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Escaping the noise: my journey into the ambient
In 2020 I was lost.
Working in the thick of the NHS response to the COVID-19 pandemic, I’d become burnt out.
Operating on a cocktail of adrenaline and anxiety for too long can do funny things. I had forgotten how to switch off and relax, and the relentless stress had become normalised for me. I’d developed a kind of bizarre Stockholm syndrome. Work had become suffocating, yet impossible to step away from.
As the post-office rubber band became increasingly taut, I grasped desperately for solutions.
Not all heroes wear capes, but mine came in the form of Brian Eno, who had certainly been no stranger to the odd silky cloak or two in his time.
I don’t know why I pressed play on Music for Airports. I don’t remember it being a conscious decision. It could have been the memory of a school friend who I fleetingly remembered owned it. In any case, enough interest gathered in that moment for me to pop it on.
When I listened, something shifted—just enough for me to feel some temporary respite. And upon subsequently listening to the rest of his back catalogue, I had access to 24/7 care.
The calm, looping monotony helped block out the noise. I didn’t need to think about it or engage with it. There were no expectations. I let it wash over me and take me somewhere else.
It wasn’t just music—it was therapy.
One of my favourite things is to pick at a musical thread and see where it takes me. Where I end up is often very different from where I start—usually another decade, style, and level of commercial success (or lack thereof).
In the following years, ambient and electronica accounted for the bulk of my listening. Every track felt like CBD oil for the soul.
From Aphex Twin’s delicate piano loops to Stars of the Lid’s endless drones and Tim Hecker’s tidal walls of sound, the catalogue grew. Ambient music had thrown me a life jacket and I was hooked.
One Saturday afternoon, I was having a bite to eat with my wife, the kids safely tucked away in the bosom of Netflix. I put William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops on in the background. Fifteen minutes in, my wife suddenly declared, “What the f1ck is this? Please darling, can we listen to something else?”
OK, not for everyone then, but for me—well, the decaying beauty and I had become close personal pals.
Ambient also reshaped the way I made music.
I became fascinated with noises and soundscapes—both in their own right and in how they could add depth and dimension to a track. My latest project, The Neon Light Foundry, not only straddled the pandemic, it also straddled my move from belligerent guitar purist to budding creator of all things atmospheric. My guitars were now self-confidently parked next to my MIDI controller and drum machine, with a supporting cast of captured noises—everything from the frolicking stream and blustery afternoon sea wind to the early morning bin lorry. I even got family and friends to record random words, interviews, sounds—anything I could use and manipulate (the sounds, not my family and friends!). I’d chop, splice, add gratuitous amounts of effects, and rearrange them to add flavour.
Suddenly, there were also new possibilities in how to use guitar, bass, and drums. My new album became the glorious lovechild of the organic and the synthesised.
So, from a glass-half-full perspective, something quite beautiful had come from a personal crisis. As a music lover, the ball of twine kept unravelling, and as a producer, I’d gained a new direction and lease of life.
Ambient music truly saved me. It was a sonic arm round the shoulder that came in an hour of need.
And maybe, when the noise around you feels unbearable, you’ll find your own stillness waiting in its quiet spaces.