did the music change, or did our collective nervous system simply demand it?
Ulrik Schmidt: Today, ambient music is much more diverse than the historical image that many people still associate with the genre. However, our listening conditions have also changed dramatically. I’m interested in how people increasingly use ambient music not only for relaxation but also for concentration, reflection, companionship, sleep, work, isolation, travel, and as part of everyday life. Its functions seem to have expanded enormously. At the same time, the reasons people listen to ambient music are not entirely new. Throughout history, human cultures have developed musical practices connected to rituals, contemplation, work, healing, and social regulation, many of which have clear ambient characteristics. What is new is the extent to which these functions have been commercialized and organized through contemporary media platforms.
