Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Rolling Stone NOVEMBER 25, 2004 - by Jon Caramanica

BRIAN ENO - AMBIENT 1: MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS

The year: 1978. Brainiac producer invents ambient music.

Following a couple of years spent pursuing a decadent glam aesthetic as a member of Roxy Music, Brian Eno turned inward on his solo albums, developing a fascination with technology and how music interacts with the sounds of the world at large. Music For Airports, from 1978, is the best of the albums he recorded during this period, a hypnotic, lush excursion into ambient music (which was until then more a concept than a genre) that gave birth to a million electronic musicians for whom microvariations in tone are the equivalent of guitar solos. Split into four "movements," Airports utilizes little more than piano, synthesizers and tape loops to create a lyrical white noise - spacious, uplifting, impermeable. The album's conceit is that it's intended to act as a sonic palliative, soothing the nervous air traveler through dulcet tones. But, of course, it's the careful listen that's rewarded the most: On Airports the trees are even more lovely than the forest