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The disturbing ambient music of William Tyler

Plus: Billy Idol's new album only contains one song that truly evokes the glory days

Graeme Thomson
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 26 April 2025
issue 26 April 2025

One could argue that all musical forms are essentially incomplete until the listener joins the party, but ambient music seems more needily co-dependent than most. Given that a typical sound bed is a blank canvas of amniotic electronica, much depends on the interpretation of whatever is laid over it: the drip and the drift; the scrape and the scratch; the arbitrary beauty of found sounds and field recordings.

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