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Ambient 1/Music For Airports

Brian Eno

1978

Buy At Rough Trade
Ambient 1/Music For Airports
Album Summary

Ambient 1: Music for Airports is the sixth studio album by English musician Brian Eno, released in 1978 by Polydor Records. It is the first of Eno's albums released under the label "ambient music", a term which he coined to describe music "as ignorable as it is interesting" and capable of "induc[ing] calm and a space to think". While not Eno's earliest entry in the style, it is credited with establishing the term. The album consists of four compositions created by layering tape loops of differing lengths, and was designed to be continuously looped as a sound installation, with the intent of defusing the tense, anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal. Eno defined his approach in opposition to "canned" Muzak and easy listening practices. The album was the first of four albums released in Eno's Ambient series, which concluded with 1981's Ambient 4: On Land. In 2004, Rolling Stone credited the album with defining the ambient genre. In 2016, Pitchfork ranked it the greatest ambient album of all-time.

Wikipedia

Rating

3.06

Votes

12141

Genres

  • Pop
  • Electronica

Reviews

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May 18 2021
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1

This is music. But it's background music. It's not meant to be listened to. (By Eno's own admission. It was literally written with the thought of having looping background music in airports and other similar spaces.) So it's inclusion on 1001 albums you've gotta hear really frustrates me. Since Eno pioneered ambient music with this album, thousands of other similar pieces of music have been made to serve as background music or meditation soundtracks. What makes this example special other than it being the first? It's not that I have a problem with this music (though I wouldn't choose to listen to it), but I have a bone to pick with its inclusion on this list.

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Mar 10 2022
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5

This is the album that transformed ambient music from a concept that some artists used to toy with to a de facto music genre. Brian Eno's sensible minimalistic approach in those four compositions became a roadmap for ambient records in the late 1970s and it's still very much referentiated to this day. The piano improvisations stitched together, the vocal loops and the beautifully crafted synth sounds all come together to create an album that grows inside you like a very powerful feeling and leaves you calm, but also pensative. As a electronic music record, it also explored that dicotomy of a human-machine relationship, evoking the uniqueness of giant flying metal machines mixed with small helpless humans on the go. Altought the attempt to remove the tension of an airport terminal through music didn't really work on a practical level at the time, when it was used as an art instalation, airports enviroments changed a lot in the last 25 years and I'm curious to see how it would work like that again after all this time and in this world we currently live in. Nonetheless, it's a masterpice, an album that goes straight to the heart.

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May 19 2021
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5

Awesomely beautiful. (And provided for a great bike ride.)

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May 17 2021
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3

if Buddha found a synthesizer while ego tripping in a small town Midwestern Episcopal church

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Apr 27 2021
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5

I have this one on quite frequently whilst I work - on that basis, it's absolutely the perfect accompaniment to some gentle cogitating. The title gives it away, even if Eno was being semi-ironic - it's functional music. And on that basis, a triumph

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Mar 11 2021
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5

Yes please. So very pleasant and I believe wholly met Eno's goal of creating music equally interesting and ignorable.

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Mar 31 2022
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2

Music for (empty) elevators, deaf people, morgues, and trees falling in the woods when nobody can hear them.

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Mar 29 2021
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5

Okay, I’m not going to lie, I actually really love this. It’s so calming and relaxing. Daughter liked it, too.

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Apr 23 2021
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5

I've always had a soft spot for this album.

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Apr 19 2021
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4

Don't really know what to say about this except that it does exactly what it tells you it's going to do and it does it very well. Great studying music and very relaxing

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May 02 2024
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2

I could yoga so hard to this album. And outside of that environment, I’m not likely to listen to it again.

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Mar 21 2022
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5

Maan... lyssnade på denna medan jag gick ut och promenerade med katten och det mesta i livet kändes ganska kristallklart... banger

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Aug 03 2021
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5

Starts out as music for airports, becomes music for spaceships. Brian Eno, and more specifically his ambient albums, were a great comfort for me during a lot of recent stressful times in my life. Just to have something nice on in the background while working through some stuff. Just perfect.

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Aug 03 2021
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5

Music for airports got me through a lot of grad school coding projects and has served me well when I’ve needed to call on it since. Good stuff, aptly named. I Stan Eno

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Nov 26 2023
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5

Already one of my favorite ambient albums. Really a genre defining album, and still very good at what it was designed to do.

