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Ambient 1: Music For Airports
Studio album by Brian Eno
Released	1978
Recorded	London & Cologne, 1978
Genre	Electronic Music Ambient Experimental
Length	48:32
Label	EG , Polydor Virgin , GRT
Producer(s)	Brian Eno
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Pitchfork Media (92%) link PopMatters (Positive) link
Brian Eno chronology
Before and after Science (1977)	Music For Airports (1978)	Music For Films (1978)

Ambient 1 / Music for Airports (1978) is an Ambient music album by Brian Eno.

Contents 1 Overview 2 Track listing 3 The music 4 Credits 5 Versions 6 Miscellanea 7 See also 8 External links

This was the first of four albums released on Eno's own, then new, Ambient label to actually carry the name "ambient" - a term which he had created to differentiate his minimalistic approach to the album's material and "the products of the various purveyors of canned music".

Notice of similarly quiet, unobtrusive music had been given on albums such as Evening Star, Discreet Music, Music for Films and Harold Budd's The Pavilion of Dreams (which he produced), but in this album it was given precedence as a full-blown concept.

The music was designed to be continuously looped as a sound installation, with the intent to defuse the tense, anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal. It was installed at the Marine Air Terminal of New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

The track labelling is the way it is because of the album's first release (1978) as an LP, and so the first track means "first track, first side", and so on.

1. "1/1" : Acoustic & electric piano – 16:39
2. "2/1" : Vocals only. – 8:25
3. "1/2" : Vocals; acoustic piano. – 11:36
4. "2/2" : Synthesizer only. – 9:38

See Miscellanea for citations.
All tracks were composed by Eno except "1/1", which was composed by Eno, former Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt, and Rhett Davies.

Music for Airports employs the phasing of tape loops of different length in some tracks, where, for example, in "1/1", a single piano melody is repeated and at different times other instruments will segue in and out in a complex, evolving pattern due to the phenomenon of phasing: at some point these instrumental sounds will clump together, at some points, be spread apart.

Talking about the first piece, Eno has said "... I found this very short section of tape where two pianos, unbeknownst to each other, played melodic lines that interlocked in an interesting way. To make a piece of music out of it, I cut that part out, made a stereo loop on the 24-track, then I discovered I liked it best at half speed, so the instruments sounded very soft, and the whole movement was very slow".

The two tracks containing the wordless "aaaaah"-style vocals intermingles four tracks which loop back on themselves and constantly interact with each other in new ways. Subtle changes in timing occur, adding to the timbre of the pieces.

Eno explains of the vocal-only piece "One of the notes repeats every 23 seconds. It is, in fact, a long loop running around a series of tubular aluminum chairs in Conny Plank's studio. The next lowest loop repeats every 25 seconds or something like that. The third one every 29 seconds or something. What I mean is they all repeat in cycles that are called incommensurable — they are not likely to come back into sync again. Your experience of the piece, of course, is a moment in time, there. So as the piece progresses, what you hear are the various clusterings and configurations of these six basic elements. The basic elements in that particular piece never change. They stay the same. But the piece does appear to have quite a lot of variety".

2/2, the synth piece, was performed with an ARP 2600.

• Various instruments, cover art & production: Brian Eno
• Vocals : Christa Fast, Christine Gomez, Inge Zeininger
• Acoustic piano : Robert Wyatt
• Engineering : David Hutchins (2/1, 1/2), Conny Plank (2/2), Rhett Davies (1/1) and Eno
• Recording Location:
  • Tracks 1-3 : London
  • Track 4 : Plank's Studio, Cologne

Country	Label	Cat. No.	Media	Release Date
US	Editions EG	EGS 201	LP	1978
US	Polydor	AMB 001	LP	1978
France	Polydor	2310 647	LP	1978
Canada	GRT	9167-9835	LP	1978
Italy	Polydor	2310 647	LP	1978
US	Editions EG	EEGCD 17	CD	Aug 1990
UK	Virgin Records	ENOCD 6, 7243 8 66495 2 2	CD	2004

• Music from the album has been covered by:
  • Bang on a Can - Music For Airports Live, 1997, Point-Music (314 536 847-2) 1 , 2 , 3
  • Makyo - 2/1 (Night Flight Mix), on the double compilation CD Minimalism: More Or Less, 1998, Law & Auder (LA05CD) 4 , 5
• The back cover features four abstract graphic notation images, one for each track
• The first track is used in the PBS special "The Creation of the Universe" (IMDB link). Eno is the sole music credit, and he also wrote original music for the documentary
• "Mistaken Memories of Mediaeval Manhattan" is a 1981, 47-minute ambient video created by Eno which uses music from the album (cat # HEN 2134). IMDB link.
  Two time-lapse animated GIFS from the production - (133K) , (270K).
  This title was later repackaged with his Thursday Afternoon video as "14 Video Paintings", RykoDisc, (HNDVD 1508) Ryko link
• Part of the first track featured in the 1986 erotic drama 9½ Weeks
• In 2005, an extract was used in an advertisement for Orange

• Ambient 2/The Plateaux of Mirror
• Ambient 3/Day of Radiance
• Ambient 4/On Land
• Ambient music

• Liner notes of initial American release
• Interview, Artpress, Sep 2001
• Interview, Keyboard Wizards, Winter 1985
• Interview, Reality Hackers, Winter 1988
• Eno lecture, New Music New York, 1979
• The Wire, Stansted Airport BoaC performance, June 1998
• ProgArchives review