[HN Gopher] How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports ...
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How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)
Author : dijksterhuis
Score : 182 points
Date : 2025-12-02 07:46 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reverbmachine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reverbmachine.com)
| krylon wrote:
| I love this album. I often listen to it when programming, Ambient
| (or more generally: calm, instrumental music) helps me focus.
| ktallett wrote:
| All of his and his brother, Roger's albums are great for this
| reason. I would recommend Svaneborg Kardyb as well, who are a
| great instrumental band.
| gonzalohm wrote:
| Do you have any recommendations?
| badmonster wrote:
| Absolutely! For instrumental focus music, check out Nils
| Frahm or Max Richter. Do you prefer more electronic or
| acoustic sounds?
| averne_ wrote:
| Not OP but I also often to listen to ambient while
| programming. A couple recommendations would be "Music for
| Nine Post Cards" and other works by Hiroshi Yoshimura, and
| "Music for 18 musicians" and others by Steve Reich.
|
| In fact, the use of loops described in this article reminded
| me of what Reich called "phases", basically the same concept
| of emerging/shifting melodic patterns between different
| samples.
| jimlikeslimes wrote:
| For a good intro the Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast radio
| is well worth listening to. Also their write up on how and
| why they produce the broadcast is really interesting.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| Biosphere - Shenzhou and Cirque, Stars of the Lid - The Tired
| Sounds of The Stars of the Lid are favorites of mine. I would
| also include everything by Microstoria which is not ambient
| but it works to the same end.
| krylon wrote:
| Stars of the Lid are _sooooo_ good, yes! Their entire
| catalog is amazing.
| faidit wrote:
| Drone Zone on SomaFM (free internet radio) was how I
| discovered a lot of that stuff. Although they don't play the
| old classics as much these days, it's still good and they
| have a few similar stations there
| https://somafm.com/player24/station/dronezone
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I generally find Deep Space One more appropriate for most
| of my coding, though I used Drone Zone a lot many years
| ago.
|
| I've been supporting SomaFM for more than 20 years now, and
| am so grateful for it. Not just the ambient stuff, but
| Secret Agent and several others too.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Aphex Twin - _Selected Ambient Works {85-92,Volume II}_.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| music for programming podcast:
| https://musicforprogramming.net/latest/
|
| some of the artists below are not _strictly speaking_ ambient
| as in brian eno kind of ambient
|
| jogging house, r beny, biosphere, anthony childs (surgeon
| doing ambient), abul mogard, alessandro cortini, alva noto
| (glitchy ambient), benoit piouliard, bing & ruth, bvdub, mu
| tate, jake muir, ulla, log et3rnal, space afrika, heurco s,
| donato dozzy - plays bee mask, imaginary softwoods, jo
| johnson, koen holtkamp, mountains, kyle bobby dunn, oneohtrix
| point never, neel, pendant, romeo poirier, domenique dumont,
| ...
| tuzemec wrote:
| For me - Aes Dana (Season 5 is still my favorite) and Carbon
| Based Lifeforms (Hydroponic Garden, World of Sleepers,
| Interloper).
|
| Actually, check out the whole Ultimae catalogue:
| https://bandcamp.com/ultimae
| krylon wrote:
| Carbon Based Lifeforms are amazing.
| ErneX wrote:
| Their album World of Sleepers is my favourite from them.
| ilvez wrote:
| Sadly they peaked pre 2010 and then slowly became
| average.. Was huge fan on the days and saw them live once
| and DJ set another time..
| Fnoord wrote:
| I guess I agree (used to be a massive 90's EBM collector
| together with my ex, though I kind of got out of the loop
| of EBM end of 00's / start of 10's). Seeing a Woob album
| from 1994 recommended a few comments below <3 for CBL, I
| do like the track ~42 degrees.
|
| How we used to find music: go to the record store every
| week to listen to whatever you couldn't afford, look at
| P2P networks at people who like similar music as you, and
| browse their collections. Eventually, use Discogs to
| search. Or simply _talk_ with other people (at parties,
| on the internet) who also like the same music.
