Ambient 1: Music for Airports
| Ambient 1: Music for Airports | ||||
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| Brian Eno's studio album | ||||
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Polydor E.G. Records |
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Title (number) |
4th |
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running time |
48:32 |
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Studio (s) |
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Ambient 1: Music for Airports is the sixth album by British musician Brian Eno and was released in 1978 by Polydor and EG Records . The album consists of four compositions and was put together from overlapping tape loops of various lengths. Eno created the album as a repetitive sound installation that was supposed to make the tense, hectic atmosphere of an airport terminal more pleasant.
Music for Airports was the first of four albums in the Enos ambient series. Music from this spherical, strongly withdrawn genre was described by Eno as "just as ignorable as it is interesting" and is clearly differentiated by him from common everyday music (cf. Muzak ). Even if Music for Airports was not the first ambient release, it is still the first album that was explicitly marketed under the genre name Ambient .
background
Brian Eno developed the idea for Ambient 1 while he was forced to spend a few hours at Cologne-Bonn Airport in 1977. While he found the building modern and grand, he was annoyed by the terminal's ordinary and, in his ears, unsuitable sound atmosphere. While he was still there, he began to design the album, which, unlike normal background music, which is supposed to either cheer up or provide an atmospheric background, "should calm you down and create space for thought".
admission
All the pieces on the album were composed by Brian Eno himself with the exception of track 1/1 , which was created by former Soft Machine drummer and singer Robert Wyatt with producer Rhett Davies.
Music for Airports consists of overlapping tape loops that have been mixed and faded into each other in different lengths. In 1/1 , for example, a repetitive piano melody is repeatedly superimposed by complex, repetitive sound patterns synchronously and asynchronously, which creates a complex sound pattern. 2/1 and 1/2 consist of four tracks of textless, vocalized sounds that are repeatedly mixed with themselves and faded over. Minor changes in timing and timbre are repeated over and over again. 2/2 was recorded with an ARP 2600 in Conny Plank's studio.
Track list
Except for 1/1 all compositions are by Brian Eno .
- page 1
- 1. 1/1 (Eno, Rhett Davies, Robert Wyatt ) - 16:30
- 2 1/2 - 8:20
- Page 2
- 3. 2/1 - 11:30 am
- 4. 2/2 - 6:00
reception
| source | rating |
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| Allmusic |
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| Laut.de |
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| Pitchfork |
 
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In 1979, music journalist Michael Bloom rated the album as "dissolute and aimless" in his review for Rolling Stone . Eno has undoubtedly done a good job, but it is hard work to concentrate on the music. While other contemporary reviews were also rather mixed, the 2004 review of the US music website Popmatter recognizes Enos Ambient debut as a masterpiece, “whose value you can only appreciate if you listen to the record in different moods and environments. You then suddenly notice how this music gives your mind the air to breathe. "
The website Pitchfork selected Ambient 1: Music for Airports 2016 as # 1 of the 50 best ambient albums of all time.
Trivia
Terminal 1 at Cologne / Bonn Airport was designed and built by Paul Schneider-Esleben in 1968–1970 . Schneider-Esleben is the father of Florian Schneider-Esleben , alongside Ralf Hütter, founder and long-term member of Kraftwerk .
successor
The Ambient series comprises a total of four parts, whereby Ambient 3 was only produced by Brian Eno.
- 1980: Ambient 2 (The Plateaux of Mirror) (with Harold Budd )
- 1980: Ambient 3 (Day of Radiance) (album by Laraaji)
- 1982: Ambient 4 (On Land)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Better branding through music: Original airport theme songs - USATODAY.com. Retrieved March 29, 2017 .
- ↑ Music for Airports liner notes. Retrieved March 29, 2017 .
- ↑ Review by Linda Kohanov on Allmusic (accessed January 22, 2020)
- ↑ Review by Dani Fromm on Laut.de (accessed January 22, 2020)
- ↑ Review by Liam Singer on Pitchfork (accessed January 22, 2020)
- ^ Brian Eno: Ambient 1: Music for Airports [reissue] . In: PopMatters . ( popmatters.com [accessed March 29, 2017]).
- ↑ The 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time on Pitchfork (accessed January 20, 2020)