The his­to­ry of ambi­ent music is a dif­fi­cult sto­ry to tell in the same way we tell oth­er his­to­ries, name­ly by ref­er­ence to great men and women and the move­ments they inspired. When it comes to ambi­ent music, there are few stars, and it can be dif­fi­cult to lump artists togeth­er into cat­e­gories. But what else would we expect from music designed to exist in the back­ground?

The con­ve­nient ori­gin point of the genre is Bri­an Eno’s 1978 Music for Air­ports, the first album released as an “Ambi­ent” record and imag­ined as music made for a wait­ing room. Eno’s spir­i­tu­al fore­fa­ther, Erik Satie, famous­ly called his min­i­mal­ist com­po­si­tions “fur­ni­ture music” and also thought of them as accom­pa­ni­ment to mun­dane tasks.

Through these con­cep­tu­al reduc­tions of music to its most util­i­tar­i­an function—creating a mild­ly pleas­ant atmosphere—ambient explores the space of day­dream­ing and the vague emo­tions asso­ci­at­ed with it. Few com­posers of ambi­ent have pur­sued the genre’s osten­si­ble pur­pose with as much prac­ti­cal­i­ty and direct appli­ca­tion as in Japan, where “the influ­ence of min­i­mal­ist com­posers like Philip Glass and Ter­ry Riley met a gold­en era for elec­tron­ics” in the 1980s, Jack Need­ham writes at The Guardian.

Japan­ese com­posers adapt­ed cen­turies of tra­di­tion to dizzy­ing mod­ern­iza­tion:

Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese music has mir­rored its sur­round­ings for cen­turies – the shakuhachi, a sev­enth-cen­tu­ry bam­boo flute, was designed to play all 12 tones of the west­ern chro­mat­ic scale as a way to give voice to nature’s diver­si­ty. So in Japan’s 1980s eco­nom­ic boom, when cities like Tokyo were mutat­ing at warp speed and Roland syn­the­sis­ers replaced the clas­si­cal instru­ment, ambi­ent was reflect­ing these new, hyper-advanced land­scapes.

The music they made was “unabashed­ly cor­po­rate,” becom­ing big busi­ness when Takashi Kokubo’s 1987 album Get at the Wave was “giv­en away with Sanyo air con­di­tion­ing units.” Andy Beta at Vul­ture details how Japan­ese ambi­ent music became big in the U.S. through a com­pi­la­tion called Kankyō Ongaku: Japan­ese Envi­ron­men­tal, Ambi­ent & New Age Music 1980–1990. The title means “envi­ron­men­tal music,” and it was also referred to as “back­ground music,” or BGM by indus­try insid­ers (and Yel­low Mag­ic Orches­tra). But what­ev­er we call it, we can­not dis­cuss Japan­ese ambi­ent with­out ref­er­ence to the pio­neer­ing work of Hiroshi Yoshimu­ra.

Yoshimura’s Green “is an exam­ple of Japan­ese min­i­mal­ism at its finest,” writes Vivian Yeung at Crack, “with the meld­ing of nat­ur­al sounds—via birds, run­ning water and crickets—to the arti­fi­cial­i­ty of arpeg­giat­ing synths and soft min­i­mal notes deployed to poignant effect.” Wet Land, from 1993, deploys soft synths in min­i­mal­ist melodies that recall Satie’s few, well-cho­sen notes. Yoshimu­ra’s music has spread far beyond Japan through the same mech­a­nism as the recent boom in Japan­ese “city pop”—through YouTube algo­rithms.

After dis­cov­er­ing Yoshimu­ra online, SPIN’s Andy Cush wrote, “Now, I lis­ten to Yoshimura’s music almost every day, both because I find it tremen­dous­ly mov­ing and because YouTube won’t stop play­ing it.” But there’s far more to the recent pop­u­lar­i­ty of Japan­ese ambi­ent music than algo­rithms, Beta argues, not­ing that the “Satie boom” in post­war Japan led to a musi­cal rev­o­lu­tion that is per­haps par­tic­u­lar­ly appeal­ing to West­ern ears. In any case, as one of Yoshimura’s new “acci­den­tal fans” writes, his inter­net fame has far eclipsed his fame in life.

