How Pink Floyd's Instrumental Passages on *Wish You Were Here* and *The Endless River* Shaped Ambient Music

The ambient music that bloomed in the 1970s and ’80s owes a quiet debt to Pink Floyd, even though the band never set out to make pure ambient records. The vast, drifting instrumental sections of Wish You Were Here—especially the slow-build synthesiser sweeps and wordless guitar slides that open “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”—created a template for atmospheric music that prioritized texture over melody. Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978) came out just three years later, and it’s hard not to hear a connection between those long, patient Pink Floyd passages and Eno’s “ignored as interesting” philosophy.

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