BRIAN ENO - 1/1 (Ambient I: Music For Airports)

(PS)

There is beauty in simplicity.

What can be said about Eno that hasn’t already been said? Glam Rock Icon turned Musical Chameleon, National Treasure, Inventor of the Skullet (possibly), Patriotic Millionaire and Godfather of Ambient.

In the mid-70s prog was becoming a parody of itself with its overly complicated, intricate noodling in 27/13 time. The yoof response to this public schoolboy frippery (which I’ll admit, I do have a sizeable soft spot for) was punk: pick up a guitar, learn 3 chords and write a two-and-a-half-minute song… and it was a hammer blow to the capes & keyboards merchants and their side-long epics.

Eno had a different approach though: strip away the clutter and take a step back, give the musical theme space and time to breathe, to imprint on the listeners’ brains; and while the impact was perhaps not as immediate as punk, its aftereffects were arguably far deeper and longer lasting.

In late 1975, Eno released three LPs back-to-back: Another Green World, Discreet Music and Evening Star, the latter a second collaboration with Robert Fripp after 1973’s (No Pussyfooting). The last two of these were significant steps away from Eno’s previous work, dispensing with the 3-minute song in favour of more expansive soundscapes with simple themes being repeated over extended, searching guitar and synth lines. To my ear, these sound very much in the same vein as works by Krautrock pioneers Tangerine Dream, Harmonia, Neu! & Cluster; perhaps not quite finding his own voice yet, but still interesting works worth exploring.

After a collaboration with Cluster in the Summer of 1977 and a brief (but unsatisfactory, IMHO) return to the 3-minute form with Before and After Science, we get the release of Ambient 1: Music for Airports; and this is where I think Eno’s hallmark sound is truly born. Here we still have the simplified form, extended pieces… but it’s even more stripped back than before. There’s more space between the music, more time for the themes to float and find a place to land softly before picking up again. Even between the 2 pieces on each side, there’s a substantial silence – a palate cleanser almost – to allow the listener to reset and return gently to square one.

In 1/1, I get Echoes of Erik Satie with the beautiful ostinato piano theme, written by Robert Wyatt; lilting, melodic, wistful, played on a seemingly endless loop. There are synths underneath this, but they feel like occasional supports or tethers, gently grounding or propping the melodic line up but only when necessary. It’s a wonderfully understated piece of music, and Eno’s Kandinsky-esque graphic score on the reverse of the LP sleeve gives a hint of what to expect: the measured repetition of simple, uncluttered musical ideas in a minimalist frame.

Eno’s own inner sleeve notes state that “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” and on those terms I’m not absolutely convinced he’s succeeded with 1/1, the principle feels more applicable to the previous ‘discreet’ releases. When I listen to this, I want to put everything to one side to devote all my attention to it, to be immersed by it as if in a hot bath, letting the glorious hits and decays of the notes fill the room and disperse through the keyholes and cracks in the doors. I feel as if allowing it to be ignored would be a terrible waste somehow.

Less is more.

(LK)

I first heard Ambient 1: Music for Airports when I was in college; picking up an album in what was an extensive music library because of the name attached to it, Brian Eno, settling down to listen to it with headphones on and then emerging forty minutes or so later not really sure what I had listened to, or whether what I remembered hearing is actually what I had experienced, because that is one of the inherent features and charms of ambient music.

Released in 1979, Ambient 1: Music for Airports is the album that is generally considered to be the album that created an entire genre of music, that being, somewhat obviously, Ambient Music; a genre that almost defies description, though when most people try it is through the idea of what it isn’t rather than what it is and there is good reason for this. Music is generally discussed in terms of rhythm and metre, of verse and chorus and in some cases even meaning, ambient music has none of these and quite deliberately so.

The story behind the creation of the album is that Eno was inspired by a wait of several hours at Köln airport, the banality of which was in counterpoint to the happy and pleasant music that was being pumped into the building. Eno, who was by his own admission, not the most confident of flyers, felt that this was trying to create a sense of forced happiness, something that could raise tension in people that were already in what he considered to be a stressful situation. He conceived the idea of a style of music that would simply exist, not asking anything of the people there and allowing them to be as involved as they wished to be.

