Did one of these at the old board a couple years ago, and I think it went rather well. Everything Eno is in play here, from his rock albums to his ambient work to his production assignments, side projects, so on. I don't know what's left to add to the discussion, having pretty much exhausted the Here Come the Warm Jets v. Another Green World debate, but given the current climate of this folder, it can't hurt to aim high.
Speaking of aiming high, the Ambient series. Modern ambient music, if we're not all up to speed on the legend, was "invented" or "discovered" or "whatever" when Brian Eno was hit by a car and couldn't turn down a low-playing radio across the room while laid up in bed. This revelation manifested itself in the brief musical sketches of Another Green World and Before and After Science, and eventually this four-part series, a much more serious commitment to the ambient concept than "The Big Ship" or "Through Hollow Lands." However, the series--along with prequel of sorts Discreet Music--is probably more seminal than it is great.
Ambient 1, a/k/a Music for Airports, has a very effective first track (it's weird to talk about music as being "effective," but the album was indeed purpose-built, intending to defuse tension at bustling airport terminals, and I know it did just that at LaGuardia for some time), with a series of treated piano loops that never quite line up the same way on the aptly titled "1/1." It already shows its age by the second track, which is marred with those terrible synth-vox pads that even sound like shit when they're on good equipment. Radiohead's "Exit Music" might be the only time this voice (as it were) has been used and didn't turn the song into a pile of shit. The synthesized choir is such a personal bugbear that the efficacy of the project is totally compromised. In fact, the genesis of this thread was my realization yesterday that more than ever, I'm listening to ambient music when I read, which on the surface sounds distracting--"how can anyone read with music on?"--but because of THE iPOD OF MY MIIIIIIND or whatever, I often need to drown out my own thoughts just so I can concentrate, and low-threshold ambient music does that for me. Otherwise I'll be fruitlessly hacking away at Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book, a book where you can't do anything but your best and most attentive reading, because I can't get "(Do You Know) The Muffin Man" out of my head. If "1/2" (that's Side 1/Track 2, not Half) had used something else to pad out the space other than bad New Age-y synth-vox, we'd at least have one good side here. "2/1" is exclusively synth-vox, and "2/2" is ambling sine waves that occasionally fall into pleasant major chords, and it makes for pleasant enough passive listening, even though active listening makes it sound like music from a circa-'81 PBS documentary about Jupiter. If you want to do a trial run on the whole ambient thing, just download "1/1" and see if it improves your concentration or productivity or whatever.
Ambient 2 is a collaboration between Eno and pianist Harold Budd. This is my clear-cut favorite of the series, which, along with my top-ten-albums-ever love for Another Green World, sort of belies my interest in the whole ambient concept: both aforementioned albums being consciously melodic and memorable rather than just background noise would seem to paradoxically indicate that ambient is best when it isn't. Indeed, this has more in common with Erik Satie than Brian Eno, consisting of quasi-impressionistic piano pieces fed through and supplemented with Eno's rack of synthesizers. (Speaking of Satie, pick up Pascal Rogé's compilation After the Rain if you're at all interested in having breathtaking music around you. Happened upon "Gymnopedie No. 1" in The Royal Tenenbaums and dove into impressionism from there.) Despite/because of the fact that these compositions are music and not merely sound, I find them to be the most effective of the four for relaxation/concentration purposes.
Ambient 3 features a synth-treated dulcimer. It's cool for about 90 seconds before you realize nothing is going to happen except the living shit getting annoyed right out of you. Never get this.
Ambient 4, a/k/a On Land, is a combination of drones and field recordings, and probably represents Eno's most uncompromised success with this whole thing. Because it's just SO dark, though, I think it makes a better sleep aid than reading aid, and since sleep is something I struggle with as well, I can say this one Works. Like #2, it also makes for fairly compelling active listening if you so choose.
Thanks to artists like Stars of the Lid, Fennesz, Jasper TX, BJ Nilsen, Gavin Bryars, Max Richter, Our Sleepless Forest, et al, I've found lots of ambient music which I like quite a bit, but the namesake of the whole genre, qualitatively speaking, might not necessarily be its biggest accomplishment. I'd say about 113 out of 181 minutes are successful, which is admittedly a really warped way to assess the quality of music, but after all, we're talking about a decidedly utilitarian form of art here.
