Top Ambient Albums of 2025
There are more records worth your time than there are hours to absorb them. There are more thoughtful drones and slow-blooming atmospheres than a single nervous system can comfortably process in one calendar year. I’m mentioning this because there are no doubts countless albums that should be on this list but aren’t because of the time constraints involved. However, here’s a list of my favorite ambient albums from 2025.
Best Ambient Albums of 2025
Whatever the Weather ii – Whatever The Weather
Release Date: March 14, 2025
This album reminds me that America’s cultural crown is a rusted relic all of a sudden – we need to step back and just accept it. And in fitting fashion each track here is named after a temperature in Celsius. London isn’t calling, London is dreary and cold, innit? Loraine James’ “Whatever The Weather II” is ambient work at its most intimate – delicate, fractured, honest. You won’t know where one track ends or the next one creeps in, and that’s exactly the point. Clarity is for 2015. It should be required listening for anyone brave enough to admit that the temperature of relevance has moved elsewhere – and it’s sitting just above freezing, probably somewhere in North London. Its mix of radiant tones, sound collage and pure spirit should solidify why this album should be on your list to listen to in 2025.
From Where You Came – Kara-Lis Coverdale
Release Date: May 9, 2025
A lot of ambient musicians have all the ingredients to make something nourishing and familiar – they’ve got the gear, they’ve got the mood, but nine times out of ten they churn out the same lukewarm porridge and call it transcendence. Boards of Canada clones, or worse, Stars of the Lid – which is fine if you’re in the mood to be slowly embalmed in a velvet-lined echo chamber. There’s nothing wrong with a blockbuster nap. But then there are those musicians who use the ingredients in just the right way to make something we feel in our guts – it’s new, but we’ve felt those feelings before. Kara-Lis Coverdale’s “From Where You Came” is nourishing. It’s a perfect mix of live instruments, reverb and mystical synthesis. A perfect start to Summer – rejuvenation through rumination.
no floor – more eaze & claire rousay
Release Date: March 21, 2025
Between us, I was ready to hate it. The first few seconds hit – bare acoustic guitar, bone-dry, no reverb, no smoke – and I braced myself for another half-baked “Americana Ambient” record. This was something else entirely. Something tender, disarming and weirdly holy. It’s fucking lovely. It’s like slipping into a hot spring – the strings drift in like sunlight through steam, and every so often a synth sputters or a knob flickers reality just enough to remind you: this isn’t nostalgia, this is your life. It soars high and then you descend into a beautiful meadow where you can feel the wind in your hair and smell all the life. It’s a divine album by more eaze & claire rousay. I look forward to pouring into their discography.
quiet circle – marine eyes
Release Date: April 25, 2025
I feel like the phrase, “Where’s the love?” gets thrown around a lot these days. But I know it’s exact location – it’s in “quiet circle” by marine eyes. Maybe I have a sweet tooth for these rich harmonies and synths, maybe I’m too oversentimental for my own good, but I love the way this album makes me feel. For me, that’s what it’s all about – how I feel. marine eyes says that this EP is dedicated to “— carving out space for our own quiet circles.” And you know what? I did carve out my own space. Definitely put this album on your list.
wellspring – anthéne & simon mccorry
Release Date: May 2, 2025
Some music feels like a soft exhale after holding your breath for too long – except wellspring is stretched over forty minutes and dripping with cello, guitar, and some kind of sonic fog that coats your lungs in moss. anthéne and Simon McCorry dragged out this album like a rusty chain being pulled slowly out of the earth with strings and signal decay. It’s slow, wandering and reflective. T here’s no climax, no catharsis – just the steady, patient unraveling of sound. Play this when the world’s too loud and you need to remember how to feel human again.
Sphaîra – Sara Persico
Sara Persico’s Sphaîra is a haunted structure made of reverb, memory, and decay. I feel like if I were in a haunted house and this came on, I’d be safe – I’d be one of them. sounds don’t flow so much as echo from the corners of some deeper chamber, full of hissing electronics, mournful textures, and voice fragments that hover between plea and prophecy. Every track builds tension without resolution – and I fucking love that. Sphaîra moves through the physical and the emotional without asking permission, dragging you into a place where beauty survives under duress. It’s unnerving, captivating and entirely a human traveling through a spirit realm. Great record.
Amber Disc – Joel Noct Brinson
Release Date: February 2025
Okay, confession time. This album and the one before it were actually released in February, so it shouldn’t be on the list, but to be fair if I would have heard it in February, it would have made it onto my Top Ambient Albums of 2025 – Winter Edition. I had a chance to see Joel Noct at a show called “EQUALIZER” at No Fun Bar about a month back and just had to listen to some of their work. Amber Disc is a real revelation. It’s the type of ambient album that hums in your soul and it sounds like a womb. Not your mom’s womb, someone elses. You’re in someone else’s womb. And just when you get comfortable, it’s over. The drone compositions in this are absolutely breathtaking and hypnotic. Give this one a listen.
