Caution: These recordings can have significant positive effects on your mental health
Deep inside, we know that sounds can heal. Through the history of humankind, music has been an integral component of rituals, ceremonies and practices. Our spiritual and cultural traditions, Western and non-Western, often include music – from liturgical services to meditations and prayers to funerals.
In recent years, music therapy has evolved as an evidence-based scientific field, mirroring the overwhelming success of a certain kind of music on streaming services – playlists for relaxing, calming down, focusing, and meditating have grown into a significant part of the digital music ecosystem. Despite the success of these ‘wellness’ playlists, the album still seems like the ideal artform to present a single auteur’s vision of music in the ambient and post-classical space.
The following six records contain healing sounds suitable for deep, mindful listening. Play repeatedly for enhanced effects.
Listen to the article's playlist as you read:
Chad Lawson: »breathe« (2022)
"Music is meant to heal," pianist and composer Chad Lawson told NPR upon the release of this double album. "The music that I do is something that's going to be able to calm someone with whatever they're going through."
Lawson may be no therapist, but as a yoga instructor, breathing coach, and host of the popular meditation podcast “Calm It Down”, he’s determined to provide helpful tools to people with mental health struggles. During the pandemic, he started receiving feedback from loads of fans that said his calming, hopeful music helped them through depressive episodes and phases of anxiety.
Recorded at Abbey Road with the help of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, among other guest musicians, “breathe” is an invitation to slow down, reflect and cherish the present moment. Consisting of collaborative pieces and solo piano versions of the same works, it’s an ideal introduction to Lawson’s rich catalogue, which contains more comforting sounds and guided breathwork exercises.
Max Richter: »Sleep« (2016)
What’s more important for healing than rest? This eight-and-a-half-hour concept album by contemporary composer Max Richter is designed to accompany a full night’s sleep. It was informed by insights the composer received from extended talks with a neuroscientist, learning about the science behind sleep cycles and brain activity at night.
“Sleep” has become one of Richter’s most successful projects, including several live performances of the full composition, a remix project, a filmed documentary, and recent new editions in 2024. Written for piano, organ, strings, vocals, synthesizers and electronics, the piece comprises 31 sections. These ‘dreamscapes’ might have been conceptualised as extended lullabies, but the result is simply some outstanding contemporary classical music that works perfectly not just for sleeping, but for travelling, working, and meditating as well.
Roger & Brian Eno: »Mixing Colours« (2020)
When ambient music went through a huge revival in the second half of the 2010s, one of the true pioneers of the genre – the man that christened it with his 1978 album “Ambient 1: Music for Airports” – focused mostly on generative music installations and other art projects. But when iconic producer Brian Eno got back together with his brother Roger, a renowned pianist and composer in his own right, they created this gorgeous record of treated piano, influenced by the works of Franz Schubert.
Still, “Mixing Colours” seemed to come exactly at the right time – at the beginning of the pandemic, when many of us were forced to turn inwards. This is healing music in the truest sense; these 18 unabashedly beautiful vignettes and melodies provided restful solace from the grim reality of the pandemic. And years later, looking back at that time as something that feels so long ago, the record is still here, sounding as perfect as ever. What a milestone.
Joep Beving: »Solipsism« (2015)
“The world is a hectic place right now”, Joep Beving said upon release of his debut album. “I felt a deep urge to reconnect on a basic human level with people in general. Music as our universal language has the power to unite. Regardless of our cultural differences I believe we have an innate understanding of what it means to be human. We have our goosebumps to show for it.”
Beving is a former advertising man turned pianist and composer – “Solipsism” made huge waves in the neoclassical world, with its song “Sleeping Lotus” becoming a huge hit in the streaming playlist ecosystem. This success is not surprising at all, as Joep’s music was a much needed antidote in a hectic world full of insecurity and fear – a soundtrack for a better, more hopeful future. Or, as Beving says in his trademark understated fashion, “simple music for complex emotions.”
Pantha Du Prince: »Conference Of Trees« (2020)
Back in the days, German producer Hendrik Weber alias Pantha du Prince made melodic house and minimal techno that spoke to the dreamers on the dancefloor. Moving away from electronic dance music in the following decade as he turned away from the city and the club, towards nature, sustainability and spirituality, his music changed as well, landing somewhere between ambient and neoclassical, with slight electronic influences still woven into his sound signature.
“Conference Of Trees” is an album dedicated to the healing of the forest – electronic eco-ambient, if you will, that referenced the science behind the communication abilities of trees, which forester and writer Peter Wohlleben had previously described in his 2015 New York Times best-seller “The Hidden Life of Trees”. Inspired by Wohlleben, Pantha Du Prince wrote a musically captivating plea for the preservation and conservation of natural forest habitats, which would benefit the mental and physical health of all beings on earth.
Sophie Hutchings: »Scattered On The Wind« (2020)
Similar to Pantha Du Prince, Australian pianist and composer Sophie Hutchings is deeply influenced by her natural environment. She spent a good deal of her childhood outdoors, by the ocean. “I find the water has an almost medicinal effect,” says Sophie, who still swims and surfs regularly. “There’s a peace that comes over you when you’re in the ocean or gazing at its horizon.”
Her dreamy, instrumental piano music sounds contemplative, like that of her ambient hero Harold Budd, and minimalist, like that of her favourite composer Arvo Pärt. Accentuated by splashes of strings, vocals, and woodwinds, the music on “Scattered On The Wind” was inspired by Hutching’s nature surroundings in Australia – the coastline and the ocean, the desert and the endless horizon. Its liner notes suggest the album is about “surrendering to the unknown, trusting that things will align.” Now what’s more comforting than that?
