atma.fmatma.fm

atma.fm is one person in Prague with a server and a record collection that goes back to childhood. He built the whole thing himself, hand-picking every track, because ambient struck him as badly underrated and he could find almost no station devoted to it — a genre, as he puts it, whose hypnotic effect can tip into something close to psychedelic. It runs as a hobby, paid out of pocket and the occasional coffee from a listener, and he would rather you spent the money on the artists themselves. They are the real heroes, he says.

This is the lighter of its two channels: spacious, atmospheric, meditative ambient with a heavy drone streak, pieces long enough that one can hold the stream while you forget it is on, in the long-form American space-music tradition. Every so often it turns and goes experimental, electroacoustic and sharp enough to wake you up, then settles back. The playlist keeps growing; he takes submissions.