Quiet Loud Quiet: My Year of Kurt and Ambient Elation

On Nirvana, Approaching Ambient "nirvana," and Taking on Too Much

It happened more than once: a dog barking, a vacuum whirring, a toddler tugging on my arm. Sometimes all at once. Meanwhile, I was trying to type out a sentence about the “immense sense of peace ambient music can bring.” Yeah, sure, buddy.

Last year, I embarked on writing my first book—20th Century Ambient. It was the biggest single creative project I’d ever taken on. And because I’m an overcommitting masochist, I also signed on for another “biggest single creative project ever”: co-hosting and producing a longform podcast called The Cobain 50, exploring Kurt Cobain’s list of his 50 favorite albums.

I remember talking with my wife on New Year’s Day about how difficult the year ahead might be. But in hindsight, I didn’t have a clue. Sparing you the gritty details, I pushed myself to my mental brink. Either of these projects alone would’ve been enough to generate sleepless nights and deadline anxiety. But I like to “do it big,” I guess.

At first glance, the two projects couldn’t be more different—one about a genre often described as “extremely chill,” the other rooted in (mostly) hardcore punk. But that polarity became a saving grace. And now, with the manuscript complete and the podcast nearing its final episode, I find myself reflective, nostalgic, and—I'll admit—a bit misty about both.

On Kurt.

Outside of my loved ones, there’s probably no one I’ve thought about more than Kurt Cobain. I sometimes even wonder how strange that is. We never met and never will, yet the art he made—and the art he evangelized—has shaped my life, ethics, and worldview in profound ways.

Discovering Nirvana felt like, well, approaching nirvana. I don’t need to regale you with the standard stories—hearing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the first time, finding your inner angst mirrored in his lyrics, getting really into flannel. You've heard those before.

I didn’t come to Nirvana until about a decade after Kurt died. I was a kid when he passed away, but even ten years later, his legacy loomed large. One thing I latched onto early was his origin story: Aberdeen, Washington. I grew up across the water from Seattle, in Kitsap County. For those unfamiliar, Seattle and the towns outside it are very different worlds. Rural Washington isn’t the cosmopolitan, progressive hub you saw in Singles. It’s conservative, isolated. Kurt being an artsy kid in a town like that made me feel a kinship with him.

What amazed me wasn’t that he “got out” of Aberdeen—but that he made something massive out of it. Back then, I thought you had to be in New York, London, or L.A. to make something that mattered. Seattle seemed like the bare minimum. And yet, Nirvana started in Aberdeen. Not just Kurt—he was inspired by a community: bandmates like Krist Novoselic, mixtapes from The Melvins. From Aberdeen to Olympia to Tacoma to Seattle to the world. That trajectory blew my mind. And even when they reached global fame, you could still hear the Northwest drawl in Kurt’s voice—the same one I heard in my grandma and other relatives from farm-town Oregon.

I also remember begging my mom to buy me Journals, the posthumously published collection of Kurt’s notebooks, at the Barnes & Noble in Silverdale. I didn’t know the ethics of reading someone’s private writings. Cheekily, one of the first pages has Kurt writing, “Don’t read my diary when I’m gone.” A few lines later: “When you wake up this morning, please read my diary. Look through my things, and figure me out.” Classic Kurt contradiction. My mom bought it for me on the condition that I “not idolize this man.” I can’t say I kept that promise. The book changed my life.

Journals is full of grotesque drawings, brutal thoughts, early drafts of lyrics, music video ideas. Visually, it’s stayed with me and continues to be an inspiration. But what really caught me were the lists. One in particular has become famous: his top 50 albums. It became a roadmap. I didn’t get through all of them as a kid, but it steered me toward the “alternative art” that shaped who I am.

Years later, my friend and colleague Martin Douglas told me he’d had a similarly profound reaction to the list. Fast forward, and we’ve just finished going through all 50 albums on our podcast. It’s a wild and eclectic mix: Bad Brains, Pixies, MDC, Public Enemy, The Slits, Flipper, Mazzy Star, The Shaggs, Rites of Spring, Black Flag.

Going through someone’s favorite albums is intimate. You wonder why they loved these records, how they influenced their work. You wonder if the list would’ve changed had they lived longer. It's a time capsule. As a fellow music obsessive, I’ve revised my own “top albums” list countless times.

I want to say that spending time with these records helped me understand Kurt better—but I don’t think that’s true. Maybe I see his art more clearly now. But I still don’t know him. And that’s okay. As a teenager, I desperately wanted to understand him. But that’s not how it works. There’s beauty in the mystery, even if so much of it is wrapped in tragedy.

If anything, exploring his list forced me to confront myself—my own hero worship, my own taste boundaries. I learned I could actually enjoy Butthole Surfers (despite the name), and that I really can’t handle early Swans.

As connected as I’ve felt to Kurt, I’ve come to accept how different we are. And with someone like him—someone who, to most of us, exists more as idea than person—you have to accept the art as the gift. And the other artists he worked so hard to lift up? That’s a gift too.