|
| How we can find music nowadays: Spotify (and such). I
| mean, seriously. Their suggestions can open you up to a
| plethora of new artists. If you then look at the top 10,
| chances are you'll like some of their work. I found a lot
| of music this way, for all kind of genres. As Valve's
| Gabe used to say: piracy is a service problem. Though I
| am not sure Spotify is so good for the artists, given
| they earn pennies via that.
|
| ..and it is still nowhere to getting and downloading and
| listening 24/7 to every new release (or, well... trying
| to), using SMB to the NAS (which automatically gets the
| releases from a scene FTP) and Winamp locally to add some
| .m3u files.
| krylon wrote:
| Sleep by Max Richter is great (and very long)
|
| Sunset Mission by Bohren & Der Club of Gore is very very
| sleepy Jazz (they have released more albums, but this one is
| my favorite by a wide margin)
|
| Long Ambients 1 & 2 by Moby - he was kind enough to make them
| available for download free of charge, too
|
| Under Wires and Search Lights by Marconi Union
|
| In A Silent Way by Miles Davis
|
| Pretty much anything by Sigur Ros. It's not strictly speaking
| instrumental, but the lyrics are Icelandic, which I don't
| speak, so it's close enough
|
| Cocteau Twins recorded many very ambient-ish albums. Not
| instrumental, but the "lyrics" are mostly glossolalia, so not
| distracting (at least for me).
| fragmede wrote:
| Here that is on spotify:
| https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3d3e49rSmge86cU4D4u8mn
| Towaway69 wrote:
| No particular order:
|
| Max Richter, John Cage, Tangerine Dreams, Klaus Schulze,
| Gavin Bryars, Richard Chartier, Asmus Tietchens, Tomaga,
| Boards of Canada, Stars of the Lid, William Basiniki,
| Joanna Brouk, Pauline Oliveros ...
|
| I do way too much coding...
| benrutter wrote:
| > Pauline Oliveros
|
| Yes yes yes! Finally someone who won't make fun of me for
| listening to Horse Singd from a Cloud.
|
| You should add Laurie Spiegel to your list, something
| tells me you'd enjoy.
| dackle wrote:
| "Deep Listening" by Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster and
| Panaiotis is also excellent:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U__lpPDTUS4
| Towaway69 wrote:
| > Laurie Spiegel
|
| Just listening to "Appalachian Grove I" - Nice, thanks
| for the tip :thumbsup:
| Duanemclemore wrote:
| Excellent recs.
|
| If anyone reading this like Bohren & Der Club of Gore, also
| check out Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble.
|
| And if you vibe with Sigurd Ros, check out Godspeed You!
| Black Emperor too.
| tuyiown wrote:
| I've not seen Global Communication mentioned, 76:14 really is
| masterpiece. (Gamers will recognize a tune featured on GTA
| IV)
| trq01758 wrote:
| Yeah, everything's interconnected as Tangerine Dream got to
| work on GTA V soundtrack. There is this note about that
| track on Wikipedia:
|
| The track "5:23" is included in the 2008 video game Grand
| Theft Auto IV and appears on the soundtrack album The Music
| of Grand Theft Auto IV. In the digital release it is listed
| as "Maiden Voyage". This track is very similar to, but does
| not credit, the song "Love on a Real Train" by Tangerine
| Dream from the Risky Business soundtrack. They had remixed
| the song for a then upcoming Tangerine Dream remix album
| but had their effort rejected so released it as 5'23
| instead.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| Here's a playlist list of long-form ambient drone stuff I've
| been curating for a couple years now:
|
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGMYnukvmgiXXFxuTKDvZfw-e.
| ..
|
| I listen to it while I work.
| lemonberry wrote:
| Aphex Twin's "Digeridoo" is incredible. It's a 4-song EP so
| it repeats often, but that's a feature for me.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| A good place for experimental music is ubu web, in fact Brian
| Eno is also over there[1].