Hometown Girl – U.e.
Release Date: January 16, 2025
Label: 28912
It’s a little bit jazz, it’s a little bit drone – but really it’s maddeningly relatable. If you’re unfamiliar with “U.e.” then you’ll probably recognize them by their other alias, Ulla Straus. Hometown Girl feels very analog and warm – kind of like reading a book under dim streetlights on a deserted road just after a good rainstorm. It breathes in the dust and exhales something half-remembered.
Not Around But Through – AMULETS
Release Date: Feb 21, 2025
I’m going to be honest, this is the first time I’ve heard Randall Taylor (AMULETS) work. I was surprised to learn that they’re based in Portland where Micro Genre Music is based, so this worked out great for us. We love discovering new music, especially when it can be found locally. Ambient music often makes me feel sad … there’s a sadness here and feels so fucking good. Standout track is “Velis” – it’s stretched out in all the right places.
Between the Glaciers and the Bay – Production Unit Xero
Release Date: Feb 4, 2025
Label: Heterodox Records
Production Unit Xero’s latest offering is beautiful and haunting. Laced with cold synths and deep, droning waves, this is the kind of sound that lingers in your bones. There’s an immediate sense of space – vast, open and untamed. A good ambient album is one where you forget you’re listening to music, and the music feels like sight, touch. For me, it brings me to a certain place – a tide swallowing shore. The water my reach your chest, but you know you’re safe. Even when you’re standing on the edge of the world and realizing that none of it belongs to you.
Be Somewhere Twice – African-American Sound Recordings
Release Date: January 10, 2025
A lush kalimba dances and collides headfirst with choral waves of sound, with processed field recordings bubbling beneath – words are so limiting. If you’re a lover of ambient music, you’ll understand the rush, that jolt of discovery when you stumble onto something raw, something original. It’s a shaky trip through harsh terrain, but soon morphs into a lullaby, dripping with culture and drenched in experience.
Spirit Frequencies – Orkun A.
Release Date: January 1, 2025
I’m so glad we’ve progressed to the point where I can listen to an album like this and say it has an old school vibe. Okay, maybe progressed isn’t the right word – but if this is entropy, I’m very happy with it. This album hums and the debris it shakes from your consciousness slips through the cracks in your mind. Deep pulses and spectral echoes: just what I hoped my ambient music would sound like in 2025.
Eccodust – Eccodust
Release Date: January 1, 2025
Label: Vivarium Recordings
This is my first foray into the realm of Eccodust, the collab of akaJazy and Floor 0. I’m really into this album – it captures that liminal feeling, that edge-of-dreamscape unease where everything is real and nothing is true. Lots of deep, pulsing bass to keep that huge weight in your stomach nice and heavy. Don’t be fooled by the whimsical field recordings sprinkled through out – this album is dark.
Crossing the Threshold – Dianna Lopez
Release Date: January 4, 2025
Dianna Lopez seems to be exploding these days and rightly so. The music on this album lurks like wind through tall grass. Their delicate vocals are an absolute delight – they shimmer and haunt the fuck out of you. Where do the spirits reside? Somewhere in between Georgia and California, on every lost highway, while listening to this music. Definitely give this a listen.
ISKRA – Olga Anna Markowska
Release Date: January 31, 2025
Label: Miasmah Recordings
I love this album, but fair warning: it’s tense as fuck. Do not let that haunting cello fool you – the amount of tension this album builds is palpable. Olga’s music has a commanding presence. Call it a foreboding, maybe an unease – a sense that something is always just out of reach, waiting to strike. Its mixture of strings and experimental electronic walls of noise perfectly represents where we are right now. Or maybe I’m projecting.
Children of Eidolon – 400 Lonely Things
Release Date: January 24, 2025
If haunted houses could dream, this is what they’d hear. I’m not sure what spirits have my riled up, but this album is definitely spiritual. 400 Lonely Things has crafted something eerie, something mournful. I was surprised to learn that these songs are more a compilation taken from large list of unreleased tracks – surprising because it goes so well together. My only complaint is that it isn’t longer. Definitely put this on your list of albums to check out.
Muzak for the Encouragement of Unproductivity – Jasmine Guffond
Release Date: June 27, 2025
The tones on this album are soft and probably mildly unsettling for the average listener, but it skirts on the edge between melancholy and nostalgia. A very specific nostalgia though; think October in Los Angeles circa 2009. Like, this album belongs in a Michael Mann film. It starts slow and ends slow and you’re left with a feeling that it’s still undulating and twisting upwards into a dark sky above a dreary, quiet Van Nuys evening. Absolutely fantastic album.
