Can ambient music improve your mental health?

“This time last year I’d just moved to London and was really struggling with the loneliness, and this mounting anxiety that everyone was either having a much better time than me or was much more successful than me. When I was alone, in order to try and slow down these thoughts, I’d hunker down with my headphones and some ambient techno.”

This is Matt, a young professional from Derbyshire who credits Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92 with helping him realise that a series of low paid, entry-level art world jobs were making him miserable. At the closing event of Laurel Halo-curated festival MODE — coming to the end of a 10 hour marathon of gauzy soundscapes from the likes of Halo, Beatrice Dillon and Oliver Coates — he was just one of the ambient enthusiasts I encountered in the smoking area. 

Another was 23-year-old journalist Phoebe, who notes that ambient is the genre that’s always there for you when you’re having the toughest time. “One amazing quality that always sticks out about ambient is its ability to calm me in any situation. From revising for exams, sleeping, afters, emotional breakdowns, panic attacks.” Normally the site of loud, coked-up ramblings, the quiet calm in the air as festival-goers rolled their cigarettes, extolling the mental health benefits of deep listening as they did so, was striking. Maybe it was the lack of alcoholic options (just a few tinnies) but at the end of the 10th hour, as I re-emerged into the autumnal chill, it felt like I’d been infected with their sense of wellbeing.

It’s not just me, however, the link between ambient music and mental health has been well explored, with the liner notes for Brian Eno’s 1978 Ambient 1: Music for Airports stating that the genre’s intentions are to “induce calm and a space to think.” Whilst raves are about escapism and getting immersed in the humming energy of the room, the process of listening to ambient pushes you deeper into your thoughts. Unlike purely minimal music, however, ambient carries shades of calm within it that don’t just help you to tune into your emotions but can also help de-escalate anxiety.

Whilst it’s easy to dismiss ambient out of hand as just elevator-style muzak or soulless, Spotify-generated “deep concentration” playlists, it’s just as easy to point out that some of the figures working within the genre (William Basinski, Nils Frahm and Wolfgang Voigt to name but a few) are true innovators. Recent years have seen less established artists put their own spin on the genre, like Otha’s ambient-tinged dancefloor hit “One of the Girls”, the abstract, ambient-dub-bass mashup of rRoxymore’s Face to Phase LP or the lush tones of Jacques Greene’s forthcoming Dawn Chorus.

What with this resurgence, events like MODE and Southbank’s forthcoming DEEP MINIMALISM 2.0 are serving as an outlet bringing together young artists working in ambient and other varieties of minimal contemporary music. Providing opportunities to escape the intoxicant-heavy, chaotic energy of London’s nightlife — and the inevitable outcome that you’ll lose your keys and dignity somewhere along the way — ambient line-ups are becoming increasingly common on the club scene. No doubt a natural response to the capital’s demanding work culture and the cumulative stress of costly rents and long commutes, it seems like we’re all yearning to lose our worries in ambient’s blissful textures.

In my own experience, William Basinski’s Melancholia is one of the first things I turn to when I can feel the vertigo and shortness of breath that characterises my anxiety symptoms — so maybe, this World Mental Health Day, it’s time for you to press play on it too. So here’s a very HUNGER ambient playlist for you below…