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Nov 29 2023
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4

I listen to ambient almost everyday. So when I Review this differently than other albums. It's not about how catchy or how well it is composed it is, it's about the feeling you get from listening. I personally feel the tranquility of standing at an empty airport. The juxtaposition of imagining a usually busy place being empty often gives me an odd sense of calm. I understand why people don't enjoy it or don't know how to review an album that have very little change, it can seem boring and repetitive but that is kind of the point. I can feel how influential this album been in the development of ambient but i am skeptical on having it on this list. Still a pleasant experience.

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Dec 06 2023
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4

4.5 stars. Beautiful, calming ambient music. Pretty impressive that this album was sorta the first of it's kind when it comes to this genre. Works equally well as background music while focusing on something else, or as interesting standalone art on it's own.

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Oct 27 2020
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3

Ambient music is not my jam. I always prefer something with energy and drive. I expected this album to be a complete waste of my time. But... somehow... it's not. It's totally ignorable but also not offensively bland. It DOES have layers of interest. The engineering on this album is absolutely top-notch. Way beyond its time. I was actually kinda into the first track. The second track, however, completely lost me with its constantly ebbing and flowing generic human voices. It was creepy AF, to be honest. The third track redeems those vocals by using them as texture to a primarily piano-focused track. But it's only the first and fourth tracks that are listenable, in my opinion. It gets more stars than I anticipated giving it but it's still not a great listen overall.

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May 03 2024
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3

The best background music. Does exactly what it says on the packaging

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Apr 27 2021
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2

I don't know. I'm not hearing a single. I'm not sure what this album wants from me, except for me to let it play on in the background. And on that note, it works perfectly. It is, absolutely, ambient.

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Jan 06 2021
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5

As far as music for work - this is best album ever made.

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Mar 21 2024
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4

Music for Zen! Delicate notes, I enjoyed everything about this album. And now it's on my Lounge folder 4/5

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Apr 07 2024
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4

What an odd thing...setting out to make music that's intentionally unremarkable and inventing a new genre in the process. The synth voice was probably pretty novel for the time, but I prefer the piano-based track. It has its place and could be a repeat listen. 4.0

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Oct 06 2024
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4

Brian Eno was easily one of the most important people in music history. Not only was he at the forefront of Art Rock, Experimental Sound Design and even Drone but he also invented the actual genre of Ambient. This album was purely created because he was annoyed with the Airport music and *boom* Ambient!!! The album kickstarted a new way of approaching and looking at music and even though better Ambient albums have been created (even by Eno himself), the album is still packed with great ideas and beautiful moments as well as a Blueprint of any following Ambient projects. The album is made up of 4 tracks all titled after the number of the song and the number of the vinyl side. So, '1/1' starts the album with some great moments right off the bat. It combines Modern Classical Minimalism (which artists like Steve Reich were at the forefront of) and New Age and even Impressionism. Meaning that right at the start, the Ambient genre shows what it tries to give you: peaceful and even meditative melodies that are easy to listen too and put one into a state that is both soothing and ethereal. The track is mainly made up of simple and lovely Piano sounds as well as some synths. There isn't much more than a total of three instruments on the entire track. It is incredibly simple but it knows that and it doesn't push itself further than that. I guess that it's hard to really give a "score" or anything to a track like this because either it works for you at this moment or it doesn't but I personally love this track. Brian Eno was and is one of my biggest inspirations and a track like this just emphasizes that less can be more. The track does exactly what it wants to do and I am hypnotised by what it does: This is a perfect track. '2/1' keeps things going by adding a lot of Choral A Cappella from four vocalists including Eno himself and using that as an Ambient instrument by playing it from a tape in different ways. It does sound like it's just a few parts of a church Choral and I do like that sound on its own but this track repeats and all of that and often breaks the little bit of flow that it had. The only thing that I really enjoy here are the synths but to be honest they aren't really so prominent that it takes the fact away that the vocals are simply annoying after a while which is the least thing Ambient tries to do. It does get incredibly frustrating because it feels like the exact same thing over and over and over and yes, the first track also sounding like that but it did it better and not as obnoxious as this track. I am sorry but I genuinely think that this is a very, very unpleasent track and without a doubt one of Eno's worst songs ever put out on a major release. The second half of the album starts much better. '1/2' does feature very similar vocals but there is piano again and doesn't fully rely on the vocals. They are still very present but they are used much more sparingly and are broken up by the piano which often times does a much better job at keeping the track together than the synths did on '2/1'. I do think that after what happened on '2/1' that I am connected to these vocals a little more than I should be because they still feel a little bit annoying which does ruin the song a little bit for me. I think that it's still an incredible track but it's simply not perfect because of these vocals. The album is closed by '2/2' which is another complete change of sound because it goes much more into a genre that only later was put under the Ambient umbrella. It uses Electronic Space Ambient in the form of only synthesizers to create a similar Ambient atmosphere. It does still fall under the "normal" Ambient genre because it does set itself apart from other Space Ambient tracks and mostly the Progressive Electronic aspect but it does utilise a lot of the sounds that it first made popular. The track sounds like a dreamy sci-fi movie about astronouts and I absolutely love it. While I do think that '1/1' is overall better, this is still a perfect Ambient track and has some of the best moments on the album as well as closing it perfectly. favourites: 1/1, 2/2 least favourites: 2/1 Rating: strong 7 to light 8 https://rateyourmusic.com/~Emil_ph for more ratings, reviews and takes

