Ambient 1: Music for Airports

Ambient 1: Music for Airports
Studio album by Brian Eno
Released	1978
Recorded	London/Cologne, 1978
Genre	Ambient, Experimental, New Age, Easy listening
Length	48:32
Label	EG, Polydor, Virgin, GRT
Producer	Brian Eno
Brian Eno chronology
Before and After Science (1977) Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978) Music for Films (1978)

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Ambient 1: Music for Airports is an ambient album by Brian Eno released in 1978.

Overview

Music for Airports was the first of four albums released in Eno's "Ambient" series, a term which he coined 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 Another Green World, 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 diffuse the tense, anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal. Eno conceived this idea while being stuck at Cologne Bonn Airport in Germany in the mid-1970s. He had to spend several hours there and was extremely annoyed by the uninspired sound atmosphere.

It was installed at the Marine Air Terminal of New York’s LaGuardia Airport.^{[citation needed]}

The music

All tracks were composed by Eno except "1/1", which was composed by Eno, former Soft Machine drummer and vocalist 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 fade in and out in a complex, evolving pattern because of 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 intermingle 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" was performed with an ARP 2600 synthesizer

Track listing

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1.	"1/1" (Acoustic and electric piano; synthesizer.)	Brian Eno, Rhett Davies, Robert Wyatt	16:30
2.	"2/1" (Vocals; synthesizer.)	Eno	8:20
3.	"1/2" (Vocals; acoustic piano.)	Eno	11:30
4.	"2/2" (Synthesizer only. Lasts 9:38 in the "Working Backwards" box edition (1983) and on the CD.)	Eno	6:00

The track labeling is this 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.

The CD pressing adds thirty seconds of silence after every song, including one after "2/2" has completed.

The album's back cover features four abstract graphic notation images, one for each track.

Credits

• Synthesizer, piano, cover art, production — Brian Eno
• Vocals — Christa Fast, Christine Gomez, Inge Zeininger
• Acoustic piano — Robert Wyatt
• Engineering — Dave Hutchins ("2/1", "1/2"), Conny Plank ("2/2"), Rhett Davies ("1/1") and Eno
• Recording location:
  • Tracks 1-3 : London
  • Track 4 : Plank's Studio, Cologne

Release history

Country	Label	Cat. No.	Media	Release Date
US	Polydor	AMB 001	LP	1978
France	Polydor	2310 647	LP	1978
Canada	GRT	9167-9835	LP	1978
Italy	Polydor	2310 647	LP	1978
US	Editions EG	EGS 201	LP	1981
UK	Editions EG	EGED 17	LP	1983
UK	Editions EG, Virgin	EEGCD 17	CD	Aug 1990
US	Editions EG	EEGCD 17	CD	Aug 1990
UK	Virgin Records	ENOCD 6, 7243 8 66495 2 2	CD	2004

Usage

• "Mistaken Memories of Mediaeval Manhattan" is a 1981, 47-minute ambient video created by Eno which uses music from both the albums On Land (cat # HEN 2134) and this album.IMDB link This title was later repackaged with his Thursday Afternoon video as "14 Video Paintings", RykoDisc, (HNDVD 1508). Ryko link
• 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 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.
• "1/1" is frequently used as background music on the U.S. public radio program This American Life.
• "1/1" features prominently in the opening scene of the 2009 motion picture The Lovely Bones.

See also

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

References

• Weisbard, Eric; Craig Marks (1995). Spin Alternative Record Guide. Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-75574-8. 

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