Brian eno ambient series series#

Perhaps no other artist of comparable stature or impact has taken such a deliberately intellectual approach to music as Eno. The notion of вЂspaceвЂ™ is key in these compositions, though it requires a musicologist of considerable virtuosity to break down the precise mechanics of how it works. Then you are likely struck by how the music allows your mind the space to breathe, and in doing so, adapts itself to your mood. The success of Music for Airports can only be appreciated by listening to it in a variety of moods and settings. So itвЂ™s fair to say that most popular music has a small, extremely finite emotional register, and one of EnoвЂ™s great accomplishments was to broaden that register, not by suggestion, but by reflection. The intensity of those feelings might shift, depending on circumstance (you just broke up with your girlfriend, youвЂ™re more of a creep), but the essential core of that feeling wonвЂ™t change greatly. Whether youвЂ™re home alone, or packed like a sardine on your way to work on a rush-hour train, your sense of being as a result of the music is unlikely to vary significantly. And the nature of these songs - most songs, in fact - is that they suggest the same emotions in whatever context you listen to them. When weвЂ™re feeling bloody but unbowed, the world plays вЂњI Still HavenвЂ™t Found What IвЂ™m Looking ForвЂќ, or at least many people do. We want empathy, so that when weвЂ™re feeling spiteful and anarchic we listen to the Sex PistolsвЂ™ вЂњGod Save the QueenвЂќ or else we play RadioheadвЂ™s вЂњCreepвЂќ because weвЂ™re wallowing, feeling a lack of romantic self-worth. One of the ways we select music to listen to at any given time is by seeking out something that amplifies our emotions, our state of mind. The sounds on Music for Airports possess an endless mutability of mood, which is to say that rather than inspiring a specific set of emotions, they instead reflect the inherent emotions of the listener.

Brian eno ambient series series#

With the series of вЂAmbientвЂ™ recordings made in the late вЂ™70s, Eno was exploring, among other things, the notion of вЂpassiveвЂ™ music. At a time when music was undergoing a shift of seismic proportions, when punk in all its raw fury was changing the musical landscape - when the Sex PistolsвЂ™ Never Mind the Bollocks was the most important new record released and when successive seasons of loud, vitriolic punk bands, post-punk bands, and new wavers were preparing to crash the music culture party - Brian Eno was closeted away dreaming up sounds that were diametrically opposed to that ethos: if the whole point of punk was that it operated at gut level and was impossible to ignore, Eno set about creating music that was fully intellectualized and utterly translucent - sounds that disappeared completely. Perverse? Well, itвЂ™s an album that was released in 1978, but largely imagined at the whip centre of anarchy in the UK. Ambient 1: Music for Airports is a willfully perverse musical statement, one of unlimited contradictions and no small genius.