INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES
Q JANUARY 2019 - by Simon McEwen
BRIAN ENO: DISCREET MUSIC / MUSIC FOR FILMS / MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS / ON LAND
Polymath's pioneering ambient work remastered.
The idea behind ambient came to the ex-Roxy Music keyboardist while laid up in hospital listening to eighteenth-century harp music on low volume and the rainfall outside. Eno applied the same minimalist sound aesthetic to these four landmark "generative" compositions, from 1975-'82, utilising synths and tape delay to evoke what he calls a "waking calmness" in the listener. This is music as emollient - hypnotic and meditative, and, forty years on, still utterly original.
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