“Psycological sounds”: la serie di dischi Environments (1969–1979) e le ragioni del successo della musica ambient

In January 2020, music critic Simon Reynolds published the article 2010–19: Back to the Garden. The Return of Ambient and New Age in «Resident Advisor», discussing the resounding comeback of ambient music in the twenty-first century after its glories of the 1970s and 1980s. In conjunction with the re-emergence of the environmental issue, between 2010 and 2020 an increasing number of artists and listeners have once again become passionate about ambient music. The search for alternatives to the society of acceleration through technological processes has also contributed to pushing the bucolic impulse beyond the production of ambient records, transcending the boundaries of the genre. Starting from the core of Reynolds’ insights, this article examines the characteristics of the Environments (Syntonic Research, 1969–1979) disc series — one of the first manifestations of ambient music and decisive for its spread — and then linking these peculiarities to the recently renewed interest in the genre. As far back as the series created in 1969 by Irving Teibel (visual designer and sound producer active in New York), what would later be defined as ambient music presented itself as an opportunity for introspective, psychoactive experiences and an encounter with nature, while the listener remained within the walls of their apartment, chilling in a “narcissistic torpor”.