On Ambient.

I’ve loved ambient music for years, but in the last five it’s become less a passing interest and more a lifeline.

I’ll skip my “Teen Spirit” story and say only: the pandemic was hard. Like it was for everyone. My usual go-to music started to lose flavor. I turned to ambient in a desperate bid for peace. In our one-bedroom apartment, with the walls seemingly closing in, ambient music felt like a universe opening up.

It became my counterbalance in a world bent on collapse. Even as things reopened, I kept returning to ambient. Still do.

When Bloomsbury opened submissions for their 33 1/3: Genre series, I immediately knew I wanted to pitch a book about ambient. The idea came fully formed. I knew I wasn’t alone in my search for solace, and I could see ambient “going mainstream” in real time. Fred Again.. making records with Brian Eno. The Calm app curating ambient soundtracks for meditation. It was happening.

I wanted to understand why this music hits us the way it does. I thought digging into its history might provide answers. Did I find them? Well, you’ll have to check back in November when the book comes out. 😉

Still, I immersed myself in ambient music while writing. I took Eno and Satie’s idea seriously: that ambient is music meant to live in the background. I lived with it constantly—around the house, in the car, even softly playing through headphones during Zoom calls.

There’s something wonderful about that. Ambient is more versatile than people give it credit for, but yeah: the stereotype that it’s peaceful and airy often holds true. I can confirm this after hundreds of hours of listening. In moments of stress, having Hiroshi Yoshimura or Suzanne Ciani gently humming in the background helped. It was like ambient music was saying, Everything will be okay. Just… chill out.

But constant exposure has its drawbacks. When something is always there, you stop noticing it. Its magic can dull. Sometimes you just don’t have the time or headspace to enter a “thoughtful, meditative state.” Trying to force serenity often creates the opposite effect.

And sometimes the world is just too loud for ambient to reach you. Even with noise-canceling headphones, the construction outside, the hallway vacuum, or the shouting on the bus breaks through—and so does your calm.

Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. When the world gets noisy, the only way to drown it out is with more noise. Thankfully, there was almost always some gnarly, loud album from Kurt’s list queued up right when I needed it—Mudhoney, Rites of Spring, FEAR—all ready to meet chaos with their own. It worked surprisingly well.

But it wasn’t just the literal noise—it was the spiritual noise, too. I’ve already written at length about my love for Wipers in Another Thought, but the week we did the first three Wipers albums felt like a lifeline. I was deep in the manuscript, feeling incredibly behind, when Greg Sage came crashing in shouting, “PUSH ME OVER THE EDGE!” Mudhoney reminded me of the fertile artistic ground beneath me. The swagger and mischief of Tales of Terror felt like a life raft in a sea of vibes. After floating for so long, it’s easy to forget what the ground feels like. Ambient music is great for grounding and breathing. Kurt’s list, though? It drags you down into the dirt and makes you feel it.

Both modes, I think, are essential. The effervescent soul-searching of ambient. The full-body squall of hardcore. Each, in its own way, rebels against the chaos of the world. Loudness is easily seen as defiance, but stillness is a kind of rebellion too.

There’s a time for both. I just happened to be in a moment where I needed them simultaneously. One is (usually) loud, the other (usually) quiet—but I find peace in both. When I felt myself slipping toward the edge, one always managed to pull me back.

Sometimes you need MDC screaming in your ear. Other times, it’s the blissful tones of Laraaji settling you down. Catharsis takes many forms—rarely the one we expect. There’s always going to be something in the way. And more than one way to move through it.

A Quick Pass at a Top 50

In the spirit of Kurt’s top 50, I tried to jot down quickly my own personal top 50 albums (and tried to emulate Kurt’s format, no less). And, I won’t lie, I wanted to change things almost immediately after finishing it. But since Kurt’s list has been taken at doctrine without a second pass, I’m going to be fair and share this here. Regardless, I stand by all these albums and love them all for different reasons. There are just about 500 other albums I wish I could squeeze in.

Okay, Last Cobain 50 Thing: Come To Our Finale Taping!

So, we actually have one episode left… and we’re doing it live! If you live in Seattle, come through on April 26 at 7 PM for “Come As You Are: A Live Finale.” Myself, Martin, and Albina Cabrera from our Spanish language companion podcast El Cancionero de Kurt will be wrapping up the series in front of a live audience. The three of us will be spinning vinyl from Kurt’s list before and after and the great Seattle band somesurprises will be performing some covers as well. Hope to see you there!

20th Century Ambient Coming in November

My upcoming book, 20th Century Ambient, is now available for pre-order! If you’ve been enjoying the blend of music deep dives and comics in Another Thought, I think you’ll really love this.

“Through text and comics, 20th Century Ambient searches through ambient music's recent history to unearth how the genre has evolved and the role it plays in our daily lives.”

It’s out November 13, 2025 from Bloomsbury Books. Don’t miss your chance to reserve a copy now.