|
| Edit:
|
| Also if you're a programmer and what to learn a new
| programming language, then check out SuperCollider[2]. You
| can use that to create your own ambient sounds. SC has a
| great library for creating user interfaces along with
| creating sound.
|
| [1]: https://ubu.com/film/eno_77_interview.html
|
| [2]: https://supercollider.github.io/
| ElectroSlayer wrote:
| There's also Strudel as a programmatic music composing app:
| https://strudel.cc/
| fragmede wrote:
| Which, Claude is better than ChatGPT at generating code
| for.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| My personal favourite for online is noisecraft, for
| example: https://noisecraft.app/1961
|
| now that is fun to watch :)
| Libidinalecon wrote:
| The best is the instrumentals on David Bowie's Low IMO.
|
| I know people love Music for Airports but I think it is
| incredibly boring compared to what Eno did with Bowie.
|
| Beyond that the first few albums by The Orb are top notch.
|
| Balam Acab - See Birds and Wander/Wonder are incredible.
| leokennis wrote:
| I have so many suggestions.
|
| But if I had to pick one: Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds
| of Start of the Lid
| ilvez wrote:
| Woob 1194 by Woob. Immersive, maybe darker than most would
| like, but deep and very graphical sound.
|
| https://woob.bandcamp.com/album/woob-1194
| matteason wrote:
| I have an 'Ambient Radio' channel on https://ambiph.one, my
| soundscape generator: https://ambiph.one/?m=1-Ambient+Radio-
| bf100
|
| There are some great less-well-known artists on there - if
| you tap the album art it'll link you to their Bandcamp if
| they have one
| ilvez wrote:
| If drone with later neoclassical touch then Marsen Jules has
| delivered very stable and top tier. Brilliant guy.
|
| https://marsenjules.bandcamp.com/
| louiereederson wrote:
| i have a 5hr playlist on spotify called lost in the sea of
| ambien which happens to have many of the artist recos here.
| title is a reference to haruomi hosono who said he got lost
| in the sea of ambient in the 80s after leaving ymo.
| goosejuice wrote:
| https://richardhoughten.bandcamp.com/music
|
| https://domeniquedumont.bandcamp.com/
|
| https://marylattimoreharpist.bandcamp.com/
|
| https://archive.org/details/Tipper-CosmAmbientSet
|
| https://williamtyler.bandcamp.com/
|
| None of these artists are strictly ambient though
| eej71 wrote:
| You might like Patrick O'Hearn.
| bradly wrote:
| A lot of great recs in this thread, but I'll a couple others
| I didn't see listed yet:
|
| Mort Garson: Mother Earth's Plantasia
|
| Hiroshi Yoshimura: Surround
|
| Satoshi Ashikawa: Still Way (Wave Notation 2)
|
| Shameless plug... Search BirdyMusic.com in Spotify/Apple
| Music/YouTube Music to hear some ambient music algo generated
| based on realtime Birdnet detections and weather in my
| backyard.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Hania Rani: Esja.
| doron wrote:
| For a more droned style - the works of Abul Mogard
| fallinditch wrote:
| I recommend Stair (2:22:22) by datassette for focus and
| ambient background. The artist recorded the sound of downtown
| Chicago overnight from his hotel and then processed and mixed
| this together with processed sounds from MS-DOS strategy game
| soundtracks from the 80s. Brilliant.
|
| https://datassette.bandcamp.com/track/stair-2-22-22
| hylaride wrote:
| Loscil - First Narrows album is great and was used in the
| game Osmos.