The opening of 1/1, or track one side one, begins with the sound of individual piano notes being played, a beginning that would fit any piece of traditional classical music as a theme that might go on to be developed, but doesn’t, and that is almost the point. The phrase is repeatedly played over and over again, never developing or changing; but just as important in these repeating phrases is the negative space in musical terms, the silence that accentuates the notes and allows them, and the listener, the time to breathe. Nothing is forced here; there is time and space in the music to appreciate it and the space around oneself.

This piano phrase forms a through line to the piece, the element that allows the listener, if they so wish, to focus on what they are hearing as, slowly, the parts of the whole begin to build with the addition of the third element of the piece, the synthesizer, which works in counterpoint to the piano. Whereas each of the piano notes is distinct and separate and even the phrases themselves exist in a minor isolation, the synthesizer provides a sustained, elongated, almost drone-like effect in the music, reminiscent of Buddhist chants or Tuvan throat singing.

The combination of these elements, the distinct piano notes, the silence that defines them and the elongated synthesizer notes combine to create an aural space into which the listener can enter and indulge in an almost physical pleasure, or stand outside of and appreciate as a calming, almost spiritual, piece of music. The title is quite apt, though it could just as easily be titled music for sitting, though that is something one does a lot in airports, or music for cooking, as it is easy to imagine this music filling the cavernous buildings that are modern airports, existing as part of the background of noise and motion and yet there is also a genuine pleasure in just sitting back and letting this music wash over you as you contemplate the meaningless nature of the music and the universe.

(MS)

I’ve listened to it. I keep listening to it. In the bedroom. In the kitchen. Washing up. Traipsing up and down the river. In the background when I’m working. In the background when I’m thinking about working. In the background when I’m not thinking about working. In the background when I’m not thinking. Not thinking. Just existing. Just breathing. Just living and sensing that I am still alive. Forgetting that I am alive. I want to say something about it. I want to say how it moves me, how it changes my mood, how it stirs in me some emotion. Most recently I tried it out on an ordinary Thursday morning and I think it did.

I turned it on from my phone. YouTube. On the bed, lying still I let it drift about with my eyes closed. But it set off my tinnitus so I got under the covers to muffle it. Then I started thinking about Dobrochna and those long gone days. But I got up because that’s not healthy. Looking for my socks I found a lot of dust under the bed so started brushing it out with my paws. Then putting the dust pan down I picked up my jeans and straightened them out on the back of the chair. There was a big brown mark on the seat which I smelt then licked and found to be chocolate orange. In the lounge there was more on the settee and a discarded wrapper stuffed into a whisky glass. What was I watching? “The Satanic Rites of Dracula, yes”. I must have dropped it down myself as I was eating it. I had a shower and though I couldn’t really hear it from the bedroom, I knew it was still going on. Towel round my privates I nipped back into the bedroom and… yes it was still going on. “New undies today” I said. Fully dressed, I stood up, blew my nose and grabbed my wallet and keys. As I reached for the phone it stopped and went straight into an advert for a Black Friday deal.

10 minutes later I tried again and turned it back on from the start, this time through earbuds with bus trip visuals. Bit of a rotten film though. Miserable looking girls in big coats shuffling up the stairs into their seats. Pitch back street scene beyond, orange lights, tree branches crashing against the window like skeletal Nosferatu fingers. Like the piano in my ears. “Christopher Lee was always a good Dracula”, I mumbled. Bermondsey to London Bridge. Brightened a bit as we crawled through Borough. School kids trooped off and more workers got on. Then I focussed on my fellow passengers. No one looks at anyone in the eye these days. The isolation of our daily commute, it’s an intense time. And yet if we could see from the side, everybody is looking at everything and everybody. Blackfriars zoomed by. Stand up to get off. IMAX blocks the horizon at Waterloo when approaching from the East. On rushing bodies splashing over the pavements. If I could just see this scene from the side, I’d see that everyone is looking at me but skilfully so as not to be seen doing it. We’re all doing it. I’m looking at some people more than others, I must admit. Another bus over the river as I can’t walk over it. The music stopped at Aldwych… and another deal for Black Friday boomed out. That’s a problem with YouTube. It breaks such contemplative moods.

I’ve listened to it lots of times in lots of places but I’ve not listened to it in an airport. Maybe that’s it.