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Apr 20 2022
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3

The most ronseal of albums, this sounds like ambient music for airports. Not something to be actively listened to, but nice and relaxing. I wouldn't be unhappy if this was playing in an airport or a spa. 5/5 for achievement of artistic intent. 3/5 for my enjoyment of the output. Rating: 3/5 Playlist track: 2/1 Date listened: 19/04/22

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May 06 2024
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3

I felt less anxious while listening to this in an airport. But then suddenly became enraged as I was trapped in a dystopia.

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Aug 14 2024
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3

An interesting album to be featured on this list. This album offers almost nothing, but is a very peaceful listen. I don't think anyone would actually listen to this without doing some other activity concurrently. Since it has the element of deliberately naming it self background music, I think the album does an incredible job at that.

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Oct 07 2024
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3

The absolute finest music to fall asleep to, which is meant as a compliment. 1/1 in particular is the peak of the ambient genre and could last forever with no complaints from me

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Oct 07 2024
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3

The middle vocal loops are too New Age to me, while the opener and closer are gorgeous. Having got into ambient music through friends a couple of decades ago, coming to this for the first time is peculiar; I was expecting something even more abstract or perhaps sublime, and my initial thought was that this is almost too tuneful to be ambient. 1/1 and 2/2 earn the stars.

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Dec 22 2021
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2

You're better off taking some Xanax if you're that nervous about flying. Suitable album title, as it sounds what it's like to be stuck in an airport. But who the hell wants to spend time in an airport? I'm also guessing airports could get a better deal from Muzak than they could from Brian Eno. In the interest of full disclosure, I put this on once to put me to sleep, and I'm pleased to report that it worked in that regard. The only reason this album is getting bumped up a notch from a 1 rating is because I really needed sleep that night, so much so that Spotify kept playing a shitload of songs after this Airport Album ended. The following is an incomplete list of artists played after "Music For Airports" ended. I have to assume these artists are all approved by TSA, Airport Group International, and any other group associated with airports: • Galaxie 500 • Goldmund • Julianna Barwick • Scott Walker • Television (!) • John Cale • Library Tapes (go figure) • Harold Budd • Stereolab • The Fall • Boards of Canada (should have been called BORED In Canada, amiright?)

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Jan 28 2021
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1

Otra vez Brian Eno? Ideal para echarse una siesta, uf

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Apr 20 2021
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1

it's difficult to rate ambient music because I wouldn't vibe to this but maybe it would be nice for sleeping?? idk I've heard way better ambient sounds than this

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Apr 20 2021
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1

I wanted to like it because I've heard this album referenced before and I think it was kinda new or influential for it's time. Was painfully boring for me to listen to.

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Aug 31 2021
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1

It's not exactly BAD, but I'm still giving it one star because why in the hell is this part of the list? What's next - an album of elevator music?

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Nov 14 2021
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1

There’s a reason I wear headphones in airports. Absolute garbage.

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Aug 21 2024
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1

Ambient? I guess Ambivalent? Absolutely! A whole lot of nothing.

