I moved into visual arts from audio arts, and I'm at a bit of a loss to distill a small list of recordings which I find inspiring. However, I'll dive in anyway ...
I am personally inspired a great deal by Daniel Lanois in general, and his Belladona album is a largely instrumental and fascinating work. Daniel's pedal steel is just elegant. I find Brian Eno's ambient recordings to be quite enjoyable atmospheric music, but he's a bit more well known (for better or worse). Lately I've been dipping into Latin jazz recordings from the 50's/60's era, but I've yet to acquire any recordings myself. I'm just at the brink of exposure with them, but I haven't been so excited about music in some time as I am with the little bit I've had the chance to hear. There's a personal friend of mine, Peter Koniuto, who has put together some really diverse and inspiring recordings; he uses some very creative approaches (boiled eggs in metal mixing bowls, blowing air over tuned bottles of wine, unorthodoxically brushed cymbals, etc.
), here's his home page, I must plug it for this topic:
http://www.redsunsoundroom.com/One of his favorite artists is Zakir Hussain, and I'd have to recommend his music to any earthling creating anything. My wife is from Nepal, and through her I've been exposed to a tremendous amount of enriching material, Hindustani and traditional Nepali music, though some of it requires more attention than others, and tends to split my attention if I'm attempting to perform other creative work while listening.
Wonderful thread! I'm eager to hear what other folks would mention here.
Cheers!