Was just listening to the AMBIENT 1: Music For Airports LP. I remember as teenage when it was played on radio as specific origin of the genre name, I thought what a load of shit. I had already used to idea of texturally rich, yet more abstract sound described as "ambient" and hearing such a... ehm.. muzak, seemed like very dull thing.
Anyways, later on with slightly more open mind, and perhaps when you actually read what Eno was thinking, I do think that many do perhaps lose up the original "ambient" concept of being background music:
These are the liner notes from the initial American release of Brian Eno's "Music for Airports / Ambient 1", PVC 7908 (AMB 001)QuoteAMBIENT MUSIC
The concept of music designed specifically as a background feature in the environment was pioneered by Muzak Inc. in the fifties, and has since come to be known generically by the term Muzak. The connotations that this term carries are those particularly associated with the kind of material that Muzak Inc. produces - familiar tunes arranged and orchestrated in a lightweight and derivative manner. Understandably, this has led most discerning listeners (and most composers) to dismiss entirely the concept of environmental music as an idea worthy of attention.
Over the past three years, I have become interested in the use of music as ambience, and have come to believe that it is possible to produce material that can be used thus without being in any way compromised. To create a distinction between my own experiments in this area and the products of the various purveyors of canned music, I have begun using the term Ambient Music.
An ambience is defined as an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint. My intention is to produce original pieces ostensibly (but not exclusively) for particular times and situations with a view to building up a small but versatile catalogue of environmental music suited to a wide variety of moods and atmospheres.
Whereas the extant canned music companies proceed from the basis of regularizing environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncracies, Ambient Music is intended to enhance these. Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to `brighten' the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms) Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.
Ambient Music must be able to accomodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.
BRIAN ENO
September 1978
When listening the Music For Airports, it sounds to me as if Eno didn't quite perfectly yet reach what he aimed, but it sounds indeed like muzak version of something. Maybe that is also thanks to being over 30 years old recording, so the synthetic choir keyboards and electronic piano producing slowly drifting melodies sounds just that way.
The whole topic was actually reminded to me by situation, that I actually was in airport recently, and they had installation there, where Eno style keyboard ambient mixed with sounds of water could be heard in entire hallway, and at some point some visual installation & images related to it. Not sure if that helps you in stress being one of the sweaty fuckers running to get the luggage and get the hell out of airport, but it did remind of the topic I just some days earlier opened about possibilities of noise and it's reach outside the devotees of genre.
Realistically, it's of course hard to even seriously discuss of noise being used as enviromental/ambient sound, but perhaps that is valid for pretty much most of the stuff what is called "ambient" nowadays. It simply isn't the material for background. And it requires very active listening, sometimes even in perfect surrounding of decent quality home stereo system.
So, my question is basically, is there any ambient now, where intentions and the results are somewhere near the Eno's manifest? Did ambient turn as opposite what it was "meant to be". From contributing & interacting with the sounds already existing in certain location, to create certain atmosphere into silence of your home or stereoheadphones?
