Day 69: Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports
Album cover courtesy of E.G. Records and Polydor Records
I’ve felt a bit weird this week. Nothing too serious, just tired and a bit loopy, today I’ve also got a slightly sore head. Even though it’s Saturday night, I just want to take it very easy, put some washing away, maybe stretch a little bit, head into bed early with a pile of books. I wanted something mellow to listen to, so I went for Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports.
Brian Eno is a man who probably doesn’t need much introduction. He was formerly a member of Roxy Music, but he’s also a pioneer of electronica and ambient music. He’s a producer, composer, keyboardist, and singer. He’s worked with arguably some of the all-time greats and produced albums that have gone down in music history, such as Bowie’s Berlin trilogy, U2’s biggest works and legendary albums for Talking Heads, like the previously reviewed Remain in Light.
He's known as the father of ambient music, and he even coined the term in the liner notes for Ambient 1: Music for Airports:
Over the past three years, I have become interested in the use of music as ambience, and have come to believe that it is possible to produce material that can be used thus without being in any way compromised. To create a distinction between my own experiments in this area and the products of the various purveyors of canned music, I have begun using the term Ambient Music.
He makes a differentiation between his music and Muzak, where the former is intended to enhance the acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncrasies of the space that you’re in, while the latter is meant to hide them. He sees ambient music as something that rewards you if you focus on it, but that you can also let it fade into the background to enhance the environment you’re in.
Ambient 1: Music for Airports does just elevate whatever situation you are in. It makes me feel more present. It makes me want to savour what I’m doing, burn a candle and really enjoy the moment, even if all I’m doing is just sitting on the sofa having a pear while a group of drunk people outside my flat are vocalising to the tune of “Tequila”. Eno says he was inspired by John Cage’s “4′33″, a silent composition where the piece consists of whatever ambient noise is present in the space that it’s performed in, so I guess the background singing is a part of the experience.
The thought that I get from this is that I want to smell like what this album sounds like. It’s clean and unobtrusive but just ever so slightly impacting the environment that it’s in, making everything around it a little bit more elegant. Eno’s explanation of ambient music as a tool to building an atmosphere is making sense to me when I listen to it. Folding towels turns into a nice moment that I enjoy rather than a chore that I need to do, it takes away the feeling of mundanity or habit.
Not to be too corny but I feel like I get it now. I used to think of ambient music as something you just whack on as background noise, but I feel like I’ve managed to reach a deeper understanding of it. If I can have even five more musical epiphanies in the course of this project, I’ll be happy. Ambient 1 is a 9.5/10.