I’m back from a restorative spring break with the family. I’ll be digging into some heavy stuff in the coming weeks, but for now, I want to stick with the theme of rest.
My kids have the good fortune—or at least, I like to think so—of having a dad who listens to quite a lot of ambient drone and adjacent music. (I make some, too.) When the kids were little, this was the music I’d reach for whenever we needed to cool down from hot emotions or simply take a breath. During the COVID-19 pandemic, ambient music also became essential for navigating anxious feelings and falling asleep.
Below are some of the albums that we’ve turned toward most, with my brief reflections on what makes each special for us. I share these albums because I love them, and in the hope opening a few more musical doors—and maybe some deep breaths, too—for you and your families.
Northumbria, Helluland (2015)
Northumbria is a guitar-and-bass drone duo from Toronto, Canada, that conjures a vast and reverberant melodic space, evoking the foggy meeting of land and sea. Their album Helluland first became a staple for me and Sprout in the car. I must have put it on one day when I was feeling frazzled, and Sprout, then in preschool, took to it immediately. The opening piece, “Because I Am Flawed I Forgive You,” was special to us: we’d play it over and over. The piece captures everything I love about Northumbria: the vast spaces; the emotional resonance of the slowly-unfolding melodies; the sense of fog, oceans, bells, and things unseen. Eventually, Helluland also became a favorite bedtime accompaniment, its opening bell-like tones announcing the transition from day to night.
Warmth, Parallel (2018)
Warmth is the ambient project of Spanish producer Agustín Mena, also of SVLBRD and founder of the Archives label. Parallel is Mena’s “tribute to the minimalist ambient of the nineties,”1 and the roll of its glorious synth chords across the conscience is like nestling into a warm blanket. No wonder, then, that it’s far and away my family’s most-listened-to bedtime album. Parallel is one of those special instances when a loving tribute steeped in existing tradition achieves a singular resonance all its own. I put it on whenever I need to slow down.
Mike Lazarev, Dislodged (2017)
Ukrainian-born Mike Lazarev makes ambient-adjacent piano music that falls most easily into the “modern composition” and “neo-classical” genre categories. On Dislodged, as he explained in a 2019 interview, Lazarev plays a close-miked upright piano, on which he had locked one of the pedals “into a certain position in order to keep the felt between the hammers and the strings to muffle the sound.”2 Indeed, the thumps and rustles of hammers and felt are as central to the album’s sound as the ringing strings of the pitched notes. The result is a patient and elegiac album of lulling, rounded edges, great for bedtime or clarifying focus.
Chuck Johnson, The Cinder Grove (2021)
Chuck Johnson is a pedal steel guitar player from Oakland, California, and on The Cinder Grove, the yearning of his instrument is palpable: melodies curl and bend about the branches of imagined trees. Opener “Raz-de-Marée” is especially affecting—so much so, in fact, that my younger child, Cub, eventually had to stop listening to it at bedtime because it summoned tears.
Robert Rich, Sleep Concert at Gray Area, 24 Feb 2018 (2018)
California’s Robert Rich is a legend of the ambient scene and has been releasing music since the early 1980’s. (Full disclosure: he’s also a friend of mine.) One of Rich’s contributions to the art form is the all-night sleep concert, wherein he sculpts intricate musical dreamworlds for an audience who sleeps on the floor of the performance space. With the advent of DVDs and, more recently, digital music downloading, Rich began releasing long-form sleep concert-style recordings for home sleepers, including Somnium (2011) and Perpetual (2014).
Sleep Concert at Gray Area, 24 Feb 2018 documents a sleep concert that Rich performed in San Francisco. I put it on one night when Sprout was having trouble getting to sleep. Part of what made this meaningful for Sprout, I think, was not only that the music fit the context, but that its composer was a family friend. But you needn’t have a such a personal connection to the music to find both wonder and respite therein.
These are a few family favorites. May they be useful and open new doors for your family, too.
Close your eyes and listen.
Liner notes from Warmth, Parallel (Archives, 2018).
“Behind the piano: Mike Lazarev” (interview), Sleepy Songs, January 1, 2019.