Best New Ambient (July/August 2026)

Summertime rolls…

Since my last roundup, I’ve been holing up in our country house, working on my next book. I’ve been returning to five stunning, recently released ambient albums, which I’m going to recommend to you with some very short blurbs below. I’ve said it before – these are not intended as actual reviews. Think of them more like those little handwritten notes from the staff at your favorite indie bookstore.

In the first half of the year, I’ve been interviewing more than 50 artists – two per week on average. I will be spending the rest of the year finishing the book, working on a few commissioned stories and writing more personal essays here.

I’m quite excited about these five upcoming albums which I’ve already had the opportunity to hear:

• Lusine – Melting Days (Ghostly, Aug 21) [ambient/electronic]

• Klara Lewis – Opening (Editions Mego, Sept 4) [noise/experimental]

• Space Afrika – Quiet Storm (Dais, Sept 25) [ambient/experimental]

• Emily A. Sprague – Cyano (RVNG Intl., Oct 2) [ambient/dreampop]

• Space Ghost – Back From Reality (Peace World, Oct 8) [ambient/house]

I might have more detailed write-ups on these for you in the future.

Today I want to start with a book recommendation though.

Eva zu Beck – The Wilder Way

I’ve mentioned Eva in a recent article about my favorite YouTube creators, because I think she’s a great advocate for alternative lifestyles and philosophies. I wholeheartedly recommend her inspiring and well-written memoir, The Wilder Way, which I just devoured over a rainy weekend in July.

Eva grew up in Poland, but moved to London as a teenager. She earned a degree from Oxford, found a well-paying job at a start-up, married young and adapted to a lifestyle full of affluence and ambition. Soon, however, she felt she was living out someone else’s dream rather than her own, which is why she eventually left everything behind to travel the world with a camera.

These days, Eva lives in a wooden cabin in the Carpathian mountains with her German Shepherd, Vilk. She’s into overlanding and running ultramarathons in remote places. She’s left most of society’s norms and limitations behind and rejects the prevailing consumerist complacency. Her YouTube channel has grown to almost two million subscribers over the course of a decade; she’s also been hosting her own travel show on the National Geographic channel. At 35, she’s now looking back on her radical search for a more feral lifestyle. Such a powerful read.

Get Eva’s book

Martin Brugger, photo: Tonda Bardehle

Ambient Album of the Month (July/August 2026)

Martin Brugger – The Shell (Squama)

The Munich-based label founder (Squama) and jazz bassist (Fazer) returns five years after his solo debut album Music for Video Stores with another gorgeous piece of lowercase ambient, this time with subtle hints of post-rock and lo-fi folk.

The Shell feels like the hazy soundtrack to a long-forgotten summer from many years ago. You can hear the strumming of an acoustic guitar in the distance, and layers of static blur the memory. If you just listen to one ambient album this month, make it this one. Thanks to Caro Whiteley for reminding me about it – make sure to check out Caro’s great Berlin culture newsletter Place to Be as well.

Felisha Ledesma & Snakeskin – Palm Of Hand (Paralaxe)

For this live performance, recorded at a Swedish avant-garde festival, sound artist Felisha Ledesma teamed up with the Lebanese dream-pop duo Snakeskin. Stylistically, Palm Of Hand falls somewhere between free-form ambient and electroacoustic composition, blending field recordings with synth drones and sparse vocal passages spoken or sung in Arabic.

The piece explores trauma, anger, and grief in the wake of the explosion in the Port of Beirut and the bombings of the Gaza Strip, yet there are also glimmers of hope. This is no superficial background music intended to lighten the mood, but rather an immersive experience that is particularly well-suited for deep listening sessions.

PJS – Auroras (okla)

These days, so much music produced with modular synthesizers sounds extremely generic and interchangeable, yet the duo of Jordan Christoff and Patrick Dique somehow manages to create 40-minute modular improvisations – without the use of overdubs or presets – that captivate me from start to finish.

The music simply flows with an energy that seems to draw directly from life itself, with an underlying melancholy setting the tone. It has often been said that good ambient music must work both as a background and as a foreground listening experience, and this is a prime example of how it’s done.

Tim Six meets Minereed – Afterlife Overdubs (biardo)

Last year, Ukrainian ambient and drone artist Tim Six performed a live synth set at a small art bookstore in Paris, his adopted home. Experimental musician Minereed recorded the performance on tape using a single microphone and later added overdubs featuring bansuri, zither, vocals, and other sounds. The Social Levitation Crew also contributed drums and percussion.

The result is a truly unique psychedelic journey into a dub-like, tribal-inspired ambient-non-ambient style that blends driving rhythms with analog drones and electronic textures. It’s also unlike anything the artists have created before.

FKP & PREMIUM CHANNELS – nowhere texas (self-released)

This sample-based road trip audio drama by the Texan artist, photographer, and author PREMIUM CHANNELS sounds like pulling over at an empty rest stop late at night and, while you’re filling up, hearing distorted voices over the wailing sounds of slide guitars and organs, coming from an old, battered radio inside the gas station – a harmless but slightly eerie moment, like the slow opening of a psychological horror movie.

I’d like to draw your attention to the beautifully evocative prose included with this ambient signalwave release – follow along with the plot as you listen by checking the info tab for each track.

“We have been on the road for one month, three weeks, two days, seven hours, and about 43 minutes. I don’t know what I’m looking for, honestly. I’m hoping that it’ll be obvious when I see it. After traveling east on down from Eden via State Highway 16, we’ve spent the last week getting wasted with some college friends in San Antonio before deciding to continue east to see the piney woods. We’re currently on U.S. Route 259 blowing north towards a place called Nowhere.”

Bonus Beats

Macroblank – 美容師 COLLECTION

My favorite curator of barber beats released a massive collection of reworks of Haircuts For Men tracks (“the barber who inspired me to do what I do”) from the 2015-2020 era, “for anyone who’s just getting started with the genre.”

The collection features 250 tracks, nearly 24 hours of trip-hop and downtempo music, mostly pieces by unknown studio musicians and bedroom producers found on old lounge compilations, which have been slowed down, edited and slightly reworked. Most of the original sampled tracks are credited in the Bandcamp blurb.

This 100% plundered but completely AI-free collection is absolutely intended as background music to create a calm, inspiring atmosphere – so turn on shuffle mode while you’re working, cooking, reading, doing chores or just chilling out.