Moby Lets You Download 4 Hours of Ambient Music to Help You Sleep, Meditate, Do Yoga & Not Panic

Back in May, I wrote about the dam­ag­ing effects stress has on the body, and the sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-val­i­dat­ed pow­er of yoga and med­i­ta­tion to undo them. Fol­low­ing close behind stress as a chron­ic con­trib­u­tor to ill­ness is sleep­less­ness, which the Divi­sion of Sleep Med­i­cine at Har­vard Med­ical School links to dia­betes, high blood pres­sure, heart dis­ease, and short­ened life expectan­cy. Add to all these risks the prob­lems of poor pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and dis­or­ga­nized think­ing, and you’ll begin to see insom­nia for the dan­ger­ous con­di­tion it is.

What to do with that anx­ious, over­worked, over­tired self? Well, again, I’d hearti­ly rec­om­mend a yoga or med­i­ta­tion prac­tice. Pow­er naps through­out the day can boost your endurance and brain­pow­er as well. But I’d also rec­om­mend music—music that calms the body and helps wash away the men­tal gunk that accu­mu­lates through­out the day. Com­pos­er Max Richter recent­ly released an eight-hour piece of music intend­ed to lull lis­ten­ers to sleep and keep them there. His efforts are now joined by elec­tron­i­ca super­star Moby, who has spo­ken frankly about the insom­nia that has plagued him since the age of four.

For his own ben­e­fit, Moby began mak­ing what he describes on his web­site as “real­ly real­ly real­ly qui­et music to lis­ten to when I do yoga or sleep or med­i­tate or pan­ic.” He “end­ed up with 4 hours of music,” he says, and “decid­ed to give it away.” The col­lec­tion con­sists of 11 “Long Ambi­ent” pieces between around 20 and 30 min­utes each. You can hear them all—or not, if they put you to sleep—at the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, or down­load them at Moby’s site. (He also gives you the option to play the record­ings on Apple Music, Sound­cloud, Deez­er and oth­er plat­forms.) “It’s real­ly qui­et,” he reit­er­ates, “no drums, no vocals, just very slow calm pret­ty chords and sounds and things.”

Con­sist­ing of rum­bling drone notes with reverb-drenched synths float­ing atop, Moby’s “Long Ambi­ent” com­po­si­tions remind me of the sound­scapes of Bri­an Eno or William Basin­s­ki, and like the work of those com­posers, his sleep music feels both ocean­ic and cin­e­mat­ic. Per­haps in his move a few years back from his native New York to L.A., Moby found him­self musi­cal­ly inspired by the Pacif­ic and the movies. (You might remem­ber his gor­geous, dra­mat­ic sound­track to the L.A.-set Michael Mann film Heat.) Wher­ev­er this music comes from, it’s a peace­ful way to com­bat insom­nia, stress, or pan­ic.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Music That Helps You Sleep: Min­i­mal­ist Com­pos­er Max Richter, Pop Phe­nom Ed Sheer­an & Your Favorites

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

The Pow­er of Pow­er Naps: Sal­vador Dali Teach­es You How Micro-Naps Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness