Old school and way cool. Some people don't like it, but they, of course, don't know what they're talking about. It's kind of like high brow muzak or a type of sonic decoration. But Mr. Brian Eno says it best:Whereas the extant canned music companies proceed from the basis of regularizing environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncracies, Ambient Music is intended to enhance these. Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to `brighten' the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms) Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.
Ambient Music must be able to accomodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.
BRIAN ENO September 1978
2 comments:
ANOTHER GREEN WORLD, from 1975, was my intro to Brian Eno around 1989, thanks to the entry on him from the old 1979 Marsh/Swenson first edition of the ROLLING STONE RECORD GUIDE. Here's my review of it from Amazon.com:
"IF THE 1970S WERE GREAT AFTER ALL..., June 4, 1999
...it was because of the release from the undercurrents of such musical beauties as Brian Eno's ANOTHER GREEN WORLD. Along with the work of such other radio-neglected mid-1970s artists as Television and Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Brian Eno's most accessible soundscape has found its way, gradually, irresistibly, into the 'desert island disc' space inside the souls of more discerning music lovers than almost any other album from that period. And if any single work demonstrates the perennial impossibility of rendering in mere words the quality and 'otherworldly' presence of music, it is this one. For all his celebrated work as producer for U2, The Talking Heads and others, and for all his later efforts in the 'ambient' music field, it is for ANOTHER GREEN WORLD that present and future listeners will honor his memory generations from now."
I have a friend who listens to all this ambient/downtempo/chill/trip hop/whatever music and much of it is pretty good. A lot of it reminds me of “Another Green World” and “Before and After Science”, LPs released in the 70s. Eno was just 20-30 years ahead of his time.
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