When he died in 2003, Yoshimu­ra “was a foot­note in music his­to­ry…. His work most­ly end­ed up as back­ground noise in muse­ums, gal­leries or show homes.” Beau­ti­ful back­ground noise, how­ev­er, was exact­ly the pur­pose of kankyō ongaku, and com­posers like Yoshimu­ra did not exceed the brief. Instead, he per­fect­ed the form con­ceived by Eno as “ignor­able as it is inter­est­ing,” music made to “induce calm and a space to think.” If you’re crav­ing such an atmos­phere, you may need to look no far­ther. You can sam­ple Yoshimura’s key albums here, and find more of his works (where else?) on YouTube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Hear the Very First Pieces of Ambi­ent Music, Erik Satie’s Fur­ni­ture Music (Cir­ca 1917)

Decon­struct­ing Bri­an Eno’s Music for Air­ports: Explore the Tape Loops That Make Up His Ground­break­ing Ambi­ent Music

The Ther­a­peu­tic Ben­e­fits of Ambi­ent Music: Sci­ence Shows How It Eas­es Chron­ic Anx­i­ety, Phys­i­cal Pain, and ICU-Relat­ed Trau­ma

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

What­ev­er you say to peo­ple this hol­i­day sea­son, whether it involves a “hap­py” or a “mer­ry” or a noth­ing at all, maybe we can agree: win­ter hol­i­days can bright­en up a dark time of the year, even if they’re also fraught with fam­i­ly ten­sion and oth­er stress­es. Maybe not everyone’s great at dec­o­rat­ing or singing hol­i­day songs, but we can all appre­ci­ate a job well done. Hol­i­day lights shine like bea­cons on dark, cold win­ter nights… we swoon to the sounds of the Beast­ie Boys’ “Sab­o­tage,” Mountain’s “Mis­sis­sip­pi Queen,” and Peach­es’ “Fuck the Pain Away”.…

Well, I don’t know what your hol­i­days are like, but those all work for me.

There are plen­ty of great Christ­mas songs—many writ­ten and record­ed by Jew­ish song­writ­ers, Andrew Frisi­cano points out at Time Out—and many a great Hanukkah song, some writ­ten by gen­tiles.

But when Dave Grohl and Foo Fight­ers pro­duc­er Greg Kurstin decid­ed to cel­e­brate the Fes­ti­val of Lights and chase away the dark­ness of a par­tic­u­lar­ly dark win­ter, they went with stan­dards you won’t find in any song­book. Their lat­est Hanukkah cov­er, Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” maybe comes clos­est to that oth­er big hol­i­day.

After his con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty, Dylan went wild for Christ­mas, host­ing a “Yule­tide extrav­a­gan­za” on his Theme Time Radio Hour. In their cel­e­bra­tions this year, Grohl and Kurstin decid­ed “instead of doing a Christ­mas song,” as the Foo Fight­ers’ singer said in their announce­ment video at the top, they would “cel­e­brate Hanukkah by record­ing eight songs by eight famous Jew­ish artists and releas­ing one song each night of Hanukkah.” In addi­tion to those named above, they’ve also cov­ered Drake’s “Hot­line Bling,” a favorite of Jew­ish grand­par­ents every­where over the hol­i­days.

Grohl him­self is not Jew­ish, but Kurstin is. In any case, they’ve both thrown them­selves whole­heart­ed­ly into the endeav­or. What would you like to see next up on the setlist? I don’t think they’re tak­ing requests, but a lit­tle “Heaven’s on Fire” might be nice, or a nice long cov­er of “Sis­ter Ray”? Just throw­ing that out there.

The dynam­ic Hanukkah duo have giv­en us a way to reimag­ine hol­i­day music, and with “all the mishe­gas of 2020,” as they write in their Twit­ter announce­ment for the Hanukkah Ses­sions, I think we might as well say why not and seize the moment. See the full playlist of Grohl and Kurstin’s Hanukkah Ses­sions here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Bob Dylan Reads “‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas” On His Hol­i­day Radio Show (2006)

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Eclec­tic Music for the Hol­i­days: Stream It Free Online

Hear Paul McCartney’s Exper­i­men­tal Christ­mas Mix­tape: A Rare & For­got­ten Record­ing from 1965

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

We could split hairs all day. Are Talk­ing Heads punk? Are they New Wave? Are they “art rock”? Why not all of the above. Con­sid­er their cred. Two art stu­dents, David Byrne and Chris Frantz, move to New York in the late 70 with their three-chord, two-piece band The Artis­tics. With min­i­mal musi­cal abil­i­ty and no expe­ri­ence in the music busi­ness, they thought, said Byrne, “we’d have a seri­ous try at a band.” Unable to recruit new mem­bers in the city, they asked Frantz’s girl­friend, fel­low art stu­dent Tina Wey­mouth, who did not play bass, to be their bassist. Soon enough, they’re play­ing their first show as Talk­ing Heads at CBGB’s in 1975, open­ing for the Ramones and Tele­vi­sion.

