It's already come up in the comments there, but Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is my favorite. In a similar vein, any of the other early ambient hous

It's already come up in the comments there, but Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is my favorite. In a similar vein, any of the other early ambient house stuff that came out around that time is good: Black Dog Productions - Bytes springs to mind, as well as The Orb - The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld or whatever the hell its called. Make sure to get the 2CD deluxe edition. Then there's the various Artificial Intelligence LPs that came out early in Warp Records' history, and not forgetting basically the entire output of Plaid. This stuff is all kinda texture-based and blends into the background, its non-distracting and doesn't demand your attention. This is fine most of the time, I find its nicer than working in silence, which can sometimes be intimidating/boring. Obviously sometimes actual silence is called for, when working out something particularly tricky. What I find surprising however is that sometimes I feel the need to listen to music that I would otherwise find extremely distracting, with constantly shifting rhythm and melody that demands attention and analysis. In certain situations I find it spurs motivation. Sometimes I can just put on Detrimentalist by Venetian Snares and just go crazy and knock out two days worth of code in four hours. Intense music often accompanies intense work for me, music that would ordinarily be so intense as to prevent work. The direction of causation here isn't obvious at all.