We love to drive emotion out of music. The sophistication of jazz is a place where people find solace in rhythmic and melodic complexities. Pop music nowadays is vibrant and all about finding individuality. Rap music provides so many lanes to travel down, as it can provide simple emotional feedback, or provoke thought through lyricism.

Rock is a transformative and fascinating genre that has undergone so many changes over the years, and there are so many more people waiting to take the crown. Electronic music has found a new place through house and hardstyle adjacent music and it continues stretching into different genres. In short, music is in a new age, free from stagnation, and bound by absolutely nothing.

One genre captured my attention this year mostly because it cannot be assigned to anything. Ambient. The things that make music like tempo, melody, and words are all broken in favor of matching a mood or feeling. Ambient music to is like looking at a painting. As you look at the painting, colors and shapes grab your attention and draw you in, but the point of the painting remains.

Every element of an ambient song works together, but each part is as important as the next. Some songs can simply be a droning chord progression, some can be one note. Some songs can be loud and emotional. Some can be quiet and even contain silence.

The recent rise in the popularity of this genre can be attributed to the inclusion of more peaceful and thought provoking additions to the world of social media. Ambient is music I commonly found alongside videos exemplifying nature’s complexities and beauty. I see it with film performances and quotes. Ambient music allows everything else to be complicated, so you can listen and feel all the nonsense flush away.

In an interview with Pitchfork, Brain Eno, an artist some consider to be the father of ambient music, defined ambient as a genre that should be “as ignorable as it is interesting”. This is accurate, as the genre additionally seems to not need context. When you feel the need to listen, you listen. That’s an amazing thing.

Music critics love to use the word “soundscape” when describing music, in order to apply settings and words to music. Here are some recommendations, in order of soundscape.

For being alone: Stasis Sounds for Long-Distance Space Travel – 36 and zaké

For feeling small: Residue – Father2006

For zoning out with friends: Selected Ambient Works 85-92 – Aphex Twin

For airports: Ambient 1: Music For Airports – Brain Eno

For flushing: Geogaddi – Boards of Canada

For other people: Stone In Focus – Aphex Twin

For falling away: Seraphim II – How to Disappear Completely

For nothing at all: scènes – France Jobin

For realizing: Svaberg – Pjusk and Chihei Hatekeyama

For saying no: It’s a Small Place To Be – Chubby Wolf

For dying: Double Bind – Geneva Skeen

For forgetting: Patience (After Sebald) – The Caretaker