One last note on Eno for now (or at all, if nobody elects to contribute): here are his Oblique Strategies cards, which I want to say he used with a few of the acts he produced when sessions would reach a creative impasse. They're mildly fun when you're at similar loggerheads. I clicked it now and got "Emphasize differences."
Speaking of aiming high, the Ambient series. Modern ambient music, if we're not all up to speed on the legend, was "invented" or "discovered" or "whatever" when Brian Eno was hit by a car and couldn't turn down a low-playing radio across the room while laid up in bed. This revelation manifested itself in the brief musical sketches of Another Green World and Before and After Science, and eventually this four-part series, a much more serious commitment to the ambient concept than "The Big Ship" or "Through Hollow Lands." However, the series--along with prequel of sorts Discreet Music--is probably more seminal than it is great.
Ambient 1, a/k/a Music for Airports, has a very effective first track (it's weird to talk about music as being "effective," but the album was indeed purpose-built, intending to defuse tension at bustling airport terminals, and I know it did just that at LaGuardia for some time), with a series of treated piano loops that never quite line up the same way on the aptly titled "1/1." It already shows its age by the second track, which is marred with those terrible synth-vox pads that even sound like shit when they're on good equipment. Radiohead's "Exit Music" might be the only time this voice (as it were) has been used and didn't turn the song into a pile of shit. The synthesized choir is such a personal bugbear that the efficacy of the project is totally compromised. In fact, the genesis of this thread was my realization yesterday that more than ever, I'm listening to ambient music when I read, which on the surface sounds distracting--"how can anyone read with music on?"--but because of THE iPOD OF MY MIIIIIIND or whatever, I often need to drown out my own thoughts just so I can concentrate, and low-threshold ambient music does that for me. Otherwise I'll be fruitlessly hacking away at Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book, a book where you can't do anything but your best and most attentive reading, because I can't get "(Do You Know) The Muffin Man" out of my head. If "1/2" (that's Side 1/Track 2, not Half) had used something else to pad out the space other than bad New Age-y synth-vox, we'd at least have one good side here. "2/1" is exclusively synth-vox, and "2/2" is ambling sine waves that occasionally fall into pleasant major chords, and it makes for pleasant enough passive listening, even though active listening makes it sound like music from a circa-'81 PBS documentary about Jupiter. If you want to do a trial run on the whole ambient thing, just download "1/1" and see if it improves your concentration or productivity or whatever.
Ambient 2 is a collaboration between Eno and pianist Harold Budd. This is my clear-cut favorite of the series, which, along with my top-ten-albums-ever love for Another Green World, sort of belies my interest in the whole ambient concept: both aforementioned albums being consciously melodic and memorable rather than just background noise would seem to paradoxically indicate that ambient is best when it isn't. Indeed, this has more in common with Erik Satie than Brian Eno, consisting of quasi-impressionistic piano pieces fed through and supplemented with Eno's rack of synthesizers. (Speaking of Satie, pick up Pascal Rogé's compilation After the Rain if you're at all interested in having breathtaking music around you. Happened upon "Gymnopedie No. 1" in The Royal Tenenbaums and dove into impressionism from there.) Despite/because of the fact that these compositions are music and not merely sound, I find them to be the most effective of the four for relaxation/concentration purposes.
Ambient 3 features a synth-treated dulcimer. It's cool for about 90 seconds before you realize nothing is going to happen except the living shit getting annoyed right out of you. Never get this.
Ambient 4, a/k/a On Land, is a combination of drones and field recordings, and probably represents Eno's most uncompromised success with this whole thing. Because it's just SO dark, though, I think it makes a better sleep aid than reading aid, and since sleep is something I struggle with as well, I can say this one Works. Like #2, it also makes for fairly compelling active listening if you so choose.
Thanks to artists like Stars of the Lid, Fennesz, Jasper TX, BJ Nilsen, Gavin Bryars, Max Richter, Our Sleepless Forest, et al, I've found lots of ambient music which I like quite a bit, but the namesake of the whole genre, qualitatively speaking, might not necessarily be its biggest accomplishment. I'd say about 113 out of 181 minutes are successful, which is admittedly a really warped way to assess the quality of music, but after all, we're talking about a decidedly utilitarian form of art here.
One last note on Eno for now (or at all, if nobody elects to contribute): here are his Oblique Strategies cards, which I want to say he used with a few of the acts he produced when sessions would reach a creative impasse. They're mildly fun when you're at similar loggerheads. I clicked it now and got "Emphasize differences."