What could be more of a pro­to­typ­i­cal­ly punk ori­gin sto­ry? But then there’s the evo­lu­tion of Talk­ing Heads from jan­g­ly, ner­vous art rock­ers to con­fi­dent re-inter­preters of funk, dis­co, and polyrhyth­mic Afrobeat in their 80s New Wave epics. Their abil­i­ty to absorb so many influ­ences from out­side of punk’s nar­row reper­toire made them one of the best live bands of the decade, and Frantz and Wey­mouth one of the most for­mi­da­ble rhythm sec­tions in mod­ern rock. Their exper­i­ments with Bri­an Eno, Adri­an Belew, and Robert Fripp lent them a pro­gres­sive edge that made Remain in Light an unlike­ly New Wave clas­sic among Phish fans; they made one of the most beloved con­cert films of all time with Jonathan Demme in 1984….

How did all this come about? You’ll get a very good expla­na­tion in “A Brief His­to­ry of Talk­ing Heads,” above. Suf­fice to say they were an instant hit, arriv­ing in “the right place at the right time,” a still-aston­ished Byrne remem­bers years lat­er in an inter­view clip. After their first gig, they appeared on the cov­er of The Vil­lage Voice, in a 1975 arti­cle by James Wol­cott call­ing punk “a con­ser­v­a­tive impulse in the New Rock Under­ground.”

See­ing them for the first time is trans­fix­ing: Frantz is so far back on drums that it sounds as if he’s play­ing in the next room; Wey­mouth, who could pass as Suzy Quatro’s soror­i­ty sis­ter, stands root­ed to the floor, her head doing an oscil­lat­ing-fan swiv­el; the object of her swiv­el is David Byrne, who has a lit­tle-boy-lost-at-the-zoo voice and the demeanor of some­one who’s spent the last half hour whirling around in a spin dry­er. When his eyes start Ping-Pong­ing in his head, he looks like a car­toon of a chip­munk from Mars. The song titles aren’t teth­ered to con­ven­tion­al­i­ty either: “Psy­cho Killer” (which goes “Psy­cho Killer, qu’est-ce c’est? Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa”), “The Girls Want to Be With the Girls,” “Love is Like a Build­ing on Fire,” plus a cov­er ver­sion of that schlock clas­sic by ? and the Mys­te­ri­ans, “96 Tears.”

Wol­cott would go on to iden­ti­fy all of the qual­i­ties that made them “such a cen­tral ‘70s band,” includ­ing Weymouth’s bass play­ing pro­vid­ing “hook as well as bot­tom” and the “banal facade under which run rip­ples of vio­lence and squalls of frus­tra­tion.” As for what they should have been called, Byrne is mat­ter of fact, as always. “I don’t think any­one liked being called ‘punk rock­ers,’” he says, “even though being lumped togeth­er and hav­ing this kind of han­dle made it eas­i­er for us all to be thought of as a move­ment.”

It was a move­ment of bands all decid­ing to do their own thing in their own way, but to do it togeth­er, restor­ing what Wol­cott called the “effi­ca­cious beau­ty” of rock as a “com­mu­nal activ­i­ty.” The crit­ic won­dered at the time whether “any of the bands who play [CBGB’s] will ever amount to any­thing more than a cheap evening of rock and roll?” Learn above how one of the “most intrigu­ing­ly off-the-wall bands in New York” in the mid-70s exceed­ed the expec­ta­tions of even the most devot­ed of ear­ly punk con­nois­seurs.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Talk­ing Heads Live in Rome, 1980: The Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Chris Frantz Breaks Down How He Craft­ed Songs for Talk­ing Heads & Tom Tom Club: A Naked­ly Exam­ined Music Inter­view

Watch Phish Play the Entire­ty of the Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light (1996)

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