Some forms of ambient music evoke placelessness, inviting listeners to disappear into a soft pink fog. But ambient music can also be deeply rooted in the specificity of a given context—like Suzanne Ciani’s 1971 soundtrack to a shopping-mall aquarium, or Hiroshi Yoshimura’s 1986 album Surround, meant to be played in a construction company’s model homes. Saloli’s The Deep End—a new album from the Portland, Oregon, musician Mary Sutton—falls in the latter category. She composed the music for a summer concert series at a Portland wellness cooperative, where the audience consisted of soakers in a clothing-optional hot tub.

Listening to the album’s first single, “Barcarolle,” it’s easy to imagine how the music might go down in a situation like that. Both the title and the lilting rhythm come from the traditional boat songs sung by Venetian gondoliers; atop the gently flowing cadence of the song’s electronic bass, a whimsical synth melody bubbles away, occasionally bursting into softly iridescent harmonies. “I had never written for synth before,” Sutton, who is better known as a pianist, has said, “but wanted to make something people sitting motionless and naked in hot bubbly water would want to hear.” In its low-key way, “Barcarolle” is gorgeous: fluid, warm, and reassuringly down to earth. Instead of atmospheric sublimity, it’s keyed to the humility of the human form at its most vulnerable.