Ambient: Floating Worlds

Prepare to empty your head and enter a zone where full enlightenment is a distinct possibility, as we give you music that is just as futuristic and mind-expanding as it is meditative and ancient. Your guides today include ambient godfather Brian Eno, who will turn your limbs to treacle with the title track from his pioneering and dream-like ambient masterwork Another Green World (1975), Iceland's Sigur Ros, who build crystal castles in the volcanic air with "Takk..." and Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada, who sustain our entrance to a world beyond consciousness with "84 Pontiac Dream". By the way, if you happen to spot a gap in the space-time continuum, let us know.

Ambience connects London with the Mojave Desert, in Next Steps.

Your progress through our ambient, floating world is numbingly slow . . . but that's the way it's supposed to be. With your body put on hold, your mind is free to explore the farthest reaches of the imagination, with help from avant-garde composer, Harold Budd, who had his future as an ambient maestro sealed during childhood. He was raised in the spooky, unearthly landscapes of the Mojave Desert in Southern California, and cites the humming sounds of wind through telephone wires as an early inspiration. "The Silver Ball" is the product of collaboration with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Ever heard the sound of Planet Earth exhaling? No? Then, cue up the Future Sound of London's "Domain".

C-beams glitter in the dark near Tanhauser Gate, in Deep Cuts.

These tracks not only have the power to make you feel weightless, they can also transport you to incredible worlds imagined by some of the keenest minds of our time. Feel like chatting up a gorgeous robot woman before whisking her away for a weekend in the country in your flying car? Then cue up the "Love Theme from Blade Runner" by Vangelis. Clannad makes our own planet seem unearthly with the title track from 1988's Atlantic Realm, which was composed as the soundtrack to the BBC's nature programme, The Natural World: The Atlantic Realm, while former motorcycle racer Steve Roach explores spectral regions with Belgian Dirk Serries (aka Vindna Obmana) on "The Dwelling Place".

"Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention," according to Brian Eno, and by the time you've floated your way through these Essentials, you'll know exactly what he means. These tracks can be used as vehicles to take your imagination somewhere it has never been before, or as secondary noise that takes the back door into your conscious mind and casts a spell without you really knowing it. From Ry Cooder's wraith-like guitar — on theme from Southern Comfort — to David Bowie's plucked koto ("Moss Garden") and Glasvegas at their most ethereal ("The Prettiest Thing on Saltcoats Beach"), you'll find an exotic range of sounds here unrivalled in any other Essentials list.