|
| Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing by Album,
| particularly the songs "passing by" and "knuddelmous"
|
| Kromattic "song "porcelain"
|
| Peardiver - song "hangout"
|
| lechiffrebeats - song Moonlight Garden
|
| Lori Travel - song "apple lamp"
|
| King of Woolworths - Song "Theydon"
|
| Aisake - song "autumn Leaves"
|
| Christopher Willits - song "wide"
|
| Northscape - song "approaching the trig point"
|
| Kiasmos - song "blurred"
|
| Celer - song "Diphenhydramine"
|
| Tony Anderson - song "Ariana"
|
| East Forest - Album "Music for Mushrooms: A soundtrack for
| the Psychedelic Practitioner"
|
| If you're on Apple Music, look for the shared playlist Lo-Fi
| Chill: https://music.apple.com/ca/playlist/lo-fi-
| chill/pl.1d5ead185...
| anjel wrote:
| The Dead Texan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zebxXliFtg
| jcynix wrote:
| I'll second Max Richter's Sleep. Timeline by Edith Progue
| might interest you too. The later is my favorite xcalm down"
| CD even before Max Richter's, when I'm too restless to sleep.
|
| And maybe Glitch (music) might be of interest as a starting
| point, especially the "Clicks & Cuts Series" which gave me a
| lot of pointers to interesting niche artists.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clicks_%26_Cuts_Series
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_%28music%29
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > I love this album. I often listen to it when programming
|
| Me too. Its been a coding zone favourite of mine for many
| years.
|
| The classical/instrumental version by _Bang on a Can_ [1] is
| good too.
|
| [1] https://www.discogs.com/release/1140705-Bang-On-A-Can-
| Brian-...
| soulofmischief wrote:
| This album helps me wake up, helps me go to sleep, helps me
| focus, and keeps me centered. Eno's works are so versatile.
|
| Another favorite is Eno's Discreet Music. Gives me chills every
| time. One of my favorite records to fly to.
| ktallett wrote:
| I am always vastly impressed by the beauty of instrumental
| albums, and just how memorable and easy listening they are. Eno
| is of course so high up the list, but as I have got older I have
| explored instrumental music, from classical to jazz far more and
| there is true beauty and artistry in conveying your message and
| making people feel with just instruments and no words.
| MultifokalHirn wrote:
| "Ambient 4: On Land" is for me one of the most beautiful and
| mystical Albums of all time
| pickledoyster wrote:
| I did not realize Eno could not read sheet music. I always
| thought he used graphical expressions in his presentations as an
| artistic choice.
| rckt wrote:
| Wow. I turned on the randomized tracks under the "Deconstructing
| 1/2" and it's beautiful.
| interleave wrote:
| Also a huge Eno fan here. Put together, I probably have listened
| to Music for Airports, Another Green World, Taking Tiger Mountain
| and Discreet Music more than any other artist. Maybe Philip Glass
| comes in at a close second.
|
| Anyways, in 2016, Tero Parviainen (@teropa) shared this really
| cool long-form exploration called "JavaScript Systems Music -
| Learning Web Audio by Recreating The Works of Steve Reich and
| Brian Eno" that I enjoyed tremendously (and I don't even like
| Javascript!)
|
| Check it out at: https://teropa.info/blog/2016/07/28/javascript-
| systems-music...
| bradly wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I've been on a path of algo music with
| JavaScript (I also do not enjoy JavaScript) and have mostly
| just guess-and-checked my way through it. I'm going to work
| through this as my advent of code project.
|
| Yesterday I put up a little dictionary of synth sounds that I'm
| building out to help me on my journey
| (https://synthrecipes.org). The goal to be able to export any
| particular sound in a format for different live coding
| environments. Sounds are defined in a JSON format like
| https://synthrecipes.org/recipes/acid-bass.json. I'll open
| source it today so other can submit sounds.
|
| --
|
| Edit: I've open sourced the repo so others can improve existing
| sounds and add new ones. https://github.com/bradly/synth-
| recipes/tree/main
| HansardExpert wrote:
| Did you know https://play.generative.fm/browse
| bradly wrote:
| I did not! Very cool. Thanks for sharing. Is there a way to
| see the source for the sounds?
| criddell wrote:
| That's really cool.