Päiväkahvit – Sontag Shogun x Lau Nau
Release Date: June 20, 2025
This album is a little raw, but that’s what I like about it. Beneath the beautiful ambience is the middle ground between sound collage and field recordings. One track is two children speaking in a language I can’t understand and honestly, I’m not sure if I’d want to know what they’re saying. It weaves in and out of minimal ambient and flows into deep, lush textures over reverbed vocals. The charm comes from its rawness – you can hear the atmosphere of the room as much as the instruments themselves. It’s unpretentious and grounded.
Hrafnamynd – Patricia Wolf
Release Date: July 11, 2025
Hrafnamynd functions as an entry point for listeners who might dismiss ambient music as inaccessible. I dare say that this album is safe, but when I say “safe”, I mean safe with your feelings. This album captures the experience of being present in a place while also remembering it from a distance. Very restrained melodies, but I’d say they are pretty emotionally charged. Atmosphere and feeling are given equal weight. Patricia Wolf shapes each piece with a guiding presence, providing structure without intruding on the spacious environments she constructs. Great ambient album.
Openness Trio – Nate Mercereau, Josh Johnson, Carlos Niño
Release Date: July 11, 2025
Holy hell, was this album an experience. It’s Jazz, it’s Ambient, it’s fucking dark. It has a pervasive darkness and it defines its atmosphere. It’s a chasm of luscious sound with every available moment filled with a precise, experimental tone. Each member shapes the group’s voice through a unique sonic palette. The album blurs improvisation and composition, emphasizing (above all else) trust and a shared experience. A release of considerable weight and sophistication. Can’t miss album.
Who Owns The Dark? – Cherrystones x Demdike Stare
Release Date: July 11, 2025
Looking to venture into darker ambient territory? Look no further. What I look for most in ambient music is to feel a sense of normalcy. My life is dark and unsettling at times, and if I’m in a place where things are too good to be true, it’s always nice to be brought back to my comfortable dark space. Some of textures in this album feel very rough – the emotional topography is bumpy, shaping an emotional terrain that is deep and disorientating. Industrial elements collide with ghostly layers, producing a sound that feels both material and alien. Deep caverns await you with this one.
Interior of an Edifice Under the Sea – Pan American & Kramer
Release Date: June 27, 2025
Interior of an Edifice Under the Sea is a damn near perfect modern Ambient album. The album captures a mood of decline and disquiet, resonating with the broader sense of instability that marks contemporary American life; the perfect companion for the end of all things. For me it echoes the empty factories in Detroit, the suspended time of financial anxiety, the ache of realizing that while some things are meant to fail, an immeasurable amount of pain is soon to follow that will negatively impact those who have it worse off than you. It’s a beautiful album for the end of this culture. Pan American & Kramer have captured something truly spectacular. One of my favorite albums of the year.
Lateral – Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe
Faith – Purelink
Release Date: June 6, 2025
This record initially slipped past my attention, partly because of its appearance on so many damn playlists and article lists, which often makes an album feel overexposed before you even hear it. But really, it’s a pretty damn good album. With elements of dub and house, this album has something for everyone – a pretty solid feat given that this album is only six tracks. One track also features Loraine James on vocals and it’s an absolute banger. The success of this album across critical circles isn’t an accident. Put this one on your playlist.
Runway Cremations – African-American Sound Recordings
Release Date: October 1, 2025
This is the second entry on this list by African-American Sound Recordings and my goodness this album is bleak. I absolutely adore the desolation and the deep chasms of longing that I can feel in my bones when I listen to this. The sound seeps deep in the marrow and draws a kind of quiet ache that has no name. What you’ll find here is patience and restraint – an understanding that emptiness itself may sing if given room.
Ambient Diaries Vol. 1 [HTX147] – Production Unit Xero
Release Date: September 5, 2025
Longform ambient compositions. How did I take you for granted? Okay, so to be fair, I think a lot of Ambient musicians overdid it with longform ambient compositions in the late 80s and early 90s. As much as I love Global Communication’s 76:14 or Brian Eno‘s Neroli, both of those albums are kind of in The Lawrence of Arabia category: well made pieces of art, great for a time and place and not something I can absorb over and over. Too long. But then there are albums like Structures from Silence or The Pavilion of Dreams that have a nice dose of shorter long form ambient pieces that are perfectly in that sweet spot – they maintain clarity and accessibility. Production Unit Xero’s Ambient Dairies Vol. 1 is in that sweet spot.
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