Ambient music continues to push boundaries in 2025, with January delivering a wave of immersive and forward-thinking releases. This month’s standout selections span deep, meditative soundscapes and genre-blurring experiments, proving the genre’s endless evolution.

Peter Rehberg’s Liminal States crafts a haunting long-form journey, while Vril’s Saturn Is A Supercomputer bends sound into new dimensions. Usof’s stay longer offers a surreal, fragmented dreamscape, defying ambient norms with unpredictable textures.

Brendon Moeller’s Further blends dub techno and 170 BPM rhythms into hypnotic, club-minded atmospheres. Angel R’s Mossed Capable of Being Observant layers loops and bit-reduced nature sounds, while Pavel Milyakov & Lucas Dupuy’s HEAL channels field recordings into a lush, new-age-tinged world.

From weighty sonic explorations to delicate minimalism, these 15 tracks showcase ambient music at its most captivating.

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Midori Hirano, Brueder Selke – Scale AA

Brueder Selke & Midori Hirano’s Split Scale unites two boundary-pushing composers with classical roots. Berlin-based brothers Sebastian and Daniel Selke (aka CEEYS) are known for their genre-blurring work and curation of Q3Ambientfest, while Hirano is a sought-after film composer and collaborator. Their debut album follows a simple yet striking concept—each track built around a note from a western scale. Composed in a fluid exchange, Split Scale blends rich instrumental textures with electronic elements, creating a deeply immersive, cinematic experience.

Kathryn Mohr – Cornered

Kathryn Mohr’s Waiting Room is a haunting debut that blends lo-fi folk with experimental electronics. Crafted during a residency in an abandoned Icelandic fish factory, the album captures a sense of isolation and introspection. Mohr’s delicate vocals and minimalist instrumentation create an eerie, immersive atmosphere. It’s a compelling listen for those drawn to the avant-garde edges of electronic music.

Gallery Six, Lorenz Weber – Dialogue 1

Gallery Six and Lorenz Weber’s Distance is a collaborative album featuring 12 tracks, each reflecting a specific moment, creating an intimate, diary-like sound collection. As with much of Gallery Six’s work, this is from the very gentlest end of the ambient spectrum, with field records and soft, hazy pads combining to intensely relaxing effect.

William Basinski, Richard Chartier – Aurora Terminalis

William Basinski and Richard Chartier reunite after nearly a decade with Aurora Terminalis, their first collaboration since 2015. The album unfolds in waves—sudden bursts of jagged sound dissolving into melodic haze, drifting between subtle textures and cinematic romanticism. A meditative farewell, it follows their previous collaborations on LINE, including Aurora Liminalis (2013) and Untitled 1-3 (2008).

Pavel Milyakov, Lucas Dupuy – room

Pavel Milyakov and UK visual artist Lucas Dupuy have collaborated on HEAL, an hour-long electroacoustic ambient album. The project began with Dupuy’s synthesizer sketches and Japanese field recordings, which Milyakov processed using Quantum, a custom-built software instrument designed to coax surprising mutations out of sampled material. The album’s palette features vaporous synthesizer pads, gentle chimes, and cottony clouds of white noise, with rhythms that churn with the slow, reassuring regularity of rolling surf.

Fennesz – Patterning Heart

Christian Fennesz’s Patterning Heart is a standout track from his eighth album, Mosaic. The piece exemplifies Fennesz’s signature blend of guitar and electronic processing, creating a lush, immersive soundscape. Notably, the track features astonishing swells that evoke the resonance of church bells, reminiscent of ’80s post-punk atmospheres.

Pepo Galan – Connection

Pepo Galán’s Simple may have been conceived with minimalism in mind, but the result is anything but. What begins as an attempt to strip things back quickly evolves into a richly layered and immersive sonic experience. Known for his emotive ambient compositions, Galán builds textures that shift between restraint and depth, weaving intricate soundscapes that refuse to settle into true simplicity.

Tren – I missed have you in my life

A standout track from one of my personal favourite producers, released as part of new label Pintai’s debut release VA EP. The Amsterdam-based collective, known for fostering a community through intimate events, captures their essence in this inaugural 12-inch and digital offering. The track begins with ceremonial, organ-like tones, evolving into a blend of shuffling drums and emotive grooves, creating a soft, introspective atmosphere.

pondlicker – orchid media

Pondlicker’s Soft Focus released via Montreal’s naff recordings, marks Adam Feingold’s debut under this moniker. The album comprises five tracks that navigate the realms of minimal, ambient, and dub techno, offering a meditative listening experience.

Voice Actor – Moving On, Moving On

For those of you not paying attention, the album of the year may have already been released. Voice Actor’s incredible Lust 1 takes cues from experimental favourites like Dean Blunt and comes in like a hazy cross between John Glacier and Andy Stott. If you’re not already on this, you need to be.

Peter Rehberg – Liminal States

Peter Rehberg, who died in 2021, was a pioneering electronic musician and prolific collaborator, especially in theatre and dance. His soundtrack Liminal States, created for Icelandic choreographer Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir, was originally composed for Pervasive Magnetic Stimuli (2018) and later reworked into her trilogy on altered perception. A long-form piece of spectral ambience, Liminal States shifts between shimmering electronics and hallucinatory sonic distortions, echoing Coil’s late-period works. It stands as one of Rehberg’s most immersive and powerful compositions.

Angel R, Florian T M Zeisig – Together

Florian TM Zeisig returns to Enmossed under his new moniker, Angel R, with Mossed Capable of Being Observant, an LP that shifts away from ‘traditional’ ambient toward a more fluid, hopeful sound. While still rooted in Zeisig’s signature looping structures, Angel R introduces staggered syncopation and dynamic interplay, expanding his sonic approach.

Vril – Final Earthbound

Vril’s sixth studio album, Saturn Is A Supercomputer showcases five years of boundary-pushing experimentation. Known for his immersive sound design, Vril crafts a hypnotic journey that bends energy into unfamiliar dimensions. The album transcends conventional structures, inviting listeners to step beyond the 3D world into a deeper sonic experience.

usof – belly

Usof’s stay longer is a surreal exploration of texture and tone, blurring the lines between form and feeling. The Lisbon-based producer, DJ, and label-head crafts an amorphous sonic landscape where melodies dissolve into digital fog, and introspection takes unpredictable turns.

Brendon Moeller – Rogue

Pushing the definition of true ambient to its very limits, Brendon Moeller expands on the foundation of his Vacuum EP with Further, a full-length dive into 170 BPM dub techno for Samurai Music. A producer known for his deep sound design and adaptability, Moeller seamlessly translates his cavernous atmospheres and machine-driven soul into the framework of modern drum & bass.

The post The 15 Best Ambient Tracks of January 2025 appeared first on Magnetic Magazine.