|
| Music is funny. I played the closed hi-hat sound
| (https://synthrecipes.org/#closed-hi-hat) a couple of times
| and my brain instantly started playing AC/DC's, Back in
| Black. I probably haven't listened to that song in 15 years
| and now I'm shuffling AC/DC on Spotify.
|
| Also, the "Sub bass" link might be broken:
|
| https://synthrecipes.org/#Sub-bass
| jacquesm wrote:
| Check out his work with Jon Hassel and if you feel like it
| 'Pearl'.
|
| Both are - in my opinion, of course - awesome. Though the Jon
| Hassel collaboration may take a while to grow on you.
| tomhow wrote:
| Previously:
|
| _How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33172448 - Oct 2022 (127
| comments)
| flobosg wrote:
| Related: "A 6-Hour Time-Stretched Version of Brian Eno's Music
| for Airports" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43520122
| zebproj wrote:
| I often use the general algorithm for 2/1 as my "hello world"
| when I'm building new generative music systems. You don't need
| too many ingredients to set it up, and it yields some
| surprisingly decent sounding results.
|
| The most recent one[0] I made was done when I was playing around
| with Rust, WASM, and WebAudio. (You'll need to press somewhere to
| start the sound)
|
| 0: https://pbat.ch/isorhythms/
| bradly wrote:
| Great sound!
|
| This Sonic Pi example really blew my mind when I first heard
| it. Such a rich sound out of three notes.
| use_synth :hollow with_fx :reverb, mix: 0.7 do
| live_loop :note1 do play choose([:D4,:E4]), attack:
| 6, release: 6 sleep 8 end
| live_loop :note2 do play choose([:Fs4,:G4]),
| attack: 4, release: 5 sleep 10 end
| live_loop :note3 do play choose([:A4, :Cs5]),
| attack: 5, release: 5 sleep 11 end
| end
| jacquesm wrote:
| Nice one! Really like the visualization, as a note starts
| expanding I try to predict what it will sound like.
| matt_daemon wrote:
| This is an insanely cool blog
| cons0le wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geL0UVnSfvQ
| jmclnx wrote:
| I like this type of music when working and other things, that
| does not get many mentions. And they play a decent amount of
| Brian Eno's stuff.
|
| http://www.echoesofbluemars.org/
|
| I think their bluemars stream is great.
| welcome_dragon wrote:
| Wow! I had no idea blue Mars was still around. I've been
| looking for an alternative to soma fm
| jmclnx wrote:
| When Blue Mars disappeared, echos appeared to play the same
| music :)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Conny Plank was a catalyst or genius (or both). He keeps showing
| up when I look into some of my favorite produced music. Besides
| Kraftwerk, I think the Ultravox! album, "Systems of a Romance",
| was the next time I saw his name. And then, more and more...
| Kreutzer wrote:
| >To dig deeper into this style of tape loop ambient music, check
| out William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops. William Basinski
| used a similar concept to Brian Eno, only the tapes he used
| rapidly deteriorated upon playback, causing the musical material
| to degrade over the length of the recording.
|
| I've never "bought" the story of Disintegration Loops that
| Basinski tells about its creation. The idea he composed it
| literally during the 9/11 attacks was just a silly attempt to add
| gravitas to abstract music. The more you think about it, the more
| off-putting it becomes. Reminds me of Stockhausen's stupendous
| remark about 9/11 being "the biggest work of art there has ever
| been".
|
| In the same vein, tape doesn't normally just deteriorate before
| your eyes. The gradual change in sound of the loops is more
| likely due to the guitar pedal chain he was running his loops
| into (Basinski tends to omit this part of its creation).
| jdee wrote:
| I went to see William Basinski 'live' in Liverpool at Yoko
| Ono's Tung Auditorium. William stood in front of his MacBook,
| waving his arms like a conductor and drinking red wine.
|
| Halfway through, he said he was tired with travelling and left
| the stage.
|
| The audience continued to sit there for another hour, staring
| at the lid of the MacBook that was making the music. When it
| finished, we applauded the MacBook and left.
