Atmospheric space ambient, work in progress. Hope you enjoy!
Ambient music, what is it?
Ambient music includes forms of music that put an emphasis on tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. Ambient music is said to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality. To quote ambient pioneer Brian Eno, "Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting." This is perhaps one of the main areas where ambient differs from space music. Space music may very well, though not necceserally, work on a more active level. In my opinion, “ambient” has become a label used by far too many who make music not ambient at all. Slapping a reverb on a guitar does not mak a rock song “ambient. I think people are often misusing the word “ambient”, when they mean “atmospheric”.
So what is space music?
John Diliberto, the host of the radio show, Echoes, and creator of XPN's Star End, has stated that space music is related to electronic music as has Bay Area musician, composer and sound designer Robert Rich, who considers space music to be a combination of Electronic music influences from the 1970s with world music and "modern compositional methods". Forest, host of Musical Starstreams refers to Space music as a separate genre along with Ambient music, and others including dub, downtempo, trip hop, and acid jazz in the list of genres he calls "exotic electronica".
Steve Sande, freelance writer for the San Francisco Chronicle considers space music to be "Anything but New Age," and writes that "spacemusic is also known as ambient, chill-out, mellow dub, down-tempo."
One misconception, in my own opinion, is that space music generally relates to outer space. While outer space and cosmos very well can be themes for space music, as I see it; the term “space” refers to an inner space heightened by the aural space created by the space music soundscapes, thus enhancing the potential and mood for contemplation, meditation, visualization, drifting away, tuning in or dropping out. It's multi layered quality translates well to otherworldly realms, deep meditation, spiritual and psychedelic experiences. There is often a feeling of vast and immense spaciousness.
I use the term “Ambient Space Music” because much of my music have the qualities and key elements of both genres. It is not to define a limit for my music, it's just a basic guideline for people searching for this style of music.
No matter the definition, I do hope you enjoy the spaces I create with sound. Safe journey!
Thanks for your support,
Jan Roos / Super Fata