“I Think Therefore I Ambient” – Mixmaster Morris’s t-shirt slogan of the early 1990s sums up a surprising amount. Like so much of the music played in the chillout rooms of the time, it’s deeply silly, but kind of deep too, and sums up the fact that ambient is the music that does let you think. Not in the sense that it demands dour intellectual engagement, but in that it simply gives space for the mind to roam.

At the recent LEAF (London Electronic Arts Festival), Boiler Room’s Joe Muggs gathered together a panel including Morris, space-grime pioneer Mr Mitch, multi-faceted experimentalist Mica Levy (aka Micachu), and ambient party promoter, installation artist and WARP-signed musician Mira Calix, to discuss the past, present and future of beatless, abstract and immersive music. The first voice you hear is LEAF organiser Rob Da Bank, then for 45 minutes the panel goes in deep on what it is to be ambient.