“Like most writers, I prefer to write in silence, but I’m not always free to enable it. Sometimes circumstances pull you on the road, out of the house
or apartment into a library or coffee shop, or even stuck within a home buzzing with life that you’re otherwise grateful for and deeply enjoy. In those instances, I reach for a playlist of ambient, downtempo, and contemporary minimalist music. I used to be an ambient music deejay back in college at WNUR-FM in Evanston, Illinois, and I’ve continued to add to my collection ever since. If you’re like me and you’re looking for some quiet to drown out the noise, I’ve been writing to these ten songs for years: 1. ‘Rhubarb’ by Aphex Twin; 2. ‘Suspended’ by Lucinda Chua; 3. ‘An Ending (Ascent)’ by Brian Eno; 4. ‘Tippy’s Demise’ by Stars of the Lid; 5. ‘Pulse, Pause, Repeat’ by Harold Budd, Ruben Garcia, and Daniel Lentz; 6. ‘Warmed by the Drift’ by Biosphere; 7. ‘Oil’ by Jonny Greenwood; 8. ‘The Sinking of the Titanic, Hymn IV’ by the Gavin Bryars Ensemble; 9. ‘Brittle’ by Loscil; and 10. ‘Glassworks: Opening’ by Philip Glass. Often the ways to drown out the noise of the world needs to be as varied as the noise itself, but to me, there’s no substitute for these genres.”
—J. Ryan Stradal, author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest (Pamela Dorman Books, 2015)
Photo credit: Anna Pasquarella