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Feb 25 2021
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5

Interessant, ein Ambience-Album zu hören

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Mar 30 2021
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5

Ein Hoch auf die Entspannung! Großartiges erstes Ambient Album

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May 18 2021
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5

I'm only two days in and this 1001 Album exercise has served its purpose. First though, the real job of a douchey music critic is to write reviews and say everything except how you really feel about something. But I'm going to shatter that and just say one word three times: "LOVE, LOVE, LOVE." I feel like we all have been listening to this album in our hearts since we were born, or at least since we hit puberty and experienced a wealth of emotion for the first time. I was two years old when this was released and this album plays as if it could've been released today. It's evocative, emotional, raw and unspoiled by the inter-workings of what a traditional album should be. I've heard this a million times since 1976, but this is the first time I've listened to Ambient 1/Music for Airports. This one pays dividends, I truly enjoyed it and is inspiration for me to find / listen / experience more Eno. Five stars for this album. Five stars for this exercise.

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Aug 22 2021
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5

Elektro Jazz synfonie. Groß und besonders

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Sep 09 2021
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5

Tranquil loveliness! I am a massive fan of ambient music, so gotta give props to the album that started it all... Fave track "1-1", I guess - not that it makes sense to break the album down into tracks...

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Sep 13 2021
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5

Do not listen to this album if you don't want to feel like you're in an airport

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Nov 01 2021
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5

Chill, relaxing, calm...yeah, this is meditation music and that is so nice sometimes.

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Nov 03 2021
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5

I love ambient, but I don't know what blocked me from Eno for that long time. Nevertheless - that is something I searched for. I think I will get to know with more music from the father of ambient. Short, 4-song-album, but outstanding.

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Nov 19 2021
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5

One of the defining releases in ambient music (one of my favorite genres). This album is beautiful and interesting, while also being able to fade completely into the background - exactly as Eno intended.

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Nov 25 2021
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5

First time listener, very interesting stuff.

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Dec 06 2021
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5

Hard to know how to rate this, as by design it’s not something to devote yourself to listening to. But by its own intentions, it’s a success.

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Dec 16 2021
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5

I don't know very much about ambient music. I got into it a while back. So this isn't my first time listening to it. I think it's the top-est of tiers as far as ambient music goes.

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Dec 29 2021
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5

Very cool album! Great atmospheric work.

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Jan 20 2022
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5

Juste envie d'aller prendre un avion.

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Feb 17 2022
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5

A beautiful, relaxing album. Paired with news of a family member passing today, this feels perhaps more somber and melancholy than intended. But I know that the memory tied to this will make this a comfort album for me regardless, and the music is just amazing. Great job, Mr. Eno. Favorite tracks: the whole thing, no favorites. Album art: It's a map, it's minimal, it's perfect. If it isn't, this should be ambient music's bible. 5/5

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Apr 20 2022
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5

Actually listened to this in an airport. Honestly so fitting and so damn good.

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Apr 28 2022
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5

I know that these days, so-called 'ambient music' is a huge genre, so even though I do like it sometimes, I thought this album might suffer from being one of the countless albums in this area. I listened to it twice this morning as I worked. It's beautiful, and when I read about how it was pretty much the first album in the genre, it's all the more impressive.

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May 13 2022
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5

Quietly beautiful. The more I learn about the experimentation behind its creation, the more amazing it becomes.

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Jun 02 2022
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5

Imagine a rainy day off work. It’s coming down decently hard but it’s early morning. So the rain is coming from above and the sun is streaming in the windows on your eastern side. Your cup of coffee is just at your elbow and you had a good night’s sleep. You can just kinda space out and watch the old dog dog at your feet breathe. Or you can read poetry from Lenore Kandel that fuddy-duddies were trying to ban for obscenity during the Summer of Love. Or you can try to figure some personal stuff out. Or you can rehearse your next argument with your politically awful relatives. And all the while, you can use the rain and the dog and the sunlight as anchors to the real world, or springboard for more abstract thought. This is kinda that.

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Jun 03 2022
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5

Really beautiful ambient music, I want to check out the rest of his Ambient Series I wouldn’t really call myself an ambient fan, like I don’t really go out of my way to listen to ambient music But I think it’s really nice to listen to and I appreciate it when I get it Overall, it’s just very lovely, 9/10

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Jul 10 2022
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5

Brian Eno is one of my favourites and so is this album. There are many no doubt who will be horrified by this and I enjoy reading their 'wtf?!' reviews but I'm happy it's found a place in the 1001. This is a cornerstone of ambient music and although I like Hendrix, Joy Division, Motorhead, Pet Shop boys and many more I also enjoy this and think if all music was the same life would be very dull. This is ambient.

