Soft Downtempo
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Soft Downtempo is gentle electronic music at relaxed tempos, usually built from breakbeats, ambient pads, dub bass, acoustic fragments, and melodic loops. It is less beat-tape-coded than chill beats and less public-room-coded than cafe electronica. The style is useful for background listening, but its best records have enough harmonic and rhythmic identity to reward close attention.
History
Soft downtempo grew from ambient house, trip-hop, chillout rooms, Ibiza compilations, and 1990s/2000s electronica. Zero 7, Bonobo, Air, Moby, Boards of Canada, Tycho, Emancipator, Ulrich Schnauss, Nightmares on Wax, Thievery Corporation, Tosca, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Bent, Lemon Jelly, and Helios carried the sound through headphone listening, cafe culture, and playlist-era chillout.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- Destiny(2001) — Zero 7SpotifyYouTube
- Kiara(2010) — BonoboSpotifyYouTube
- La Femme d'Argent(1998) — AirSpotifyYouTube
- Porcelain(1999) — MobySpotifyYouTube
- Dayvan Cowboy(2005) — Boards of CanadaSpotifyYouTube
- A Walk(2011) — TychoSpotifyYouTube
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Sources
- downtempo and chillout histories
- Cafe del Mar and Ibiza chill references
- artist release catalogs
- streaming chillout playlists