The Living Music List #26: On a Change of Pace
Taking a moment to consider the stopping power of ambient music
Currently listening to: Peel by KMRU
If ever there was an artist who makes music to get completely lost in, it’s KMRU. One of his most popular works, Peel, is no different. It’s 23 minutes long and doesn’t display much change. There are some mild energy shifts here and there, but they come about gradually, so you don’t realize something has changed until you’re fully drenched in the extra sound. This is the kind of ambient music that I’m listening to more and more these days—heavy, consistent drones with only a hint of melody. Just enough to keep things interesting. Peel is a dense atmosphere to exist within, but it is a pleasant one. It’s how I imagine it feels to be on a planet where the force of gravity is maybe 10% weaker than Earth’s. It’s a subtle difference, but everything feels just a bit lighter. This is slow music, too. I often have this track on in the background while I work a job that can be very fast-paced, and I find myself getting work done in a similar amount of time but the minutes have passed as if they were hours, and the effort felt mindless and rewarding. Peel is a track that reminds me what slow music like most ambient can do to the clocks in our heads and the beating of our hearts—quiet them. What if life itself never really changes pace, and just our perception of it does?
Reflection
Hello, friend.
How do you like your music? Upbeat and heavy? Slow and steady? With cream and sugar?
When it comes to the pace you prefer, your answer might depend on how your life is moving in the moment.
For me, lately, it’s all felt much too fast. The pace of our society, especially here in America, seems to quicken exponentially as the days go by. There is a relentlessness to which we’ve succumbed—the insatiable nature of capitalism.
I was just reading an incredible piece from Omar F. Najjarine’s newsletter The Autodidact about “Why modern life feels meaningless,” and he quotes author Kirsten Powers who reflected on how different the pace and space of her life feels now that she resides in Italy:
I realized there are other places in the world (not just Italy) where life isn't about conspicuous consumption and "crushing" and "killing" your life goals, where people aren't drowning in debt just to pay for basic life necessities. There are places where people have free time and where that free time is used to do things they love—not to start a side hustle. I started to have a dawning awareness that we don't have to live this way. I also began to notice how calm I felt in Italy for extended periods, even when working from there, so it wasn't due to being on vacation. I could feel my nervous system settle. I noticed how I began to find the famous Italian inefficiency charming. It was a kind of quiet rebuke to the productivity fetish in the United States, where businesses are forever trying to “optimize” and “streamline” to please their shareholders and enrich their CEOs while making life increasingly miserable for their employees.
Najjarine goes on to discuss some of the overarching factors contributing to our apparent abandonment of the old traditional ways of being that revolved around making meaning of our lives—and how finding meaning is ultimately the strongest driving force of satisfaction and contentment in these complex stretches of consciousness we human beings call life.
Most of us don’t work for ourselves. Most of us work too much, too hard, for too long. Most of us still struggle to provide for ourselves while doing so. Most of us experience a constant deluge of voices and images online telling us we aren’t there yet. Most of us feel the increasing speed of the hamster wheel beneath our feet as the years go by, as we remain stuck in the rat race competing primarily against ourselves, chasing more time, more comfort, more wealth, less stress, less work, less disenchantment.
I know, I know—there’s so much to be grateful for in this era of relative peace and comfort. Things are expensive, sure, and we overwork ourselves, sure, but at the end of the day, we have so many luxuries that people of even the recent past did not. Luxuries that should make our lives more efficient and help us find more free time to slow down, relax, and appreciate all these luxuries.
The truth is they’ve all come with a price. The content machine must be fed. The all-time-high valuations must rise further. Humankind’s spirit must always collectively yearn for more. It’s just how we’re wired. We’ve evolved thus far through our singular power of desire and our ingenuity that’s allowed us to achieve our desire by any means necessary.
What else can we yearn for now that we have reached this pinnacle? Well, something in our souls can’t see it that way. We can’t have reached the highest point because we inherently feel that our species can only climb higher and higher. And as the scale of the heights we’ve ascended becomes increasingly abstract as we zoom out, we shift our focus to speed instead. Efficiency. Metrics. At this point, if we want to see real progress in our lives, we’ll have to become the 6 million dollar men: “better, stronger, faster.”
This is why I’ve found myself gravitating towards ambient music records like they are little bonfires of respite. I like my music slow these days. I need it to be slow much of the time, to ground me, to remind me that life can indeed move at different rates.
I often feel like we are told to be everything all at once. A wage worker, an artist, a provider, a side-hustler—no matter what role we play, we better be monetizing it. Drone music reminds me that being one thing for a little while is quite alright.
I’m currently situated in a very urban plot of New Jersey, not far from NYC, one of the most bustling cities in the world. The noise around me is not only constant, but it sounds like hurrying. Sirens, cars rushing by and honking their horns, planes lifting off and touching down every few moments from Newark Airport. Listening to a record with field recordings of more serene landscapes reminds me that there are places out there with less movement, that emanate a more natural sound of waking life.
Yes, I think I’ll take my music nice and slow this morning. I’ll hear it and remember that other people made this—people who were able to change their pace through music. And I won’t need lyrics to draw meaning from the tracks—I’ll sit and bask in the atmospheres, get lost in the soundscapes, unfocus my vision and let the smallest details of the sound ephemerally pop in and out of my awareness.