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Oct 05 2022
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5

Dude's insufferable but also undeniable.

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Nov 13 2022
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5

Ambient 1/Music for Airports is exactly as breathtaking and innovative today as it was when it was first released. Time simply flies by as you lose yourself in both the ethereal music and your own mind. This is genius. Pure and simple.

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Nov 13 2022
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5

The record that defined ambient as a genre, Brian Eno created this in 1978 and today it still sounds like it came from the future. I could actually feel my cortisol levels dropping while listening to this. Relaxing, but never boring. Beautiful, but still challenging. The heavenly choir on '2/1' is something else. From the liner notes: "Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting". Eno fully succeeded in this - Music For Airports creates a space that allows you to alternate between being lost in the music and being lost in your own thoughts.

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Dec 11 2022
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5

Beautifully crafted ambient landscapes. Brian Eno will always get 4-5 stars from me.

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Dec 14 2022
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5

4.5 stars, rating 5 for Drew's sake

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Dec 30 2022
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5

The point Brian Eno was making with this album was that there should be a genre that could be played as background music, but that would still benefit from closer listening if the listener so chose. This first of his series of four Ambient titled albums is probably his most significant achievement in that genre. It is relaxing yet strikingly beautiful. Brian Eno struck the perfect balance to create something that did not create a demand on the listener while providing something substantial to the development of popular music.

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Jan 13 2023
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5

The ambition of many during the COVID lockdowns of 2020, that the extended free time and solitude would allow them to pursue hitherto neglected creative hankerings, oft proved overambitious. It turned out most lost themselves in chain-wanking and opening the first can of the day at 10am rather than nailing down chapter 14 of their epoch-shattering debut novel. Pointing this out is not to judge people; basically, most people aren't Brian Eno. In 1975, a taxi struck Brian Eno in New York, leaving him bedridden for several weeks. To ease his convalescence, his friend Judy Nylon brought him a record of harp music, leaving Eno alone when it began to play. But Eno found that the volume had been set very low, and that one of the stereo channels wasn't working anyway. He also found that he lacked the energy to change the setup, forcing him to listen to this hushed harp music mingle with the outside rain. Our Brian being a clever bugger, he realised that this accidental restraint meant that he was listening to music in quite an innovative manner, as a background texture rather than as a attention-demanding spectacle, as an ambient feature. Well, maybe "innovative" is a slightly generous adjective. The use of music as ambience may well be as old as music. Just think of the coffee shop pianist performing gentle, genteel trills to accompany the clientele's chatter. Those oddball good-eggs Erik Satie and John Cage wrote Dadaist pranks such as Satie's Vexations and Cage's 4'33" which inspired later ambient musicians. Satie's Vexations, a posthumously discovered work first performed by John Cage and a group of assistants, consists of a simple piano motif repeated 840 times: Cage and his chums didn't realise that such a performance would take 18 hours. Cage's own 4'33" is a three movement piece for any length of time and for any combination of instruments, the sole directive being that the musicians cannot touch their instruments. In other words, silence. Because of this, the John Cage Trust has claimed to hold the copyright on silence, and in 2002 sued Mike Batt (who wrote Art Garfunkel's Bright Eyes and was the mastermind behind the Wombles' music career) after Batt included a minute of silence on one of his albums and tried to claim joint songwriting credit with Cage for his silence (they settled out of court). These, and many others (American minimalists, Krautrockers, the raga ambassadors et al.) all pioneered the aesthetic which would become known as ambient, and that clever chap Eno definitely knew gulping portions of these. With these precedents, and his own incapacitated experience, our Brian codified ambient music as we understand it today, first revealing his formulation in 1975's Discreet Music, and cementing the name with his series of four Ambient albums, of which Music For Airports was the first. Our Brian has always been a nervous flier, finding airports generators for anxiety and disquiet. Hence, his goal of creating a musical backdrop which would seek to calm and mollify, not overwhelm and distract. I am not a nervous flier, indeed I relish flying, and the anxieties that fray me at airports concern tiredness and missing the flight, not fear of plummeting. That is, I find airports boring places, usually attended in some state of exhaustion, a purgatorial sentence before the heavenly delights of the heavens. Mind, I'm not listening to this in an airport, but rather on the sofa in pyjama shorts and with an enfeebled foot. Which I suppose is a convoluted way of saying that the listener need not heed the artist's intentions. One can treat this album as a wholly ambient experience, a sonic equivalent of a fireplace, an element to comfort oneself while one reads a biography of Harold Wilson, completes a crossword or writes a review of Ambient 1/Music for Airports. Yet our Brian was also clever enough to add a vital ingredient to Ambient 1/Music for Airports, without which the entire album would be a mere curio: he remembered to make it beautiful. One can just shut one's eyes and focus on the album, wallowing in the textures. The lack of direction becomes the central strength, allowing the listener to lose themselves without fear of missing some aspect. A still yet sensual pool of an album, and one that invites thought as well as serenity. Thoughtfulness is our Brian's hallmark, you know. Not everyone will embrace Ambient 1/Music for Airports. The meandering, the impassivity, the seventiesness of the record will bore and irritate many. This is no indictment on either them or Eno. What everyone should observe is that a preference is not a philosophy, and a fondness or distaste for ambient music is no more profound than a fondness or distaste for tomatoes. NoRadio, signing off.

