Best New Ambient (September 2025)
These records will take you places
I recently stumbled across an inspirational meme quoting the reclusive Irish actor Cillian Murphy:
“I love being at home. My life is very simple. I read a lot of books. I watch a lot of films. I listen to a lot of music. I tend the garden. I cook with my family. Yeah, I'm boring.”
This meme got thousands of likes and shares.
I liked and shared it as well, because it accurately describes the approach I’ve been taking to life in the last years.
Murphy and I are both in our late 40s. Despite the bodily decline, I find many advantages in getting older: I was never clearer about my priorities, never more unapologetic about pursuing them, and less interested in what people think.
That freedom (call it arrogance, I don’t care) is a privilege that apparently comes with age. I guess constant back pain is the price you have to pay for clarity of mind.
My priorities in life right now are similar to Murphy’s: Besides occupying myself with the arts, I want to be around my loved ones and in nature as much as possible. It just seems like the most sensible way of spending the little time I have on this planet.
By the way – if you’ve newly subscribed to my newsletter and you’re interested in getting to know me, here’s an autobiographical introduction I wrote earlier this year which I’ve overhauled and expanded.
Anyway, here are some tiny recommendations outside of ambient music first:
Super Happy Forever, a beautiful, quiet 2024 film by Japanese director Kohei Igarashi. If you loved Drive My Car, this will be right up your alley.
This NTS Guide To… mix of late 1990s/early 2000s Japanese experimental electronic music (ambient techno, glitch, electronica, so-called IDM).
The writings of Byung-Chul Han. I recently enjoyed the Korean-German philosopher’s essay Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity (2022) – a plea for a life dedicated to slowness, reflection and self-communion.
Barber beats. This piece introduces a subgenre of vaporwave that I’ve been getting back into recently, so I’ve lifted the paywall on it.
Home-made plum jam. After an unusually rainy July, we’ve been drowning in wild plums. My wife has been making purées and jams from these dark red delicacies, adding rosemary, cloves and cinnamon.
Now let’s get to the best ambient music released in the last four weeks.
Angela Winter – Forbidden Questions in Space (Past Inside The Present, 2025)
Kōans are paradoxical riddles, stories or questions that students of certain Zen Buddhist schools have to ‘solve’ as part of their spiritual journey. They were created in ancient China to find new ways of engaging with the world – to foster a change in perspective, and to shake up the students’ internalized rational way of thinking. Not to avoid fear, anger, pain or frustration, but to accept and explore these emotions instead of just blindly identifying with them.
Angela Winter, an ambient composer based in Carrboro, North Carolina, is not a Buddhist, but Zen kōans and Bashō’s haiku poems consoled her in a time of depression stemming from a deep concern about the state of the world. Originally written as songs for piano and voice, Forbidden Questions in Space turned into “sonic kōans for troubled times”, improvised pieces to invoke a state of deep contemplation.
Through eight meditative soundscapes, Winter creates a mesmerizing, shimmering web of synths, drones, static noise and ethereal, ritualistic wordless vocalizations. This is not the type of ambient that will dissolve easily into the background – the music invites active listening and rewards open minds with a breath-taking journey into a rich and awe-eliciting sound world.
Florian T M Zeisig – A New Life (Stroom, 2025)
I’ve previously interviewed this prolific Berlin-based producer. His newest work, A New Life, feels new-age-inspired, though the press blurb asserts that it “does not belong to a ‘genre’. Not aesthetic, not ironic, not for consumption. Not intellectual – it is felt. (…) A return to truth. To be human without the mask.”
Gentle synths are interwoven with acoustic instruments, mainly saxophone and cello, and laced with field recordings of ocean waves, rustling leaves and birdsong. It’s important to note the non-ironic stance, because it could feel like it’s bordering on clichés if absorbed superficially – but a deep listen will uncover a core of earnestness, warmth and humanity.
Album highlight “Thank You Pharoah” feels indeed reminiscent of the late spiritual jazz master’s restrained playing on Floating Points’ Promises album, one of my most played records during the pandemic. Like that record, A New Life can act as an emotional support companion in these violent times, reassuring the listener that this moment, too, shall pass.
Aiko Takahashi – Monologue (Quiet Details, 2025)
Aiko Takahashi is a producer based in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, who has been quietly releasing some gorgeous work over the past few years. Now they’ve been commissioned by the
label, which has been featured extensively in this column, due to their no-nonsense approach to ambient music. Monologue is one of my favorite albums from their catalogue so far.This is lowercase ambient of the 12k school and lineage, inspired by the works of Taylor Deupree and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Takahashi started out by creating loops on an upright felt piano, meshed them with field recordings, sine waves, effects and bell sounds, and processed them by bouncing them out to analogue tape. From that process resulted a bunch of masterfully arranged pieces of swirling micro-sounds and ASMR-like textures. Monologue creates an ambiguous atmosphere unlike any other ambient record I’ve heard recently.
