Mono No Aware
Mono No Aware collects new ambient music that reflects our present moment. Each piece of the 80-minute compilation has its own unique identity, yet together it feels like the work of one mind.
Ambient music is always there, but the ways in which it intersects with culture is always shifting. In the 1970s, when the term first emerged thanks to Brian Eno, ambient existed as a corollary to space rock and psychedelia— solitary “head music” for the golden age of post-Dark Side of the Moon headphone listening. In the ’80s, as baby-boomers got older and busier, some of it became new age, a lucrative albeit niche market where the music was as crystalline as the rainbow reflected from the underside of a compact disc. In the ’90s, thanks to the rave-era chillout space, ambient returned to its druggy roots as collective listening, a sonic environment that facilitated shared consciousness expansion. And as that decade progressed and the millennium turned, ambient music came to be seen as a direct expression of technology’s state of the art, showcasing the ability of the newly fast computer to create sounds the likes of which no one had ever heard. Along these paths, ambient music is given meaning by what is happening around it—it’s a function of how the sound exists in the always-changing now.
Years on from its home hi-fi beginnings, ambient is now most likely to circulate on cassette, CD-R, or via streams on YouTube or Bandcamp. The communities that have grown up around it and nurtured it exist online, so creators and listeners are likely to draw inspiration, create, share, and discuss the music in the digital space. Mono No Aware, a new compilation assembled by the Berlin-based experimental label Pan, situates ambient music in this present moment. The set, assembled by Pan label head Bill Kouligas, is an invigorating survey of what’s going on in some of ambient’s obscure corners. Mixing selections from artists who come from all over but are mostly little-known outside of experimental music circles, Mono No Aware manages to be simultaneously an introduction to new voices and a deeply satisfying 80-minute mix that hangs together…
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