your favourite instrumental songs purely for vibes only. jazz, electric, lo-fi, whatever. need some tunes for my musical scribbles warm up

Question

Sam · Answer

Endlessness, by Nala Sinephro

Lanie · Answer

Khruangbin: Particularly their 2015 album ‘The Universe Smiles Upon You’. Once you listen to that a couple dozen times, dive into their 10 year anniversary re-release, ‘The Universe Smiles Upon You II’. Both sound like massages for your brain and are super musically interesting. Hope you like!

Gio · Answer

Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders: Promises: Floating Points album Promises with American jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra. What more could you want or need?

Emilie Bienvenew · Answer

Max Richter Recomposed Vivaldi's Four Seasons: All of Max Richter composition are incredible, but I discovered this one with the greatest contemporary ballet show at the Opera de Paris : The Seasons' Canon from Crystal Pite.

Hope you'll enjoy also !

Becca Mandy · Answer

open this wall | berlioz: berlioz is described on Spotify “as if Matisse made house music” and that pretty much nails it

J B · Answer

Ludovico Einaudi

Matt · Answer

Three Albums by The Necks for Your Creative & Meditative Moments: I've been grateful to see a few rec requests pop up here recently seeking out instrumental music to soundtrack creative process. When I need to stimulate the ol' grey matter, I likewise turn to some tunes for thought, so the responses to these open requests have been appreciated. I'll share one of my standbys for helping get the wheels to turning, Australian combo The Necks. They are, on the surface, a jazz trio with the familiar instrumental array of keyboards, bass and drums, but what they do with this format is far less typical. I'll quote the bio blurb from their Bandcamp: "The Necks are one of the great cult bands of Australia. Not entirely avant-garde, nor minimalist, nor ambient, nor jazz." Their "songs" often run 30 minutes to an hour and focus on developing a theme through repetition that they then explore the possibilities of through gradual shifts (and the stamina of the players--Chris Abrahams, Tony Buck, Lloyd Swanton--is something to marvel upon). These improvisations can easily become transfixing in a productive way that might assist in guiding thinking during creative expression or just casual zoning out.

Here are three recordings from The Necks that I usually turn to for these purposes:

Drive By (2003)
This is the most "open" of the three selections in this rec in terms of sound. A mysterious beauty pervades this performance, beguiling and alluring.

Stream: Bandcamp | YouTube | Apple Music

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Hanging Gardens (1999)
A rhythmic tour de force over which the keys create an atmosphere of suspense (it feels very film noir in a Blade Runner kind of way throughout). Engaging and intriguing. Works great for racing the clock against a deadline!

Stream: Bandcamp | YouTube | Apple Music

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Body (2018)
There are three distinct sections to this one, the middle of which is perhaps the most surprising...it could be mistaken for a lost Stereolab track from around the time of Transient Random-Noise Bursts! (That's drummer Tony Buck on the electric guitar.) The passages surrounding it are gorgeous, if not a bit eerie. I like to imagine the guitar-driven middle part will time up exactly with when you hit that flow state sweet spot and in turn propels you with it.

Stream: Bandcamp | YouTube | Apple Music | Spotify

Amy · Answer

Beethoven Blues (Jon Batiste): Beautiful piano that is truly pleasing

Matt · Answer

Pat Metheny Group - "Phase Dance": If you want a track to listen to purely for vibes, then this is a track made purely of vibes (and some really, really good musicianship to boot!). This is one of my favorite jazz fusion pieces, period. Pat's the man for vibes in general.

Matt · Answer

Miles Davis - "He Loved Him Madly" (1974): Music to get utterly, profoundly lost and found inside of. Meditative, enveloping, haunting, blissful. Like much of the music of the “Electric Miles” period (late-‘60s/mid-‘70s), what is heard here eludes tidy categorization, but a descriptive estimation of “He Loved Him Madly” might be “psychedelic ambient jazz fusion,” or a long walk down a hypnagogic corridor. Clocking in at 32 minutes, the piece is paradoxically massive yet lighter than air. The title of this work riffs on a favorite saying of Duke Ellington in paying tribute to this legendary man who had passed away two months prior; it is a hybrid composition assembled from snippets of a day spent jamming in the studio and was released as an entire side of the double LP Get Up With It in autumn 1974.

Julia · Answer

∞: my master, ever-growing playlist of ambient, Americana, etudes, new age, post-rock, cosmic country, spiritual jazz, etc. for when you're feeling ~infinite~ lol

JJ · Answer

Leaving Home - Yo La Tengo: Perfection.

Plus all of Yo La Tengo’s instrumentals.