Review: Brian Eno, Ambient 1: Music for Airports

With his 1978 album Ambient 1: Music for Airports, English musician/producer/conceptualist Brian Eno coined the terms “Discreet Music” and “Ambient” as “music designed to induce calm and space to think.” The album, comprised of four dissimilar yet completely cohesive movements, was created with simple keyboard melodies, serial tape loops and embedded voices. The effect is sheer weightlessness, the disc’s soft ebb and flow of synthesized patterns imbued with live brass and strings. More than just spatial white noise, Music for Airports is the sonic equivalent of visual art. Eno’s sculpture of sound has inspired numerous imitations, briefly fulfilling its postmodern destiny as an audio installation at NYC’s LaGuardia Airport.

Label: EEG Release Date: November 2, 1990 Buy: Amazon

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