Ambient music from Wikipedia.

Ambient music from Wikipedia using the beautiful Lucida Calligraphy font.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_music



Ambient music ,
  unlike other forms of "background music" ,  is intended to
   enhance acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncracies in the sound environment .


Whereas conventional background music
        is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty
     ( and thus all genuine interest )  from the music ,
            Ambient Music retains these qualities .


And whereas their intention is to "brighten" the environment
                 by  adding  stimulus  to  it
      ( thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks
          and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms )
     Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.


Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of
           listening attention without enforcing one in particular ;
      it must be as ignorable as it is interesting .


As a genre ,  it originated in the United Kingdom at a time when
       new sound-making devices such as the synthesizer ,
         were being introduced to a wider market.
Brian Eno was an early pioneer of ambient music.
The Orb and Aphex Twin gained commercial success with ambient tracks.
Ambient compositions are often quite lengthy ,  much longer than more popular ,   commercial  forms of music .
   Some pieces can reach a half an hour or more in length .