{"id":2494713,"date":"2026-07-09T09:34:53","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T09:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2494713"},"modified":"2026-07-09T09:34:53","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T09:34:53","slug":"a-new-track-running-and-ambient-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/a-new-track-running-and-ambient-music\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Track: Running and ambient music"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When I started running, I expected it to be a struggle. In fact, I intended it to be. I wasn\u2019t aiming to win marathons, but I wanted to feel its impact: the sweat streaming down skin, the increasingly laboured gasps for breath, the ache of muscles as the distances increased.<\/p>\n

I do very little in my life without music on, so to me it seemed totally normal that music would be on while I was running. Na\u00efvely, the thought of running without music appeared to be like a kind of torture \u2013 a combination of doing something physically painful and intellectually unstimulating in service of\u2026 offsetting ingesting copious amounts of olive oil and butter? When I put my headphones on, I figured it was only natural that the songs match the energy of my activity. High tempos and BPMs were important; they would make sure that even when I wanted to fall over there was momentum to keep me going. Memorable lines and shouted vocals acted as a partner that I could tune in and out. I turned to the melodic hardcore of Turnstile, the bright and gleaming pop of Dua Lipa and Charli xcx, the aggression of rage rap.<\/p>\n

But as I grew to actually like running, to become (gulps) \u2018someone who runs\u2019, I started to rethink all this. In his book Run the Song<\/i><\/a>, writer and music critic Ben Ratliff writes: \u201cI run with music to help me merge with the external world, but I am sometimes using it to help me define myself against it\u2026 to run is to be out in the world, but also to be alone.\u201d Nothing summed this up more than ambient music, a genre that can be both all-encompassing and have a cocooning effect. When I ran, contrary to the popular belief that exercise can have a calming influence, thoughts took the speed as an opportunity to race through my brain. By relying on music that turned my mind off, music that melded with the movement of my body, everything else filled the gap.<\/p>\n

Since the pandemic lockdown, ambient music has proliferated in an insidious way, spawning countless anonymous \u2018artists\u2019 on streaming services spamming \u2018curated\u2019 playlists, and an emphasis on ambient as little more than Chill Beats to Live Your Life To. While there\u2019s always been utility in ambient music as background soundscapes \u2013 from Brian Eno\u2019s Music For\u2026 <\/i>series to Hiroshi Yoshimura and Kanky\u014d Ongaku \u2013 intentionality and personality are what separates the worthwhile from the exploitative.<\/p>\n


Illustration by\u00a0Andrea Bojkovska.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was this intentionality that I sought to solve my problems; I wanted to fill my runs with interesting and conceptual sounds, not just Bird Song and Ocean Waves For Running To, freeing me from the shackles of setting a pace or reaching the next kilometre marker on Strava. This experiment transformed sessions, allowing me to burrow deeper into the music and climb away from what I was going to make for dinner, how I was going to do that thing at work, when I was going to text back that friend I\u2019d left hanging.<\/p>\n

Listening to Grouper\u2019s Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill <\/i>(otherwise now known as: me at the end of a 10k trying to get up Gardner Street in Partick) helped me pry new meaning out of Liz Harris\u2019s drowned and reverbed words; the silence and space in <\/i>Ana Roxanne\u2019s Because of a Flower <\/i>allowed the hustle and bustle of the streets and parks and bridges and riverfronts I ran past to leak in and \u201chelp me merge with the external world\u201d; the sustained and patient notes of Kali Malone\u2019s The Sacrificial Code<\/i> had borderline psychedelic outcomes when matched with the fatigue of an extended run. Forget runner\u2019s high \u2013 come back to me when you\u2019ve ran for an hour to the drone of a pipe organ.<\/p>\n

Five ambient songs to run to<\/h2>\n

Belong \u2013 AM\/PM
<\/b>Ambient running music for beginners. If you need <\/i>BPM to keep you going, this track will mirror the thud of your trainers hitting the tarmac.<\/p>\n