Best New Ambient (January 2026)
These records will take you places
2025 was a year of growth for zensounds. In spring, it entered the global Top 100 Music leaderboard and became a Substack bestselling publication, meaning that for the first time more than 100 people were actually paying for a subscription.
In late summer, I published an article on Japanese ambient records that went viral. By the end of the year, my total subscriber numbers had more than doubled.
I’ve been thinking more deeply about the direction of this little niche music newsletter. There are many other great publications out there, some of them dealing with very similar music. I want to add value to my readers’ lives, not more noise to the internet.
As you’ll have noticed, I’m currently quite excited about vaporwave, an experimental electronic music genre I’ve been following on and off since 2013/14. The scene is living through its third or fourth renaissance, but the media and other music writers aren’t covering any of it, so I’m trying to close that gap.
I’ve been receiving promising feedback around my new interview series Vapor Talks both from inside and outside of the scene. For the next couple of weeks, I have a bunch of insightful conversations with up-and-coming artists and some true legends lined up.
Despite my excitement, I want to clarify that zensounds is not turning into a vaporwave newsletter. Vaporwave will remain a major focus area for the next months, but I will keep covering other forms of ambient and experimental music, reviewing ‘classic’ ambient records and dedicating artist features and interviews to composers and producers from that wide-ranging realm. I’m still interested in exploring experimental forms of electronic, jazz, rock, folk, noise and drone music.
Today I am resuming my monthly ambient album roundup, which will now come in the middle rather than at the end of each month. That means some of the albums mentioned below are still unreleased but can usually be pre-ordered.
Before we start, some tiny non-music recommendations:
In her multi-volume novel series On The Calculation Of Volume, the brilliant Danish author Solvej Balle offers a fresh sci-fi take on the Groundhog Day scenario: A glitch in time forces a married French woman to relive one specific day in her life, the 18th of November, hundreds of times in a row, and while she can very much remember them all, the world around her, including her husband, seems to forget everything. Will she ever be able to find her way back into linear time? I’ve devoured the first volume in a couple of days.
A great essay by Justin Patrick Moore about how to be a ‘slacker’ in 2026 has deeply resonated with the ageing Gen X’er in me: “Slacking off is a way to sidestep the rat race of meaningless work and the hamster wheel of 21st century busyness in favor of doing your own thing.”
A controversial essay by Sema Karaman, “My Case Against Travel”, rightfully received a lot of traction. I agree with the general sentiment – and I’d add the environmental impact of mindless traveling to the list of reasons why I’d rather stay in one place and travel much slower these days. One of my resolutions for 2026 is actually to not set foot on a plane. As Bruce Chatwin once said: “Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin.”
I’ve had the pleasure to be able to preview these three amazing upcoming music books, all of which are now up for pre-order:
Ambient Album Of The Month
Kayla Painter – Tectonic Particles (quiet details)
For the newest entry in their discography, UK ambient label quiet details enlisted Kayla Painter, a Bristol-based artist of Fijian-British heritage who’s been making waves in the electronic music community with her immersive A/V shows.
What strikes me most about Tectonic Particles is how every track sounds completely different, from the tonal characteristics of their sound sources to their overall mood and atmosphere. Taken in as a whole, the album still feels totally coherent.
“Tectonic Particles is about small processes that make gigantic differences in the Universe”, Kayla is quoted in the liner notes. “The star burning out that explodes, creating stardust, creating us. The drip over a hundred thousand years that forms a stalactite.”
The composer, producer and educator works with synths, saxophones and steel drums, among many other analog and digital instruments, to weave a fascinating tapestry of percussive rhythms, textures and sounds. Most of all, I appreciated how the album surprised me constantly with its unexpected twists and turns, evoking the same awe and wonder I often feel when looking up at the night sky.
David Moore – Graze The Bell (RVNG Intl.)
It’s hard to make a solo piano record that truly stands out from all the Peaceful Piano playlist muzak. Even storied artists and record labels have spent the last couple of years chasing the algorithm with what can only be described as human slop.
With his ensemble Bing & Ruth, pianist David Moore has been creating atmospheric minimalism for two decades; he’s also part of the ambient Americana trio Cowboy Sadness. It’s no surprise that his new solo album Graze the Bell, performed on a 1987 Hamburg Steinway D and recorded live with no overdubbing, is the rare kind of meditative piano record that creates much more than just decent hotel lobby ambiance (though it totally works as background listening as well).
Reminiscent of widely resonating genre classics such as Max Richter’s Blue Notebooks, Nils Frahm’s Solo or Hania Rani’s Esja, there’s an inviting warmth at the core of this album that might be lost on the casual listener at first, but will surely be discovered by the attentive one on repeated explorations.
Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore – Tragic Magic (Infiné)
This duo record by experimental vocalist/keyboardist Julianna Barwick and harpist Mary Lattimore sounds exactly as enchanting as you might imagine. Recorded in nine days at the Philharmonie de Paris, it’s an emotional journey into the wilderness territory between improvisation and composition, falling somewhere between contemporary classical, ambient, dreampop and folk noir.
