For many of us,  2020 has been like watching a tape loop. We aren’t getting very much stimulus in our immediate environment. The same background keeps going by over and over again — if we’re lucky enough to have a moving background at all. In other words, there’s a lot of negative space. The perfect time, maybe, for ambient electronic music. Here’s more from The Verge:

The notion of “ambient music” is pretentious, sure, but the concept is simple. If most music is centered around some alchemy of melody and rhythm, ambient music eschews that for whatever else: tones, moods, atmosphere.

I’ve listened to Peel by Nairobi-based artist KMRU roughly once a day since I first heard it in July. Like most music in the genre, the album is concerned with timbre and texture — a lot of shapeless, ambiguous noise that slowly escalates and envelopes you. (Or, if you are my sister, you might describe it as “scary” and “ominous” and “please turn that off.”) Still, it was nice to put on something consistent in the mornings, which became as much of a ritual for me as taking coffee with oat milk and refreshing the Times’ updated COVID maps.

Hear more!