Brian Eno – Ambient 1

Brian’s pioneering Ambient album from 1978. Music for Airports is so delicate, lovely, and aesthetically moving that it has been known to give rise to sensations of flying, being enfolded in warm blankets, or watching a vision take place in the heavens.

If this sounds like an overstatement, you haven’t heard the album. A four-part “piece” performed entirely on synthesizer and piano, Eno’s composition finds a referent more in abstract painting (one visualizes bold blocks of color in warm hues) than in any musical genre.

Resonant synthesizer notes resembling bells or voices are interwoven with bits of melody, overlapping each other, and fading in and out of an architectural silence. Essentially, it’s the kind of music one might hear in heaven, and Eno manages to present it without the pretense or cheese that typify most of what later became ‘new age’ music.

Music for Airports stands against the prejudices of even the staunchest ambient music critics, partly because Eno did it first, but mostly because this disc is genuine, pure, and achingly beautiful.