Music Channel 24 - What is Space Music?

What is Space Music?
Space music, also called spacemusic, is a subgenre of new-age music and is described as "tranquil, hypnotic and moving". It is derived from ambient music and is associated with lounge music, easy listening, and elevator music.
Space music typically evokes a sense of spatial imagery and emotion or sensations of floating, cruising, flying and other transportative sensations.

Stylistic origins
Ambient, easy listening, eclecticism, electronic, elevator music, light music, lounge music, New Age, soundscape, Berlin school, computer music, krautrock, planetarium, soundtrack

Cultural origins
Early 1970s, Germany and Japan

Typical instruments
Computer, drum machine, digital audio workstation, electronic musical instrument, sequencer, synthesizer

Other topics
Meditation music, program music, space age pop, space disco, space rock, space-themed music

According to Stephen Hill, co-founder of a radio show called Hearts of Space, the term is used to describe music that evokes a feeling of contemplative spaciousness. Hill states that space music can range in character, the sonic texture of the music can be simple or complex, it can be instrumental or electronic, it may lack conventional melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic features, and may be less concerned with the formal compositional schemes associated with other styles of music.
Hill proposes that space music can be found within a wide range of genres.
Space music may have influences from western classical, world, Celtic, traditional and experimental music.

Hill believes that space music can evoke a "continuum of spatial imagery and emotion", which can be beneficial for introspection, and for developing, through a practice of deep listening, an awareness of the spatiality of sound phenomenon. This type of psychonautic listening can produce a subtle trance-like state in certain individuals which can in turn lead to sensations of flying, floating, cruising, gliding, or hovering.

Hill states that space music is used by some individuals for both background enhancement and foreground listening, often with headphones, to enable states of relaxation, contemplation, inspiration, and generally peaceful expansive moods; it may promote health through relaxation, atmospherics for bodywork therapies, and effectiveness of meditation. Space music appears in many film soundtracks and is commonly played in planetariums.

According to Hill space music is an eclectic music produced almost exclusively by independent labels and it occupies a small niche in the marketplace, supported and enjoyed by a relatively small audience of loyal enthusiastic listeners.
Examples of artists who have been associated with space music
This list includes notable artists who have created works that have been categorised by some[who?] as space music:

Miles Davis – In a Silent Way
Lonnie Liston Smith – Loveland
Constance Demby – Novus Magnificat: Through the Stargate
Enigma – A Posteriori
Brian Eno – Apollo, Music for Airports
Edgar Froese
Grateful Dead – Aoxomoxoa, Infrared Roses, Grayfolded
Geodesium – A Gentle Rain of Starlight, Fourth Universe, West of the Galaxy, Double Eclipse
Lisa Gerrard – The Mirror Pool
Michael Hedges  – Aerial Boundaries
Paul Horn – Inside the Taj Mahal
Dave Luxton
Jean Michel Jarre – Oxygène, Équinoxe, Magnetic Fields, Rendez-Vous, Chronologie, Oxygène 7–13
Ray Lynch
R. Carlos Nakai – Cycles Volume 2
NASA (with Brain/Mind Research) – Symphonies of the Planets series
Mike Oldfield – The Songs of Distant Earth
Oregon
Giles Reaves – Wunjo, Nothing Is Lost, Sea of Glass,[81] Kaleida Visions, Sacred Space
Eloy Fritsch – The Ice Sea of Enceladus, Moonwalk
K.T. Reeder Some of Reeder's work uses elements of space music.
Steve Roach – Structures from Silence
Klaus Schulze – Irrlicht, Cyborg, Picture Music, Timewind, Moondawn, Mirage, X
Jonn Serrie – Midsummer Century, Ixlandia
Michael Stearns – Ancient Leaves, Desert Moon Walk, Planetary Unfolding, Lyra Sound Constellation, Chronos, Encounter
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Stars Over Foy
Tim Story – Shadowplay
Tangerine Dream – Alpha Centauri, Zeit, Phaedra, Rubycon.
Isao Tomita – Snowflakes are Dancing, The Planets, Kosmos, Space Walk – Impressions of an Astronaut, and The Mind of the Universe
Vangelis  – Albedo 0.39, Spiral, Blade Runner, Mythodea, Rosetta
George Winston
The Moody Blues – "To Our Children's Children's Children"

Space Artists Highlights

Space Album Highlights