Best New Ambient (May 2025)
These records will take you places
Due to the positive feedback to my April roundup of new ambient music, I will be turning this format into a monthly column.
As I’ve been writing frequently about ambient and ambient-adjacent music for some years, I get sent a lot of new music in this style. Seriously, most of it is quite good and interesting.
The records I’m including here are the special ones though, those that speak to me on a deeper level. It’s sometimes hard to explain what makes them stand out, but I’ll try nonetheless.
Before we get into today’s ambient roundup, here are 5 unrelated brief recommendations:
E, the stunning first album from Eliana Glass, just released on Félicia Atkinson’s Shelter Press label. This 27-year old, New York-based jazz singer and pianist arrives fully formed, brimming over with style, wit and character. In an interview over at
she talks about discovering her New Zealand roots, working on music with her brother and being inspired by Nina Simone and Elizabeth Fraser. Clearly not ambient, but definitely the most impressive debut of the year. Don’t miss out.
The 2023 movie Past Lives by Celine Song, starring Greta Lee. A poetic film about the Korean relationship concept of inyeon, which is derived from the Buddhist/karmic school of thought. In what is essentially a romantic comedy-drama, it’s remarkable how the director completely resists resorting to cheap clichés.
Takashi Hiraide’s short novel The Guest Cat, first published in Japanese in 2001 and translated to English in 2014. Written in a tone of unagitated, laconic beauty, it tells the story of a suburban couple of mid-thirties freelance writers whose lives lighten up when they start getting visits from a stray cat. (Thanks to
for recommending this!)Sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor that you can store away during the day. It’s a helpful ritual that clearly divides nighttime from daytime. As a side effect, you take up less space to live, clean, heat etc., which can help reduce your ecological footprint.
Freshly baked sourdough bread (or bagel) with cream cheese and fig jam. Bake in some rosemary if you want to make it even more perfect.
Best New Ambient (May 2025)
Marine Eyes – Quiet Circle (2025)
This EP by Los Angeles-based musician Cynthia Bernard aka
continues where her last full-length To Belong left off. The new music was inspired by a street with that exact name, “a long, tucked-away driveway at the base of Mount Diablo in the Bay Area”, where Bernard grew up.“I remember wondering as a kid if it was actually quieter there”, she writes. “That small thought stuck with me over the years, and in its own way, shaped how I came to value stillness and softness in life.”
Not really an album but a 20-minute ambient snack, these six relatively short and concise tunes consist of processed and layered guitar and synth sounds, field recordings and gorgeous wordless vocals. In her Bandcamp listening session, she talked about working on her peaceful, introspective and slightly melancholic soundscapes on an iPad, literally composing in nature.
It’s the acoustic quality of the music’s individual components and the thoughtful composition that clearly makes it stand out from a flood of generic wellness wallpaper. Now more than ever, it’s important to create ambient music with a deep and distinctly human spirit. Cynthia masterfully lives up to that challenge.
Hinode Tapes & Hiroki Chiba – Ita (Instant Classic, 2025)
Ever wondered how it would sound if Eberhard Weber had traveled to the small village of Forst, Lower Saxony, West Germany, sometime in the mid-1970s, to hang out with Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius of Cluster/Harmonia fame on their off-grid farm and jam together?
Maybe a bit like the first track on Ita, the collaboration between Polish ambient trio Hinode Tapes and Japanese double-bassist Hiroki Chiba. These four rather long-ish improvisations explore a space where analog kosmische meets electroacoustic chamber jazz.
This at times mystical, ritualistic-sounding record was done without much editing and overdubbing; just some field recordings were added afterwards. Hiroki Chiba’s spacious plucked bass notes float effortlessly over Piotr Kaliński’s bright synths, Jacek Prościński’s earthy wood percussion and Piotr Chęcki’s breathy saxophone, painting images of still Japanese landscapes passing by a bullet train window at dusk.
Ian Hawgood – well, here we are (Quiet Details, 2025)
Ian Hawgood has been active in ambient circles for a quarter century. Aside from producing music himself and creating a vast discography, he’s been co-running the Home Normal label since 2009, first from Japan, then from Poland, and now from his home country, England. This new album was released on one of my favorite contemporary ambient labels,
.Just a couple of years ago, the artist survived a suicide attempt through an overdose. That horrible event left him with some serious health issues that also affected his music-making practice, but luckily he’s made it out of that deep valley. I know what depression is from first-hand experience, so when someone on the Bandcamp listening session commented along the lines of, “I’m so happy you were still here to make this album”, that really tore me up.
Make no mistake though – this album is by no means a sad affair, but a rather life-affirming one, an hour of immensely beautiful textural lowercase ambient in the 12k/LINE tradition, somewhere between Federico Durand and Marcus Fischer. Minimalist restraint makes this album feel through-composed and well-rounded; each element sits exactly where it should.
Chaos In The CBD – Downtempo Special | RA Greenhouse Sessions (RA, 2025)
This brotherly duo from New Zealand has been releasing breezy deep house and chugging dub techno for a decade. Now they’ve released their debut full-length, A Deeper Life, a mix of organic house and downtempo tunes in the style of Larry Heard’s classic 1990s albums.
While I do enjoy that record, I want to highlight this DJ mix compiling inspirations and influences. Contrasting the more dancefloor-oriented album, this is an hour of laid-back ambient and trip-hop sounds. Expect loads of colorful flutes, acoustic guitars, new age synths, Balearic vibes and Caribbean rhythms, featuring many lesser known gems from the 1980s until today. One to bookmark for the upcoming summer nights.
Stephan, thank you for the phrase "ambient snack", I really ought to use it more often. That "linen sheets" from Marine Eyes really hit the spot. I've been working thru finding a better way to describe micro-meditations, since I'm making ambient music that's a couple minutes apiece — I generally call it sonic science fiction like short stories, but am looking for better terms to aptly describe the ambient ones. Thank you for these recommendations, and if you have more in this brief-yet-fulfilling vein, I welcome further recs... and shall look forth to your next roundup.
Also the phrase "through-composed" (aka "go beyond the 8-bar loop!") doesn't get enough mention, so I smiled upon seeing your use! 😁🎼
Such a good stack!