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Jan 15 2023
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5

Groundbreaking music that your can't dance to, can't sing along with, can't rock out with? Love it. Eno uses his toys to make music that is texturally fascinating, layering fragments of melody to build a place of comfort.

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Feb 01 2023
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5

Med første spor 1/1 ønske rueg å starte hver morgen med tøy og bøy. Kult opplegg med albumkonseptet, det har vist meg en ny sjanger. Det blir mer ambient musikk fremover!

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Feb 01 2023
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5

Este es mi disco para viajar en avión. Según registro de mi last.fm lo he escuchado entero más de 23 veces. Si os parece mucho, el Ambient 2 tiene registradas un total de 67 escuchas completo. En general puedo entender que no guste, es solo música de fondo sin ritmo ni orden pero me encanta. Además por ser el album que fundó la música "ambient" debe estar aquí sin ninguna duda.

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Feb 08 2023
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5

Music for Airports - and generally quiet environments. I tried to listen to this in a busy cafe with loud, terrible music (KLAXXONS) in the background, and it kind of ruined the serenity. But it's definitely a great album, and a very influential one. I love the repetition of motifs and the way it builds up layers. Hypnotic.

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Mar 17 2023
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5

File under uneasy listening. As this album starts it seems ethereal and relaxing. It turns out it is hiding a dark secret where the noise below the sound grates and puts you on edge. Like an orchestra of nails down chalkboard. Amazing stuff really and responsible in many ways to a fair amount of technology and soundtrack work that followed

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Mar 22 2023
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5

Puts you in a calm, meditative, mood. Never tried it at an actual airport, funny enough.

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Mar 22 2023
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5

Ambient albums like this one miss that pop feeling so are not particularly exciting. Still, this is such a landmark album in the genre, it must be given 5 stars of course.

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May 19 2023
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5

Proposta ousada e perfeitamente executada. Som integrado ao espaço e em expansão.

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Jun 28 2023
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5

Weirdly enough, I got this album exactly one week after Another Green World, but given my enjoyment of that album (and Before And After Science), getting a third from him so quickly is a welcome surprise. Besides, this is a far different album from those two, leaning in completely on ambient music; in fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the only ambient album on the entire list (I know Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is on here, but that’s really more of an IDM album with ambient influences. Anyway, as ambient music, this is really just meditative, calming music, and I love that. The first song of the four in particular is nice, with the piano playing being something that brings it all together. Honestly, what more can I say? Anyone interested in ambient music should listen to this album.

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Jul 12 2023
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5

Thanks to Brian for making this and thanks to this project and Wikipedia for teaching me about the origin of Ambient Music.

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Aug 11 2023
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5

need more composers so invested in being so hella specific. ambient my good friend ambient.

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Aug 15 2023
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5

An album that has a gentle touch running throughout. It achieves that rare feat of passing you by, yet still being memorable. It also sounds modern, yet also analogue. Bloody love it.