|
| Quite surreal. Very enjoyable though.
| uslic001 wrote:
| One of my first ambient records I bought after I got into Music
| for Airports by Eno. Still one of my favorites. After those two
| I got into Stars for the Lid.
| asdhtjkujh wrote:
| Despite being categorically "non-narrative" music, the
| longevity of both records is almost entirely dependent on these
| narratives behind them. Ambient 2-4 are musically much more
| interesting, but the memetic quality of its origin story has
| given Ambient 1 (and the Basinski record) undue attention over
| time. Conceptually pure, yes! Sonically compelling, maybe. At
| least the Eno's approach was novel.
|
| Also, Stockhausen was not entirely wrong. It was insensitive
| and poorly phrased, but 9/11 is undoubtedly the defining
| aesthetic image of our time.
| pram wrote:
| That isn't true. The "loop tape" was already like 20 years old
| IIRC, it was already disintegrated by 9/11
| xrd wrote:
| Reading this article makes me want to point out the difference
| between commercial music software and open source software.
|
| What stands out here was that Eno used very simple sounds and
| looped them. This was not a complicated rube-goldberg machine he
| built to finally get to these masterpieces. It was simple
| recordings of voices, looped.
|
| Reggie Watts makes incredible, and non-traditional, electronic
| house music, basically just his voice and looping machine
| (granted he does have a 4 octave range, but...). So organic and
| human.
|
| Same for Matthew Herbert, see his manifesto:
| https://prruk.org/personal-contract-for-the-composition-of-m....
| It is all organic.
|
| This is what makes me a little sad when I play with all the
| amazing open source tools on Linux. Ardour is great. Hydrogen is
| great. Sonic-PI is incredible.
|
| But, the UI's are not the best. Getting started requires a ton of
| reading and researching. It is a long way to just "play" (I mean
| playing like a child, not playing piano).
|
| For example, I wish Sonic-PI had a better way of writing music
| than JUST writing out ruby. I like ruby as a language, and I'm
| surprised there is not a way to easily extend the Sonic-PI tool
| so I can plugin my Novation drum pad and easily trigger samples
| and notes. I can absolutely watch for MIDI notes from Novation,
| and take actions in ruby code, but it kills my creativity to do
| it that way. I wish I could build a tiny set of buttons that
| shows me that which is not a stream of logs. I never feel like
| Sonic-PI puts me into a creative mode. It feels like trying to
| jam the beauty of a harp into emacs. And, I love emacs.
|
| Open source music software could have bespoke custom UIs for any
| user. I'm a command line guy so I'm part of the problem. But,
| these tools should be customizable to make our own bespoke UIs
| which match the beginner level, or the advance level, or anything
| in between.
| barfoure wrote:
| You think open source has a UX problem? Try learning to play a
| guitar. It's so bad it makes some people's fingers bleed.
| People spend years learning how to play and they still say they
| have a long way to go!
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > But, the UI's are not the best.
|
| Try jumping into _any_ DAW without "a ton of reading and
| researching".
|
| Granted, there are hardware drum machines and sequencers that
| you can "play" with as a completely fresh user, but these tend
| to be the exception rather than the rule. The newer generation
| of hardware sequencers (say the Elektron series) are quite
| impenetrable without spending a significant amount of time
| learning about what they can do and how to do it.
|
| > Open source music software could have bespoke custom UIs for
| any user.
|
| from the voice of experience, I'll tell you that this makes
| user support almost impossible, or at least, extremely
| difficult and frustrating.
| xrd wrote:
| I 100% agree with everything you said.
|
| But, when I use open source, I assume user support == "me
| supporting it". That often means reading the docs, reviewing
| source code, (and lately, asking claude...)
|
| I'm just saying I want to be permitted to build my own UI,
| easily. I think that should be front and center in the design
| decisions. I sheepishly think of Sonic-PI, and how incredibly
| hard Aaron has been working for years and know he was rightly
| focused on the backend pieces, which are incredibly complex.
