Best New Ambient (April 2026)

New music from Boards of Canada, Emily A. Sprague, Félicia Atkinson & Christina Vantzou, Anenon, Salamanda and Miska Lamberg

Look, I won’t try to hide my excitement about the new Boards of Canada album Inferno, set to arrive on May 29. I’ve even tried to get a ticket for their album listening session in Berlin. When I clicked the link a minute after it went live, all tickets were already gone. I felt relieved though; I think I like the idea of sharing my first listen with a roomful of fans more than I’d like the actual experience.

So far, there’s just a single three-and-a-half minute piece of new music out: The beatless “Tape 05” (which might be called “Father and Son” on the album) is unmistakably BoC, with its uncanny drones, a dark synth chord progression, warm harp and organ tones. Fans have already been comparing it to the ambient track “Olson” from their classic ‘98 album Music Has The Right To Children.

If you’re not familiar with Boards of Canada at all, this article might work as a brief introduction. Written in October 2024 when speculations about a new album last bubbled up, it explains why even just the announcement alone is such a huge deal to many of us.

There’s another song I’m listening to on repeat right now: “Double Moon”, a new standalone single from synthesist Emily A. Sprague. Her solo records have usually been instrumental, but this tune features her ethereal vocals floating over twinkling modular synths. Is this what claire rousay meant with the ‘indierock-ification’ of experimental music? Anyway, I’d really appreciate a full album in this style.

On a personal note, I was invited to record a short video reel for the German indie music magazine DIFFUS. I’ve contributed a longform piece about the contemporary local vaporwave scene to their upcoming print issue, to be published on May 13. In the piece, I’m quoting four of the most prolific and influential vaporwave artists based in Germany. Paid subscribers will find the full interviews (in English) here in my archive: Puderpolli, Kratzwerk, Stachy.DJ alias hofuku sochi and Room 208.

I’m actually not on Instagram myself, but you can now follow me on Bluesky. I will probably be using that account mostly for links to my longer form writings (here and elsewhere), and to brag about the most recent additions to my vaporwave tape collection.

Below you will find my four favorite ambient albums released in April.

Christina Vantzou, Félicia Atkinson, photo: John Also Bennett

Félicia Atkinson & Christina Vantzou – Reflections Vol. 3: Water Poems (RVNG Intl.)

I’ve been following these two artist-composers for years (check my 2024 interview with Félicia, one of my faves from the archive), but wasn’t aware they’re connected by a long friendship. Atkinson lives in Normandy, Vantzou in Greece, so it’s not a huge surprise their first album-length collaboration turned into a musical ode to the sea – viewed “not as a monolithic postcard”, as Félicia clarifies in the press text, “but more a person per se; an energy, a mystery, a complex character we face everyday, as human beings living by the sea.”

Recorded in centuries-old Greek and Italian mansions, as well as Atkinson’s home studio near the Channel coastline, this album was made with synthesizers, gongs, metallophones, piano, vibraphone, Fender Rhodes, Mellotron and guitars; John Also Bennett contributed electric lap steel guitar and vocals to one song. The final mixes were completed with Vantzou working from the Mediterranean island of Crete, exchanging files with Atkinson in Normandy.

Water Poems combines Vantzou’s electroacoustic sound sculptures with Atkinson’s intimate poetry and her knack for atmospheric field recordings (think crashing waves, dripping water, seabirds). Both women’s voices are heard, in English and in French, sometimes in a spoken word manner, sometimes in Atkinson’s already patented whispering style, conversing with each other or finishing each other’s thoughts.

This is not exactly wellness music, but a magical and immersive ambient album that works best as a deep listen without any distraction. The press text contains a quote from marine biologist Rachel Carson which resonated with me a lot – it might actually say more about the actual experience of these sounds than any further accumulation of pretentious adjectives:

“To stand at the edge of the sea (…) is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.”

Anenon – Dream Temperature (Tonal Union)

When Brian Allen Simon’s last album Moons Melt Milk Light came out three years ago, I spoke to him in a long interview here and then again at an in-person conversation at a listening event in Berlin. This feels like ages ago.

