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Ambient 1 / Music for Airports (1978) is an ambient music album by Brian Eno.

Overview

This was the first of four albums, released on his own, then new, Ambient label to actually carry the name "ambient" - a term which he had created to differentiate his minimalistic approach to the album's material and "the products of the various purveyors of canned music".

Notice of similarly quiet, unobtrusive music had been given on albums such as Evening Star, Discreet Music, Music for Films and Harold Budd's The Pavilion of Dreams (which he produced), but in this album it was given precedence as a full-blown concept.

The music was designed to be continuously looped as a sound installation, with the intent to defuse the tense, anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal. It was installed at the Marine Air Terminal of New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

Track listing

The track labelling is the way it is because of the album's first release (1978) as an LP, and so the first track means "first track, first side", and so on.

1. "1/1" : Acoustic & electric piano; synthesizer – 16:39
2. "2/1" : Vocals only. – 8:25
3. "1/2" : Vocals; acoustic piano. – 11:36
4. "2/2" : Synthesizer only. – 9:38

The music

See Miscellanea for citations.
All tracks were composed by Eno except "1/1", which was composed by Eno, former Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt, and Rhett Davies.

Music for Airports employs the phasing of tape loops of different length in some tracks, where, for example, in "1/1", a single piano melody is repeated and at different times other instruments will segue in and out in a complex, evolving pattern due to the phenomenon of phasing: at some point these instrumental sounds will clump together, at some points, be spread apart.

Talking about the first piece, Eno has said "... I found this very short section of tape where two pianos, unbeknownst to each other, played melodic lines that interlocked in an interesting way. To make a piece of music out of it, I cut that part out, made a stereo loop on the 24-track, then I discovered I liked it best at half speed, so the instruments sounded very soft, and the whole movement was very slow".

The two tracks containing the wordless "aaaaah"-style vocals intermingles four tracks which loop back on themselves and constantly interact with each other in new ways. Subtle changes in timing occur, adding to the timbre of the pieces.

Eno explains of the vocal-only piece "One of the notes repeats every 23 seconds. It is, in fact, a long loop running around a series of tubular aluminum chairs in Conny Plank's studio. The next lowest loop repeats every 25 seconds or something like that. The third one every 29 seconds or something. What I mean is they all repeat in cycles that are called incommensurable — they are not likely to come back into sync again. Your experience of the piece, of course, is a moment in time, there. So as the piece progresses, what you hear are the various clusterings and configurations of these six basic elements. The basic elements in that particular piece never change. They stay the same. But the piece does appear to have quite a lot of variety".

2/2, the synth piece, was performed with an ARP 2600.

Credits

• Various instruments & cover art : Brian Eno
• Vocals : Christa Fast, Christine Gomez, Inge Zeininger
• Acoustic piano : Robert Wyatt
• Engineering : David Hutchins (2/1, 1/2), Conny Plank (2/2), Rhett Davies (2/2), and Eno
• Recording Location:
  • Tracks 1-3 : London
  • Track 4 : Conny's Studio, Cologne

Versions

Miscellanea

• Music from the album has been covered by:
  • Bang on a Can - Music For Airports Live, 1997, Point-Music (314 536 847-2) 1 , 2 , 3
  • Makyo - 2/1 (Night Flight Mix), on the double compilation CD Minimalism: More Or Less, 1998, Law & Auder (LA05CD) 4 , 5
• The back cover features four abstract graphic notation images, one for each track
• The first track is used in the PBS special "The Creation of the Universe" (IMDB link). Eno is the sole music credit, and he also wrote original music for the documentary
• "Mistaken Memories of Mediaeval Manhattan" (IMDB link) is a 1981, 47-minute ambient video created by Eno which uses music from the album (cat # HEN 2134).
  Two time-lapse animated GIFS from the production - (133K) , (270K)
• Part of the first track featured in the 1986 erotic drama 9½ Weeks
• In 2005, an extract was used in an advertisement for Orange

See also

• Ambient 2/The Plateaux of Mirror
• Ambient 3/Day of Radiance
• Ambient 4/On Land
• Ambient music

External links

• Liner notes of initial American release
• Interview, Artpress, Sep 2001
• Interview, Keyboard Wizards, Winter 1985
• Interview, Reality Hackers, Winter 1988
• Eno lecture, New Music New York, 1979
• The Wire, Stansted Airport BoaC performance, June 1998
• ProgArchives review Template:Rating-5

• Pages with empty short description
• Brian Eno albums
• 1978 albums