kleph
09-04-2006, 12:16 PM
It might surprise folks to learn that of all the albums that I have in my collection, the ones I have listened to the most are from Brian Eno’s Ambient series, particularly the first Ambient 1: Music for Airports. Ever since a friend of mine first introduced me to this album more than two decades ago, it has been a constant part of my life. I listen to at least one album from the series pretty much every day and I still find myself caught by surprise at their freshness and originality.
But it is not your normal album. You don't listen to it like normal music. You put it on and let it subtly seep into your world. It doesn't impose but it is not ignorable.
"An ambience is defined as an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint," wrote Eno in the liner notes of Ambient 1. "I have come to believe that it is possible to produce material that can be used thus without being in any way compromised."
And he was right. The Ambient series may be one of the most influential works created by any modern composer. It’s impact began almost immediately as it led to the foundation an entirely new genre of music, New Age. Later, in the last 1980s, The Orb released “Ambient Music for the E-Generation” inspired by the series and spwaned a whole genre of electronic music that was designed to chill out to rather than party down.
http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/2/0/1/eno.jpgEno burst into prominence in the early 1970s as the keyboardist for the groundbreaking glam band Roxy Music. He left the group at its peak and moved onto a bold solo career that produced influential works such as the landmark Another Green World (previously reviewed (http://forum.zgeek.com/showthread.php?t=47747) for ZTunes by ewe2). In recent decades his work as a musician and composer has been eclipsed by his work as a producer for such bands as Ultravox, The Talking Heads, Devo and, of course, U2.
Over his career, Eno's musical odyssey has ventured further and further out of the mainstream and more completely into the realms of innovation. Interestingly, as he has done so, his influence has broadened and his distinct musical vision has become one of the most powerful in the world today. Need proof? Eno composed one of the most ubiquitous pieces of music in the world today – the Microsoft boot up sound.
Ambient, although it is one of Eno’s most important contributions to modern music came about, literally, by accident. In early 1975, Eno suffered an car wreck that left incapacitated. One day, with much difficulty, he put on an album of 18th Century harp music and returned to bed. He then realized the stereo was not working properly and was almost inaudible but he was unable to get up and fix it. So he was forced to listen to the entire album in this manner, which gave him an inspiration.
"This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music - as part of the ambience of the environment just as the colour of the light and the sound of the rain were parts of that ambience," he later wrote.
Previously, music created for such a purpose was achieved by taking existing compositions and draining them of any artistic force, watering them down so they became so innocuous you never even noticed them. That idea horrified Eno and he felt it was possible to create a type of background music with it’s own artistic integrity. It's a concept long incorporated into music styles that hail from the Orient but completely alien to our western traditions.
Eno already had the key tool to bring this vision to life due to a collaboration with King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp several years earlier. The duo had put together two Revox tape recorders making it possible to build layer-upon-layer of sound. Fripp began exploring musical creations that created dense multilayers but Eno now went the other direction using the technology to create a minimal sonic effect.
He created several experiments along these lines including Music for Films and Discreet Music before releasing the landmark Ambient 1: Music for Airports in 1978. To say it confounded folks is to put it lightly. Most wrote it off as the ostentatious experiment of a pop musician who didn’t know any better. But there was a lot more going on here than a single listen might suggest.
The first composition, "1/1," consists of a single phrase played on an acoustic piano – played by ex-Soft Machine drummer, Robert Wyatt – looped with varying pauses. (a short sample can be found here (http://www.sleepbot.com/ambience/sample1/airport1.mp2)) This is overlaid with soft synthesizer tones looped as well. The three other pieces on the album are more complex compositions featuring loops of subtle sounds that include voice, piano and brass synthesizer. They all, despite their innocuous sound, retain a persistent originality due to the unpredictability of the sounds you are hearing. And, as recurring tape loops, each composition can be played endlessly over and over to complete the effect endlessly.
In fact, Ambient 1, as the title suggests, was written specifically to be played as a constant background for a large public place, such as an airport. This conceit clearly put the work in the realm of art. As much as a modern sculpture challenges you to re-evaluate the setting it is displayed in, Ambient 1 demands you re-examine the environment it is used to fill. It has, in fact, been performed in several airports including New York’s La Guardia and London’s Heathrow.
But Eno himself has admitted there is a paradox to this music that creates a unique and formidable challenge for the artist. It has to be subtle enough to flutter in and out of your consciousness as you listen but never becomes sonic wallpaper to fill the room.
“Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular,” Eno wrote. “It must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”
One way this music works is because it capitalizes on how your consciousness works. We tend to think of music in terms of how we listen to songs we like – with our full and complete attention. But our consciousness is much more fractured and, more often, music is one aspect of the complete soundscape we behold. We only focus on it occasionally – when we hear a lyric or a chord we like – but, for the most part, it is only one element of our overall perceptions.
While traditional musical compositions are composed with the intent of being beheld at the forefront of one’s attention – like a performance – Eno’s Ambient works are not. They are, instead, intended to take advantage of an interesting philosophical concept that a buddy of mine calls “the theory of surprise (http://www.arizonaphilosophy.com/?p=72).”
Essentially it states that we typically divide things we perceive into rough category of what we are directly and indirectly aware of. Right now I am directly aware of my laptop but indirectly or peripherally aware of what is on the desk next to me. But when I look over and see… say, my cell phone, I am not surprised or shocked as if it has suddenly be introduced into my awareness. So I actually have been completely aware of it all along, although my sense of it has been peripherally.
This would seem to suggest that my intuitive division between my general consciousness and my overt self-consciousness might be incorrect. I actually perceive the world as a whole including my self-awareness of the perception. Eno’s ambient pieces are specifically designed to capitalize on this. They are musical landscapes or, more properly, soundtracks to landscapes, and beholding the whole is how they are intended to be listened to.
Ambient 1 paved the way for three more Ambient albums that explored the same musical hypothesis. These works are often in one key, lack any vestige of rhythm and use only the barest sonic effects. While the series’ best known pieces feature Budd’s minimalist piano work are best known, some utilize only organic sounds, others are layers of string instruments.
Another key theme to the series Eno would address more fully in later Ambient works – particularly Ambient 4: On Land. It is the attempt to create a sense of place using music. This idea actually has its genesis in earlier Eno works such as Discreet Musics and reaches it's triumphant apogee with the astounding Apollo - Atmospheres & Soundtracks (although The Pearl remains my favorite of all of Eno's Ambient works).
It is this element that makes Eno’s Ambient works something special. They have a special permanent resonance in the listener that only a few pieces of music can match. For me, even as I listen today they somehow hold the nostalgia of two decades I have journeyed through with them and yet they still they remain as musically fresh today as when I first heard Ambient 1.
This essay also appears on my website kleph.com (http://www.kleph.com/stuff/).
© 2006 C.J. Schexnayder
But it is not your normal album. You don't listen to it like normal music. You put it on and let it subtly seep into your world. It doesn't impose but it is not ignorable.
"An ambience is defined as an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint," wrote Eno in the liner notes of Ambient 1. "I have come to believe that it is possible to produce material that can be used thus without being in any way compromised."
And he was right. The Ambient series may be one of the most influential works created by any modern composer. It’s impact began almost immediately as it led to the foundation an entirely new genre of music, New Age. Later, in the last 1980s, The Orb released “Ambient Music for the E-Generation” inspired by the series and spwaned a whole genre of electronic music that was designed to chill out to rather than party down.
http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/2/0/1/eno.jpgEno burst into prominence in the early 1970s as the keyboardist for the groundbreaking glam band Roxy Music. He left the group at its peak and moved onto a bold solo career that produced influential works such as the landmark Another Green World (previously reviewed (http://forum.zgeek.com/showthread.php?t=47747) for ZTunes by ewe2). In recent decades his work as a musician and composer has been eclipsed by his work as a producer for such bands as Ultravox, The Talking Heads, Devo and, of course, U2.
Over his career, Eno's musical odyssey has ventured further and further out of the mainstream and more completely into the realms of innovation. Interestingly, as he has done so, his influence has broadened and his distinct musical vision has become one of the most powerful in the world today. Need proof? Eno composed one of the most ubiquitous pieces of music in the world today – the Microsoft boot up sound.
Ambient, although it is one of Eno’s most important contributions to modern music came about, literally, by accident. In early 1975, Eno suffered an car wreck that left incapacitated. One day, with much difficulty, he put on an album of 18th Century harp music and returned to bed. He then realized the stereo was not working properly and was almost inaudible but he was unable to get up and fix it. So he was forced to listen to the entire album in this manner, which gave him an inspiration.
"This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music - as part of the ambience of the environment just as the colour of the light and the sound of the rain were parts of that ambience," he later wrote.
