Ambient 1: Music For Airports
by Brian Eno

From ForegroundNoise 12/15/2018 09:26 | #227169 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

I remember reading BEA user JulianR’s comment on My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless “never has an album been so synonymous with a genre, yet so unique within it”, but my mind, however, leapt immediately to this one. So iconic was its release that the entire labelling of the ambient genre followed its precedent. No other record wears its ethos so proudly on its sleeve (in this case quite literally) than this one.

Its simplicity is often what leaves Ambient 1 so overlooked and overcriticized; yes, the album is sparse, but this is exactly where its impact lies; there’s no worth in comparing it to the complexity of jazz or prog since the entire manifesto of ambient is to do more with less. With tracks 1/1 and 2/1 being piano and vocal driven respectively, the third track combines the two elements to create a stunning harmony between the classical piano keys and the synth-laden vocals. The effect is transfixing and heartwrenching all at once; there seems to be a tragedy unfolding slowly before your eyes, but the lack of any lyrics leaves the nature of this tragedy just out of reach.

Eno’s urge to move towards ambient music came as a result of a car accident, after which he was confined to his bed for a considerable time. A friend of his on their way out the door offered to put a record on, however Eno realised after she had left that the volume was far too low and moreover, the sound of the rain which had started to fall all but drowned out the music. This was his eureka moment, and both these elements are here if you look for them. Ambient 1 is the faintest remnant of the melody and the pounding cacophony of the rain.

Most of this is copied from the description of the album in my overall chart, do check it out if you have the time!!

From Mercury TOP 100 COMMENTER 11/09/2013 18:58 | #91477 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

This album is to me one of the most purely aesthetic and peaceful albums I've ever heard. At first I loved it, it was even on my chart awhile back. But I took it off and moved on. But I have found myself coming back to this album. It feels like a musical interpretation of the most basic, simple peace a spiritual entity can feel and long for. The first track feels like total tranquility, like the waters on a clear blue day, like a realization of love and unity. The second track feels like beauty in spite of rocky surroundings, like determination, it feels like the greatest reassurance of your own power. The 3rd track is like a mix, musically, of the first two - with the soft keys of track 1 and the rising and swooping synths of track 2. It's also beautiful, in the extreme. And track four closes it with some gorgeous, echoey piano and synth parts that just bare your soul and make you feel as fresh as a newborn baby.
Really love this album!

We're still pretending this is music? None of the songs even have a chorus... in fact they have nothing hahaha! Ahhhhh, I'm just kidding... you carry on listening.

Indirectly descriptive of the environment from which it takes its cue, and blurring the traditional roles of composer and listener, Eno's ambient music is a groundbreaking reconfiguration of the background 'muzak' of the 1950s. This album represents a radical departure for Eno. Here he rejects rhythm altogether at the expense of transcendental patterns of piano and choir. The effect is one of a combination of esctasy and melancholy as if having drifted slowly on an astral flight through the galaxy to an intersection where memory and infinity meet. Each mood piece consist of methodical and repeated pulses stretched out as if looped to create mystical and esctatic electronic mantras. With 'Music For Airports', Eno reaffirmed his genius.

From Mother Nature's Son TOP 100 COMMENTER 07/31/2012 00:23 | #47491 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

It's not one of those albums you can turn back to again and again, but on the first listening it's amazing. I'm not sure I have ever listened to an album that was so great the first time!