Madeleine Cocolas – Syndesis (Room40, 2025)
For her sixth album, the Australian composer traveled to her ancestral homeland of Greece to capture sounds, retracing her own steps 20 years after a first visit. The field recordings inspired her to write six versatile, cinematic compositions for piano and synthesizer that explore notions of time, place and memory.
Syndesis falls somewhere between ambient and post-classical, combining Cocolas’ compositional finesse with a deep interest in sound textures. Minimalist piano motifs and swelling bass notes shape the show-stopping opener “Where We Began”, while “Parthenon” features organ-like drones over hissing noise. “The Lion Gate” builds on an instrument that sounds like a mouth harp, before menacing drones, uncanny strings and single piano chords take over.
“Bells of Athens” starts out with piano arpeggios over rumbling low end; the actual bells do not start chiming until the last third of the piece. “Theory of Divination” is the only track with vocals, with Cocolas’ layered voice taking center stage as an instrument. “Where We Go” closes the album on a blissful note with piano chords that feel like a warm embrace and a melancholic goodbye.
Areliz Ramos – B Side (Mappa, 2025)
Mappa is a Slovakian tape label with a meticulously curated catalogue confidently sitting between ambient, experimental and electronic music, close in spirit to other forward-thinking Eastern European labels like Warm Winters Ltd. or Pointless Geometry. Their newest release comes from Peruvian producer Areliz Ramos, who lives in London and creates an intriguing blend of field recordings, distorted beats and lo-fi guitar – somewhere between Claire Rousay’s patented ‘emo ambient’ and the hazy, dubbed-out ambient techno of Pontiac Streator and the likes.
B Side is a headphone-friendly collage of found and composed sounds (and sometimes beats) that carries an emotional, diaristic undertone, channeling melancholic daydreams and exploring feelings of alienation and homesickness. “Rather than constructing a safe haven from hardship, Ramos offers a cracked mirror, staring right at it, embracing that vulnerability”, the press blurb says. “The gentle and beautiful ‘B-Side’ explores fleeting satisfaction, or the elusive comfort sitting just out of sight.” What a beautiful way of saying: Right up my alley.
Physique – Bright Lights, L’il City (Miúin, 2025)
Physique is the duo of improvising musicians Neil Quigley from Kilkenny, Ireland, and Sam Scranton from Chicago, Illinois. I got alerted to their second album through Lia Kohl’s newsletter
.Quigley and Scranton do not limit themselves in the way they create sounds – you will hear homemade instruments, text-to-speech programs, software presets, field recordings and random objects used as percussion. Rooted in improvisational practice, these playful instantaneous compositions are surprisingly fun to listen to, kindly inviting the listener into their weird little eclectic universe. Ambient? Maybe. I’ve been listening to this idiosyncratic album a lot while doing research and writing in the mornings, so I guess it works as such.
The press blurb mentions influences “ranging from YMO, Martin Denny, L.A. Noire, The birthplace of Larry Bird, Ridley Scott’s music video for Roxy Music’s Avalon, clocks in bars, and market segmentation analyses”, which made me laugh out loud. Physique prove that experimental music can be intelligent and fun, not taking itself too seriously.
Six Missing – Without Mind (Nettwerk, 2025)
This new album by producer and sound designer TJ Dumser alias Six Missing from Austin, Texas, was apparently “crafted as an improvised soundtrack for ketamine-assisted therapy sessions.”
Based on loops from an Eurorack modular synthesizer, these 12 long psychedelic tracks heavily feature sounds of a Mood Matriarch and Minimoog as well. Without Mind was inspired by ambient pioneers like Brian Eno and Hiroshi Yoshimura (especially his recently re-released Surround album), but it also heavily reminds me of kosmische / Berlin School acts like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze.
Clocking in at 75 minutes, this is a sprawling body of work designed as a headphone soundtrack for inner journeys that works well for actual traveling too. What is truly fascinating is how the music creates a different atmosphere depending on the daytime and the listener’s surroundings. I’ve found the album soundtracking recent train journeys and walks through the city, but it’s also provided an inspiring backdrop for late night writing sessions. Brian Eno would definitely approve.
Thanks so much for including qd38 Aiko Takahashi 🙏💙
Thank you for the tips! Deeply into Ambient music.