Previously, music created for such a purpose was achieved by taking existing compositions and draining them of any artistic force, watering them down so they became so innocuous you never even noticed them. That idea horrified Eno and he felt it was possible to create a type of background music with it’s own artistic integrity. It's a concept long incorporated into music styles that hail from the Orient but completely alien to our western traditions.
Eno already had the key tool to bring this vision to life due to a collaboration with King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp several years earlier. The duo had put together two Revox tape recorders making it possible to build layer-upon-layer of sound. Fripp began exploring musical creations that created dense multilayers but Eno now went the other direction using the technology to create a minimal sonic effect.
He created several experiments along these lines including Music for Films and Discreet Music before releasing the landmark Ambient 1: Music for Airports in 1978. To say it confounded folks is to put it lightly. Most wrote it off as the ostentatious experiment of a pop musician who didn’t know any better. But there was a lot more going on here than a single listen might suggest.
The first composition, "1/1," consists of a single phrase played on an acoustic piano – played by ex-Soft Machine drummer, Robert Wyatt – looped with varying pauses. (a short sample can be found here (http://www.sleepbot.com/ambience/sample1/airport1.mp2)) This is overlaid with soft synthesizer tones looped as well. The three other pieces on the album are more complex compositions featuring loops of subtle sounds that include voice, piano and brass synthesizer. They all, despite their innocuous sound, retain a persistent originality due to the unpredictability of the sounds you are hearing. And, as recurring tape loops, each composition can be played endlessly over and over to complete the effect endlessly.
In fact, Ambient 1, as the title suggests, was written specifically to be played as a constant background for a large public place, such as an airport. This conceit clearly put the work in the realm of art. As much as a modern sculpture challenges you to re-evaluate the setting it is displayed in, Ambient 1 demands you re-examine the environment it is used to fill. It has, in fact, been performed in several airports including New York’s La Guardia and London’s Heathrow.
But Eno himself has admitted there is a paradox to this music that creates a unique and formidable challenge for the artist. It has to be subtle enough to flutter in and out of your consciousness as you listen but never becomes sonic wallpaper to fill the room.
“Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular,” Eno wrote. “It must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”
One way this music works is because it capitalizes on how your consciousness works. We tend to think of music in terms of how we listen to songs we like – with our full and complete attention. But our consciousness is much more fractured and, more often, music is one aspect of the complete soundscape we behold. We only focus on it occasionally – when we hear a lyric or a chord we like – but, for the most part, it is only one element of our overall perceptions.
While traditional musical compositions are composed with the intent of being beheld at the forefront of one’s attention – like a performance – Eno’s Ambient works are not. They are, instead, intended to take advantage of an interesting philosophical concept that a buddy of mine calls “the theory of surprise (http://www.arizonaphilosophy.com/?p=72).”
Essentially it states that we typically divide things we perceive into rough category of what we are directly and indirectly aware of. Right now I am directly aware of my laptop but indirectly or peripherally aware of what is on the desk next to me. But when I look over and see… say, my cell phone, I am not surprised or shocked as if it has suddenly be introduced into my awareness. So I actually have been completely aware of it all along, although my sense of it has been peripherally.
This would seem to suggest that my intuitive division between my general consciousness and my overt self-consciousness might be incorrect. I actually perceive the world as a whole including my self-awareness of the perception. Eno’s ambient pieces are specifically designed to capitalize on this. They are musical landscapes or, more properly, soundtracks to landscapes, and beholding the whole is how they are intended to be listened to.
Ambient 1 paved the way for three more Ambient albums that explored the same musical hypothesis. These works are often in one key, lack any vestige of rhythm and use only the barest sonic effects. While the series’ best known pieces feature Budd’s minimalist piano work are best known, some utilize only organic sounds, others are layers of string instruments.
Another key theme to the series Eno would address more fully in later Ambient works – particularly Ambient 4: On Land. It is the attempt to create a sense of place using music. This idea actually has its genesis in earlier Eno works such as Discreet Musics and reaches it's triumphant apogee with the astounding Apollo - Atmospheres & Soundtracks (although The Pearl remains my favorite of all of Eno's Ambient works).
It is this element that makes Eno’s Ambient works something special. They have a special permanent resonance in the listener that only a few pieces of music can match. For me, even as I listen today they somehow hold the nostalgia of two decades I have journeyed through with them and yet they still they remain as musically fresh today as when I first heard Ambient 1.
This essay also appears on my website kleph.com (http://www.kleph.com/stuff/).
© 2006 C.J. Schexnayder