While that record felt like a departure with its organic sound, Brian’s new work sounds more electronic again, somehow more in tune with his 2010s albums. Brian started his journey as an experimental electronic producer in the L.A. beat scene but is also a self-taught saxophonist whose deeply personal and often haunting music sits comfortably between genres and audiences.

It’s a situation he addressed in a somewhat defiant-sounding Bandcamp message on the album release day:

“I don’t give a f*ck about trends, about image, about posturing or fitting into some box or genre. I know that this is why my music isn’t rated as high as it should be, taken as seriously in the zeitgeist as it could be. It’s too difficult to pin down, not ambient enough for the background, not jazzy or academic enough for the grad students.”

Dream Temperature might indeed not fit neatly into boxes or categories. Brian’s music is based on a minimalist palette of tenor saxophone, acoustic piano and field recordings. The electronic manipulations on this material are essentially controlled by the human breath as well, as Brian makes use of a digitized wind synthesizer, the Roland Aerophone. Its sound feels slightly reminiscent, as Brian himself noted during a listening session, of Gigi Masin’s classic 1986 album Wind.

There are other traces of his main influences that can be heard throughout this album – Sakamoto, Jarrett and Aphex Twin are mentioned in the press text for good reasons. But most of all, to me this just sounds like Brian’s unique, natural voice, which he’s carved out over the last decade and a half.

Salamanda – Basil (Music To Watch Seeds Grow By)

I love the concept of this UK-based ambient tape label, which commissions artists to create bodies of work dedicated to specific plants. A package of seeds comes with each ordered cassette, so you will actually be able to watch them grow as you listen to the music.

The most recent entry in their discography comes from Seoul-based duo Salamanda whose playful, melodic work has somehow eluded me until now. The music traces one day in a single Basil plant’s life. Standing in a pot on a window sill, it stretches to absorb all the sunlight it can possibly get until winding down again for the night. This beautiful suite of 22 minutes tends to fly by quickly, and I’ve found myself just pressing play again and again.

Salamanda make use of so many bright and twinkling little sounds that are tickling my brain in strange ways. Searching for references, I’m reminded of Foodman’s colourful productions, though his tracks are much more heavy and forward-driving than these chime-like minimalist excursions. It’s important to note that Basil is not at all beatless, but the rhythm elements (a lot of light percussion, hand drums and marimba or xylophone) feel soft and organic. They blend in perfectly with those bright synth pads in the first and the hazy, dreamy textures in the second half.

miska lamberg – stillness in their isolation (Sawyer Spaces)

In his 2015 documentary In Pursuit of Silence, filmmaker Patrick Shen researches the effects of noise on our lives and health. In one sequence, a scientist explains how humans will rarely experience absolute silence in their lives; even in a soundproof room, we can still hear our blood rush and our heart beat.

While listening to this fascinating new work by Finnish sound artist miska lamberg, I was suddenly thinking about Shen’s film, which I’ve watched over a decade ago in a tiny cinema across the street from where I lived in Berlin at the time. I was then also thinking of John Cage, who wrote a book called Silence and urged us to stop “discriminating against sounds”. In his view, the sound of a violin shouldn’t be judged any differently than that of a jackhammer. In the end, these are all just frequencies hitting our ear, and as soon as we turn towards them instead of wanting them to go away, they become interesting – or even beautiful.

Two longform pieces make up this CD release: “transportation” is based on city traffic recordings, while “ventilation” focuses on the sounds of air conditioning units. These environment noises can feel intrusive, annoying, violent – almost unbearable at times. But as the context changes, we start turning our attention towards their textural details. All of a sudden, the difference between signal and noise dissolves, as we understand it’s just another value judgment made by our mind. stillness in their isolation instead enhances a pure listening experience, driven by a deep curiosity about the sound itself. What the piece is essentially about, it seems to me after repeat listens, is a reclaiming of human agency.