For the recordings, Lattimore chose historical harps from the 18th and 19th century from the Musée de la Musique’s instrument collection, while Barwick worked on classic analog synthesizers like the Jupiter and Prophet-5. The heavily reverbed, angelic vocals lend a folky, vaguely pagan atmosphere to the music. Every reader who’s been around for a while knows that I’m highly susceptible to this type of gothic romanticism. Just listen to the central piece “Haze With No Haze”, and you’ll know immediately what I’m referring to.
Markus Guentner – On Brutal Soil, We Grow (Affin)
Fresh off last year’s dubby collaboration with Joachim Spieth, the veteran German ambient producer jumped right into finishing another solo album. “In an era that constantly demands speed, efficiency, and productivity, Guentner’s deliberate choice of slowness becomes an act of resistance”, the press blurb states. “The album doesn’t deliver quick gratification; instead, it creates space for reflection, and becomes a refuge from the relentless consumption that dominates contemporary culture.”
Which is absolutely true to an extent, but it also applies to most music in this genre. I think this is one of the main reasons many people, including myself, often feel drawn to instrumental soundscapes instead of classic songs. That being said, Guentner’s pieces do indeed stand out from the vast ocean of mediocre ambient releases, mainly because of their emotional resonance.
This music seems to seep into our sphere from some timeless place beneath the crust of the earth. Ancient noises and drones connect with voices from the deep that transmit unspeakable darkness. But wait, there’s hope and warmth as well – at times it is truly overwhelming, this album, and you need to take your time with it. Let it deliver on its promise though; just give it enough space and it will reward you with a feeling of deep connection to nature and the cosmos.
Miska Lamberg – Evening, window (Dragon’s Eye)
A sound artist and musician based in Helsinki, Finland, miska lamberg often deals with environmental and philosophical issues in their work. They practice sound recycling, which means that rather than creating new sounds, they “work with existing sounds of the world through the use of field recordings and other recorded media”, as their press bio states. I find that approach to music-making as collage very thoughtful, as it’s also about noticing and appreciating our surroundings, and working mindfully with the resources at hand, instead of just blindly using them up.
Evening, window is a truly captivating body of work that reminds me of certain moments on Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, or even some of William Basinski’s discography or the less abrasive parts of Tim Hecker’s. The album seems to oscillate between the austere warmth of melancholy and the cold, icy depths of depression and despair (“I remember the day the world lost color”). Simple repeating organ phrases are layered with barely edited field recordings, until processed strings get eaten up by static fields of white noise. After watching too many Aki Kaurismäki films, I imagine January in Helsinki to feel exactly like that.
Brian d’Souza – Sunflowers (Music To Watch Seeds Grow By)
One of my favorite ambient tape labels out there celebrates their seventh release since launching their first season in late 2024. Season two is opened by Scottish producer Brian d’Souza, better known to electronic music fans as Auntie Flo.
Sunflowers are special plants, with root systems that “engage in complex social behaviours”, as the blurb explains. “Recent studies have shown that sunflowers exhibit spatial awareness and a form of etiquette: avoiding competition when resources are plentiful, sharing nutrient patches when necessary, and positioning themselves strategically when they have better access to resources. This balance between cooperation and competition underpins d’Souza’s composition.”
“I chose sunflowers because they embody cooperation over competition”, the composer states. “When they encounter nutrient-rich soil between two plants, they deliberately root elsewhere to avoid conflict, demonstrating that co-existence can be a stronger evolutionary drive than dominance, challenging our traditional understanding of survival of the fittest.”
In terms of process, d’Souza converted biodata from an actual sunflower into sound on a modular synthesizer. Regardless of how that might work in practice, I find the concept of this record at least as fascinating as the spartanic but at the same time weirdly colourful palette that came out as the result. It’s hard to explain but this album actually sounds as if it was composed by a plant rather than a human – which I guess was the whole point.
Erdfisch – Erdfisch (tier.debut)
Some brilliant, wildly unique stuff from avant-garde guitarist Marius Mathiszik and sound artist/composer Henning Rohschürmann, who met while studying music in the Netherlands many years ago and previously collaborated on several releases and performances. This is a more through-composed and post-arranged version of the improvised electroacoustic Fourth World kraut-jazz the duo has been presenting to baffled after-hour audiences at raves and festivals throughout Germany over the last few years.
In the spirit of recycling existing words instead of desperately having to create new ones from scratch, I again quote from the press blurb which actually describes the music quite aptly: “In a lush landscape comprised of granulated instruments, modular synths and field recordings of animals, beats form through hidden pulses and hexed polyrhythms. From time to time gentle melodies appear, piloting the listener on a thrilling path through ever-engaging cinematic beauty.”
Erdfisch (‘earthfish’) will definitely appeal to the more adventurous listeners of ambient music, as it’s really not ignorable enough to become mood-enhancing background noise. In fact, when I heard it first very casually over headphones during work hours, it kept distracting me from my tasks, as my attention was constantly drawn to interesting new textures and sounds. When I sat down with the record again after work though, this artful musical kaleidoscope instantly evoked a lively deep sea scenario that I happily and completely disappeared into.
What a honor to be mentioned alongside such many great artists, thank you!
Excellent write up this Stephen. Wonderful to see Kayla’s work getting credit duly deserved too! She is a playful breath of fresh air in the industry 🔥