I won’t always just sit there, by the way. I’ll do the dishes, maybe not as fast as my monkey brain initially wanted. But it won’t matter, because I’ll begin to realize the contentment I feel as I wash each individual dish slowly and thoroughly to the sound of the music.
I’m feeling like it’s time for a signficant change of pace, but I don’t think I necessarily need to quit my job and go live in the country and throw away my smartphone. There are many facets of life that now seem to encourage a life lived too quickly, yes. But standing calm in the middle of it all—reacting to it in my own time, setting my own pace—is my new goal. There’s something quietly powerful about the calm eye in a storm and I want to remain there. Let the storm rage around me, knowing I’ve made my place of peace that can’t be penetrated by the rushing winds and rain.
I need to remember that, despite outside influence, I can control my time. That may mean someday I need to make choices like quiting my job and moving to the country. But right now, it’s smaller than that. I’ll start slowly. A captured moment of zen here, an hour of pure existence there.
All the while, I’ll search for the right records that match my tempo.
Reminder: Join the HB&H Discord Community
If you’re an artist, a label owner, or a music journalist in the ambient, electronic, and/or experiemental space, please reach out to me if you’re interested in joining the private Hum, Buzz, & Hiss Community Discord Server. There, you can meet others in this niche, share and discuss your work, and just hangout.
Email me to join the community: meltedform@gmail.com.
Music Recommendations
Hello again, friend.
Thank you for reading today’s post. I hope you enjoyed the reflection—and I hope you have a moment today to just be.
I’ve got some records for you today that will hopefully help get you there. What are your go-to tracks or albums for slowing down? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to add them to my library.
Happy listening, and happy Friday the 13th, by the way. :-)
The Living Music List—Ambient
Note: All of the below ambient projects are available on Bandcamp. Bold and * denotes reader-submitted work—thank you!
series of untitled events by end, red dress (album / experimental, noise) [Indpendent / Bandcamp]*
Clarity of Resonance by Jenn Jacobsen (album / drone) [Independent / Bandcamp]*
Faith in a Beautiful Future by Exit Chamber (EP / drone) [Passed Recordings / Bandcamp]
Crystalline Existence by Endlesstrains & Taennya (album / drone) [ARCHIVES / Bandcamp]
Softie by Jogging House (album / drone, downtempo) [Independent / Bandcamp]
Shantih by pleasuregarden (EP / experimental, dark ambient) [Independent / Bandcamp]
a space to rest and recover by Various Artists (compilation / drone, minimalist) [slow echo / Bandcamp]
5 by Saito Koji (single / ambient guitar, drone) [independent / Bandcamp]
Sediment by Julian Edwards (album / experimental) [Independent / Bandcamp]
Suzu by Ian Hawgood & Stijn Hüwels (single / drone, minimalist) [Home Normal / Bandcamp]
Reveille by Rosales (single / drone, minimalist) [Home Normal / Bandcamp]
Jougə by Various Artists (compilation / meditative, field recordings) [Neotantra / Bandcamp]
Squared Roots by Seefeel (album / electronic, experimental {note: some percussion}) [Warp Records / Bandcamp]
Nebulous Nights (An Ambient Excursion into Profound Mysteries) by Röyksopp (album / experimental, field recordings {note: some tracks that lean electronica, others that are more sparse and drone-based}) [Independent / Bandcamp]
Tape I by Glim (album / drone) [Room40 / Bandcamp]
The Living Music List—All Genres
Note: Most of the below projects are available on major streaming services (except #2, which is only on Bandcamp).
Stellar by Akira Kosemura (EP / classical crossover)
Fascinating Stuff by Seconds (album / electronic {but difficult to categorize, jumps all over the place})
22_23 Live Sessions by FKJ (album / electrojazz)
Colourblind by Tom Misch (EP / altternative)
The Skeleton Key by Roc Marciano & The Alchemist (album / hip-hop/rap)
Missionary by Snoop Dogg & Dr. Dre (album / hip-hop/rap)
Babygirl (Original Soundtrack) by Cristobal Tapia De Veer (album / film score)
Upside Down by Polygonia (EP / electronic)
Digital Rain / I Miss You (EC1 Edit) by Daniel Avery (single / jungle/drum’n’bass)
Dryad’s Hymn by Keane Wang (album / classical crossover)
The Press Box
No features today, but I want to highlight a few forthcoming, reader-submitted releases that will be featured in Hum, Buzz, & Hiss in the coming weeks. Keep an eye out for:
Nocturne (Soundtrack for an Invisible Film) by Avi C. Engel [Independent / releasing January 3, 2025]
Förr + Anders Enge Remix by Dött ljus [Slowcraft / releasing January 8, 2025]
dream or memory? by missing scenes [Varia Records / releasing January 10, 2025]
Bottna by Dött ljus [Slowcraft / releasing February 5, 2025]
That’s all for this week’s issue. Thank you for reading. Until next time.
Your friend,
Melted Form
Remember to listen to the hum, buzz, & hiss of the world around you—there is music to be heard there.
Read the previous issue of The Living Music List:
Afterword—Let’s Get In Touch
Are you an artist, a label owner, or a member of the press? Want to share an in-depth feature of your upcoming release, an advertisement, or a guest post for a future Hum, Buzz, & Hiss issue? Get in touch with me at meltedform@gmail.com. As always, I would love to hear and recommend your music, especially if it’s new and ambient/electronic/experimental.
