It might be easier to list the artists today who haven’t done something linked to meditation and mindfulness recently. And it is Calm that seems to draw in the biggest and best names. This year alone has seen Camila Cabello/Shawn Mendes, London Grammar, Keith Urban and UMG all working with the meditation app.
The year’s most interesting – and musically most creative – partnership, however, comes from Coldcut, one of the most consistently innovative electronic acts of the past 30+ years.
The @0 Zero Beats ambient mix for Calm has been curated by Matt Black (one half of Coldcut and co-founder of the Ninja Tune label) and is not just about scooping up existing tracks and shunting them into a mix: rather 10 new tracks have been written and recorded specifically for the mix by musicians well-versed in ambient music.
Alongside new music from Coldcut themselves, there are tracks from acts including Steve Roach, Suzanne Ciani, Imogen Heap, Laraaji, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Julianna Barwick and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.
“@0 refers to that liminal state I’ve experienced many times where my mental and emotional stability was not solid and I felt I was teetering on a zero axis about to fall into depression, or more rarely, mania,” explains Black of the concept behind the mix. “I found that ambient music, by making no demands on my psyche, often opened some space and with its sonic soft fascination, subtly raised my energy, helping to avoid that downward spiral and navigate slowly up and out. @0 is a balance point.”
The mix is currently only available for Calm subscribers and there is no news yet if it will be made available outside of the app.
Calm has drawn in some major names over the past few years, most significantly Harry Styles who recorded one of the app’s popular ‘sleep stories’ last year. The company is able to lock in such big names as it has raised huge sums in investment ($88m in February 2019, $27m in July 2019 and $75m at the end of 2020) to give it a valuation of over $2bn.
The Coldcut deal suggests a move by Calm to shift beyond global celebrity names to target a much more discerning audience niche.