| I don't think he should do the "UI-only-for-me-and-not-for-
| thee" work, but maybe as a community we can start doing
| better about making bespoke UI possible.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| You should check out Andrew and Ben's work, Extempore.
|
| There is definitely a learning curve, but after reading the
| basics and poking through the examples, you realize you can do
| anything.
|
| Lots of C libraries have wrappers already written and you can
| also write your own. I wrote a curl wrapper and pulled live
| data from sources such as weather APIs, assigned different
| facets of the data to different instruments and dynamics. You
| can write GL shaders and generally create your own interfaces.
|
| It's also fully networked with sample-accurate synchronization,
| so that it's very easy to construct distributed computation and
| physical interaction. This is where the cyberphysical
| programming aspect comes into play.
|
| Extempore has support for MIDI devices, and I've really pushed
| my gear to the limit with it. It is also very low level; you
| even write your own DSP. But you create libraries over time so
| that spontaneous jams don't require twenty minutes of fiddling
| first.
|
| It took a lot of time to feel comfortable in the environment
| when I first got into it years ago, but with modern agentic
| IDRs such as Cursor, you should have a much, much easier time.
| It's great for writing algorithmic music and really great for
| freeform jam sessions. Lots of built in goodies that will
| really inspire you.
|
| Also it's LISP.
|
| https://extemporelang.github.io/
| firefax wrote:
| I always assumed he spoke to the airport about what sorts of
| music it enjoys, this method seems needlessly hostile to user
| research.
| cromulent wrote:
| I imagined it was what he - as an airport user - thought
| airports should play.
| Duanemclemore wrote:
| Eno has been an inspiration for my entire music listening life.
| U2's Achtung Baby and Zooropa - both of which Eno was a partner
| in making - came out in my preteens. It's tough for a kid in the
| rural midwest to find Brian Eno, but as soon as I got to a place
| with cultural access I was all over his work. And once Pandora
| and internet radio came out I was able to go deeper and in to
| contemporary composition and other related genres.
|
| But even with almost 30 years of listening to this stuff,
| sometimes a really obvious one slips through the cracks.
|
| I hadn't heard of or listened to Tim Hecker until just this year.
| And oh man, I haven't felt this way about finding a "new" artist
| in a long time. If you want a good entry point start with his
| mid-career Ravedeath, 1972 [0] and its companion Dropped Pianos
| (both of which feature the MIT Piano Drop on the cover) and work
| forward and backward from there.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravedeath,_1972
| soiltype wrote:
| Weird - I also listened to ambient music for almost a decade
| before hearing about Tim Hecker. I have to second the
| recommendation, although I started in a different place - when
| I first heard Harmony in Ultraviolet, it was like something
| clicked into place. Ambient music had been missing something
| and I hadn't even known it.
|
| I had a similar experience with Abul Mogard. Whoever they
| really are is a genius of immense soundscapes.
| xoxxala wrote:
| Brian Eno has this great line from the liner notes for this
| album:
|
| "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."
|
| I've always found ambient to be perfect for listening while
| working. Now I understand why!
| soiltype wrote:
| Thanks for the quote. It shows why Eno was so successful - I
| find all my favorites work either as entirely background sound
| or as a total listening experience on their own.
| ravetcofx wrote:
| I was often confused by Brian Eno and Brian Green, who made one
| of my favorite albums Music for Home. The later has been a
| musician and producer for Rufus Wainwright, Michael Buble, John
| Legend and others.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| There is also Brian Greene, the theoretical physicist.
| CompoundEyes wrote:
| I trained myself to take a power nap to track "2/2" on that
| record. After a really hard workout, getting cleaned up, having a
| bite to eat and drifting off for 30 minutes so many times it has
| a warm spot in my heart. I like that music can serve as
| "functional". I also recommend Mindspring Memories if you have
| nostalgia of the personal computing boom for a unique ambient. To
| me it evokes what trying out a Phillips CD-i at my local
| department store felt like in 1991. YMMV
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