What we call Ambient Music today dates from 1978, when English musician and producer BRIAN ENO released “AMBIENT 1 : MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS.”  In his companion “Ambient Manifesto,” Eno gave a name and a purpose to an undefined creative area of minimalist, electronic, and experimental art music, and turned it into a contemporary genre.

Writers searching for the roots of the Ambient sensibility traced its origins to prehistoric Eastern religious traditions that promoted ecstatic states through stillness, meditation, psychedelic and mystical experience. The contemporary influence of European electronic music was more technical, and focused on creating complex soundscapes and defining auditory space. Today, Ambient music creates a sense of place that ranges from merely calming and serene, to profoundly numinous and transcendent, and supports an accessible form of spirituality for a post-secular age.

On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, we look back at ambient music from its early maturity in the 1980s, and now—on a program called “AMBIENT EVOLUTION.”  Music is by JOHANNES SCHMOELLING, PETER BAUMANN, DON ROBERTSON, STATE AZURE, CHRISTIAN HALTEN and MICHAEL STEARNS, BLUE CHIP ORCHESTRA, PETER SEILER, and BRIAN ENO.

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