The best ambient music and downtempo from the Bay Area in 2022
Ready for another year-end list? How about eight?
In celebration of all the great music released by Bay Area artists over the past year, we’ll be sharing daily wraps of our favorite releases of 2022. Starting today, every day we’re publishing a new list highlighting the best music from the Bay Area across a wide variety of genres, including dance, downtempo, folk, hip hop, metal, and rock.
Read on for our favorite ambient music and downtempo from the Bay in 2022, or shuffle the playlist.
Private Paradise - Space Ghost
“An ode to time spent at Sea Ranch on the Northern California coast to refresh their spirit and regain optimism and enthusiasm for the outside world.” Space Ghost, the Oakland producer whose Dance Planet was one of the best Bay’s dance albums of 2021, returned this year with Private Paradise, a full-length album on Vancouver label Pacific Rhythm. The sonic palette remains the same—channeling late 80s, early 90s house and techno—with a notably more ambient bent. Dance music for the mind.
— Ronny Kerr
Sicko - Beast Nest
“All my music is dedicated to Beni and the Queer and Trans freaks that make my life so fun and wholesome and nerdy and joyful and cool and weird. I want safety and empowerment for us all. I want us to make stuff when we want to and consume stuff when we want to. I want us to have shelter and whatever we need to feel the least shitty on our shitty days and super happy on our happy days.”
So writes Sharmi Basu aka Beast Nest for the release of Sicko, their experimental ambient full-length on Ratskin Records. Deeply embedded in the queer and trans BIPOC communities in the Bay, not to mention various DIY and music-focused organizations, Beast Nest’s latest album is a psychedelic sanctuary assembled of cosmic noise and tone. Sampled bird calls, twitchy synths, and low-key beats come together in a soulful tapestry suitable for the morning, day, or night—in other words, it’s for living.
— Ronny Kerr
Time, Space, and Thought - Channelers
“An ongoing personal ancestral dialogue with the folk musics and drone-based traditions from the British Isles and Ukraine.” Released on their Oakland label Inner Islands, Time, Space, and Thought is Sean Conrad’s 13th full-length album as Channelers. As on Another Entrance and Messages from One of Deeper Within—both featured in our list of the best ambient music from the Bay Area in 2021—the new work is a largely acoustic journey into sonic exploration and spiritual meditation. The title suggests the process, as Conrad dedicated deep wells of time, space, and thought to themselves and their practice, allowing the instruments to lead the way in a free, improvisational way. It’s perfectly peaceful, as good for the early morning and midday sun as it is for middle of the night. Press play and float away.
— Ronny Kerr
Masking - Joel St. Julien
“The idea of ‘masking’—the process of learning certain behaviors to conform to the pressures of seeming ‘normal’—made him realize that he had been hiding his struggles rather than expressing them.”
Following EMPATHY—one of the Bay Area’s best ambient albums of 2021—SF artist Joel St. Julien returned with Masking, a full-length work released on Yann Novak’s LA-based imprint Dragon’s Eye Recordings. Nearly half the length of its predecessor, the new work sees St. Julien intermingling slow and beatless sonic tapestries, thumping ambient techno twittering (“Secrets Come Out”), and hazy downtempo IDM (“Float”). While it seems likely that tracks like “Masking” and “Collected Breath” intentionally allude to the pandemic, for St. Julien the overall theme of the album is highly personal, investigating his “neurodivergence” in a world where we’re so often encouraged (both directly and indirectly) to seek acceptance by taking on other forms. Another fantastic entry from the Haitian-American composer and producer.
— Ronny Kerr
Magma Pulse - Kush Arora x Orogen x Titus 12
“Visions of geothermal vents, psychotropic volcanic tourism, and widescreen stratosphere coasting abound.” Following Indian Unclassical Vol. 1, which made our list of the best ambient music from the Bay Area in 2021, Berkeley artist Kush Arora (aka Only Now) joins Orogen (Lucas Patzek) on Magma Pulse, a tectonic, dub techno record released by Bristol label Limbo Tapes.
— Ronny Kerr
Beanna - mejiwahn
Luxuriate in the pleasing eclectica that is Beanna, a lush, wistful, summertime sound collage. Sunlit dreamscapes pepper their way throughout, accompanied by a smooth, afternoon haze aftertaste. Oakland artist mejiwahn brings this beautiful project to life with an innovative sprinkling of sampling, vocals, an accompanying artful video to “Gully”, and a plethora of electronic and acoustic instrumentals. Showcasing a full lineup of collaborators and experimental styles, the production is robust, rhythmically interesting, and melodically essential for this summer’s listening.
— Elise Mills
Lavender Palace - Michael Claus
Selected by Elise Mills.
A Rainbow in Curved Air - Nico Georis
“It was never supposed to happen. No one was supposed to reimagine Terry Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air - a piece of music that, until now, has existed in its own class of expression. No one was supposed to scale the perilous heights of the citadel and come back with another document of the strange festival scenes within.”
True, true. Among diehard aficionados of minimal electronic music, the late 60s piece by Terry Riley stands alone. Inspired by Hindustani classical, jazz improvisations, and experimental recording techniques developed at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, A Rainbow in Curved Air is legendary. But just because something is sacred, that doesn’t make it untouchable. Perhaps it’s the thing we should touch most.
Recorded and engineered between Big Sur, SF, and Sonoma County, A Rainbow in Curved Air by Nico Georis is a new return to the sacred piece, released on Santa Cruz label Spiritual Pajamas. Just over 13 minutes, it’s not quite as epic as the original, but it’s also more approachable. The artist knows it: Promo material describes it as “way less manic, way more listenable.” Instead of covering the even stranger side B on Riley’s original record (“Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band”), Georis offers three originals, including one track (“Vapor”) featuring music generated by a marijuana plant. A gentle comedown for the long slope to summer’s end.
— Ronny Kerr
Wake - Rosa Beach Mason & Sean Conrad
Offering a set of “naturalistic emotional landscapes,” Wake is the debut release from Rosa Beach Mason and Sean Conrad. Trance-like wordless vocals float over fluid and perpetual arrangements, radiating positive vibrations and ambient bliss. Out now on Inner Islands. Peace.
— Elliot Engel
Half Moon Bay - Tomu DJ
Sinuous pathways. Misty sightlines. Woody, leafy, wet brown carpets. The distant crashing of something. Are these the abstract constructions of some imaginary place or simply the sonic reimaginings of one of our favorite foggy, coastal cities? Emotional, upbeat, and subdued all at once, Half Moon Bay is a full-length ambient techno work by Tomu DJ. Released on LA label Franchise and featuring contributions by DJ Manny, SUCIA!, kimdollars1, and blessingsnore, the album takes you on a psychic journey seemingly outside of space and time.