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Aug 16 2023
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5

August 15, 2023 500TH ALBUM 🎵 Honk if you love the Joshua Tree 📯 Honk if you love the Spore soundtrack 📯 and the Minecraft soundtrack 🎺 and the Hyrule Field theme in BOTW 🎺 And looking up liminal space pictures at 3am 🎺 🎺 By my logic, this is an album that should be boring (no sense of progression, no percussion, not one single trombone) and is instead a haunting & beguiling experience for me. Though this is the 1st time I’ve actually listened thru the whole thing, I already have some regret at not seeing a live performance in my hometown earlier this year. It's a fitting album for #500, not only are its liminal qualities perfect for a pseudo-halfway checkpoint (I've heard about 40 more records that I haven't logged on this website, which is closer to the real halfway point), but I also feel like I'm dancing a liminal limbo in my actual life, while relationships, my job, and creative prospects all feel like they're on the precipice of change. HL: “1/2, “2/2” And now to celebrate this milestone, some albums that I feel I didn't appreciate enough the 1st time: Nas- Illmatic (no. 17) : listened when my rap vocabulary was very limited. one of the best hip-hop albums I've heard Lauryn Hill- The Miseducation of... (no. 18) : there's a few albums I didn't actually properly listen to- distractions, questionable speakers at times. Guess that's why I mostly ignored this triumph in gospel/soul/reggae/rap fusion Magazine- Real Life (no. 58) : a crossroads of post-punk, prog & glam that sounds better every listen Dinosaur Jr.- You're Living all Over Me (no. 93) : didn't really like this much on the first listen, but noise rock has grown on me and so has this Prefab Sprout- Steve McQueen (no. 120) : still not crazy about 80s sophistipop, but this might be the best example I've heard of it, or 2nd to Songs From the Big Chair Bowie- Blackstar (no. 127) : easy 5-star, felt wrong as soon as I gave it 4 The Pixies- Surfer Rosa (no. 130) : same reasons as Dino Jr. Spiritualized- Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (no. 143) : been on my mind too much this year to just be a 4-star Thelonious Monk- Brilliant Corners (no. 200) : 2nd only to Head Hunters in jazz albums I've relistening to Justice- Cross (no. 230) : recent listen-thru was still a bit exhausting, but some tracks ("Stress", "Phantom Pt II", "Let There Be Light") are excellent, and even "Tthhee Ppaarrttyy" sounded better on relisten

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Sep 10 2023
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5

Against the backdrop of an industry that's always chasing music that's faster, louder, and harder, sometimes you need to go quiet instead. Here Eno coined the term 'ambient music' and effectively launched a genre that's (in his words) "as ignorable as it is interesting". By eschewing rhythm and predictable patterns, the sounds can surprise and intrigue the listener, just enough to shut out anxious thoughts, while remaining quiet and calm enough to prevent new ones. The music is perfect for study, self reflection, or sleep. It's also a welcome change of pace when other music starts to all sound the same. A calm-inducing, and secretly chaotic, palate cleanser. In the words of John Lysaker, "it holds together no better (and no worse) than a cloud."

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Sep 28 2023
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5

it’s THE ambient album for a reason. truly amazing soundscapes, and i really love the movement each piece has. put this on while i was working and just vibed, great album.

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Sep 28 2023
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5

This has always been one of my favorite albums of all time. The beauty packed into such brevity is unparalleled. And to think this is start of the genre, no exemplar to follow—outstanding.

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Oct 13 2023
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5

I'm sure everyone has an album on this list that speaks to them in a way that just doesn't seem to happen for many people. This is one of those albums for me. It's so simple, just the same soft themes repeating over and over again. A little piano, a little synthesizer, and little bits of silence. And yet, I love this album and listen to it with some regularity. This album is incredibly influential as well. It showed many musicians that they could do more by doing less. I love Brian Eno, and I love this album 5/5

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Oct 25 2023
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5

The most soothing album there is, I love it. From the first few piano notes on the first track it announces what it is: spare melodies, vibrating textures, slow, calming waves of tranquil sound and gentle dissonance that resolves quickly into the settled swelling of ethereal synths. Tune in or zone out, pay attention or let it course through you, it's reassuringly there, rising and falling like the sky breathing.

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Oct 29 2023
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5

I listen to this kind of fall asleep music all the time, and it is amazing how little it has evolved in 50 years, Eno nailed it the first time

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