Here are some thoughts about my historical and spiritual connection with Ambient Space Music.
~ David
HISTORY
Before
there was such a thing as “ambient” or “space” music,
there was a genre that was loosly referred to as “mood music”
that emerged with movies and popular music in the early parts of the 20th
century.
It wasn’t until the mid 80’s, with Brian Eno’s famous “Ambient
1 - Music for Airports,” that the term “ambient” began to
be used to describe what otherwise was referred to as “space music.”
This terminology is still being debated and discussed, along with the much
derided term “New Age Music.” Personally, I don’t mind “space
music” or “ambient” to describe what I like, but there are
many other sub-genres that can fall within the brackets of those terms.
My interest in this music goes back to at least the mid 70’s. I remember
vividly the day I was working at my college radio station - going through
the new promotional LP’s that came in every week - when I came across
an abstract looking album by a band called Tangerine Dream. The album was
“Phaedra” and I immediately fell in love with it. This music truly
called out to me, almost in a spiritual way. It seemed like it was “my
kind” of music, and I felt as if I had always been waiting for it to
show up. I kept up with this spacey, trancelike band until it began to evolve
away from that initial purity of mood and style. I tried to follow the thread
of it in the works of some of the individual members’ albums. I even
wrote a fan letter to Klaus Shultze and got a reply from him!
If the adolescent ‘me’ connected with Tangerine Dream, the adult
would find his big connect with the phenomenal works of Steve Roach. Steve
has released more than 50 albums over a quarter-century career that have redefined
ambient music for most enthusiasts. I consider him to be a major influence
in my own work, and I tend to surround myself with his auditory worlds, like
a life soundtrack. Steve shows us what depths and widths are possible in contemporary
deep ambient or spiritual/shamanic space music, and I consider him to have
pioneered a genre or field where others can now more easily explore their
own musical heart paths and make their own discoveries. These new soundscapes
are truly limitless.
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
Now,
I find that making my own music in this particular universe is a combination
of joyful play and my personal spiritual practice. Surely, those are parts
of the same thing. Most of my music is not “planned” in any traditional
manner. It comes from the muses and appears in a natural flow that, later,
seems surprising to my rational mind. This comes out of the unconscious and
from the source of emotions.
To me, music is about emotion. It invokes a picture in our souls that cannot
be described in words or visual imagery (both of which arts naturally have
their own realms of beauty and value). Music and aural soundscapes reach directly
to touch that part of us that cries, laughs, fears, and sighs. The moods and
emotions that can be invoked by music are truly endless.
NONORDINARY REALITIES
One side purpose to certain types of ambient works has to do with shamanism and accessing nonordinary realities. As a spiritual practice, there are many who follow this path to directly experience spiritual realms and effects and who do so within the framework of “tribal” or shamanistic practices. Some of the tracks I and others in this genre create have the characteristic of encouraging “entrainment”, or trance states by presenting a repetitive rhthym or note pattern at a particular frequency for extended lengths of time. Rather than intending to be “boring” or ambient in the sense of background-only, this is intended to assist the interested listener in an active manner to enter such concsiousness states. For those who are not seeking this, it certainly does no harm and is enjoyable on its musical merits alone.
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