I spend a lot of time getting lost in music. Not just listening to it (although I do plenty of that) but also thinking about what it does, how it works, and why certain songs and records carry certain emotional resonances. So when the opportunity came up to create a playlist as part of Steno's new Deposition Zen campaign, I didn't think of it as a box I needed to check. I treated it like an assignment I'd been waiting for.

The result is Find Your Flow: The Sound of Deposition Zen. Two hours of ambient music curated for the legal mind. The guru said balance leads to enlightenment. We made a playlist.

An Ambient State of Mind

Ambient music is the only genre designed specifically to coexist with thought rather than compete with it. Brian Eno, who more or less invented the category with 1978's Ambient 1: Music for Airports, described it as music that could be either actively listened to or allowed to blend into the environment. For attorneys trying to reach flow state in the middle of a chaotic workday, that quality is exactly what you need. No hot coals required.

The longer answer to the question of "why ambient" is that ambient music has had a fascinating cultural rehabilitation over the past decade. For a long time, new age music was considered a punch line—ambient's more earnest, crystals-and-dolphins cousin with a bad ponytail.

But something shifted. Artists like Laraaji, Iasos, and Joanna Brouk (all present and accounted for here), who were making visionary music in the 1970s and '80s, started getting rediscovered. Labels like Numero Group and Light in the Attic began reissuing and championing this music to new audiences. Suddenly a genre long considered embarrassing became interesting, and for good reason. A lot of it is extraordinary.

Finding Your Flow

You can't force a flow state, but you can create the right environment, mindset, and soundtrack. The Deposition Zen that Steno delivers works the same way. Remove the friction, eliminate the logistics chaos, and suddenly there's room to actually think.

The playlist’s main job is to simply get out of the way. I wanted it to feel less like an album with a fixed arc and more like a well-designed room that you could enter at any point and feel immediately at ease. That meant resisting the urge to build to a dramatic crescendo and instead creating an ebb and flow. There are moments of deep stillness punctuated by gentle lifts, but nothing that pulls your attention away from your work.

The playlist spans several decades of ambient music, from early classics to records made in the past few years. There are artists here who were pioneering the genre before most people knew it had a name, sitting comfortably alongside musicians who are doing interesting work right here and now.

You’ll notice a definite emphasis on texture and tone over tempo. Whether you're prepping for a deposition, deep in discovery, or just trying to find a few hours of uninterrupted focus, I suggest you put it on, let it do its job, and get back to doing what you do best.

Go Deeper

Consider this playlist a map for wherever the music takes you. Below are a few places for further exploration. Fair warning, though. This is a rabbit hole with no visible bottom.

Centripetal Force Records is, as founder/owner Mike Mannix describes it, "a music label focused on otherworldly sounds and oddball noisemakers." Only part of the catalog qualifies as ambient, but all of it is worth your time. They're represented here by numün, Luke Schneider and Prairiewolf, but start anywhere.

Steve Roach's Bandcamp is a universe unto itself with dozens and dozens of releases spanning decades, all of it informed by the vast, arid landscape of the Arizona desert he calls home.

Across the Horizon, a podcast hosted by Bob Holmes of SUSS, spans new folk, ambient, electronic, soundscapes, Americana, spiritual jazz, and cosmic psychedelia. It's a generous, unpretentious guide to music designed to evoke open skies and endless roads.

Reflections is an immersive ambient music and visual event series that pairs visionary composers with cinematic visuals inside historic churches and other spaces for deep listening in various cities across the country.

Find your flow at steno.com/zen.