Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T05:31:50.701Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Unsettling Brian Eno's Music for Airports

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2017

VICTOR SZABO
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the liner notes to his album Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978), Brian Eno (1948–) defined Ambient music in contradistinction to Muzak's ‘derivative’ instrumental pop arrangements. Ambient music's historians and critics have often followed Eno by describing Ambient music as an alternative to conventional ‘background’ or ‘programmed’ music for commercial spaces. Such descriptions can be misleading, however, given that Ambient music's dominant mode of reception is selective personal consumption, not public administration. This article investigates the aesthetics of Eno's Airports, and elucidates the organizing role of the Ambient genre, within their primary reception context of personal recorded music listening. A comparison with The Black Dog's Music for Real Airports (2010) shows how Ambient music then and now reflexively affords atmospheric use by translating a sense of physical dwelling and passage into mixed musical moods. By expressing ambivalence about the reality of airports and air travel, these Ambient records characteristically convey apprehension about the technological administration of human experience – a phenomenon that includes personal recorded music listening.

Type
Articles
Information
Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 305 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography

Adey, Peter. ‘Airports, Mobility, and the Calculative Architecture of Affective Control’. Geoforum 39 (2009), 438–51.Google Scholar
Aikin, Jim. ‘Brian Eno’. Keyboard, July 1981, 42–66.Google Scholar
Allen, John. ‘Ambient Power: Berlin's Potsdamer Platz and the Seductive Logic of Public Spaces’. Urban Studies 43/2 (February 2006), 441–55.Google Scholar
Anniss, Matt. ‘Ambient House: The Story of Chill Out Music, 1988–95’. Red Bull Music Academy, 17 February 2016. http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/specials/2016-ambient-house-feature/ (accessed 18 February 2016).Google Scholar
Augé, Marc. Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity, 2nd edn., trans. Howe, John. New York: Verso, 2008.Google Scholar
Bangs, Lester. ‘Eno’. Musician, Player & Listeneri, November 1979, 38–44.Google Scholar
Barber, Lynden. ‘Atmospheres in the Home’. Hyperreal Archives. http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/rvonland.html (accessed 18 January 2014).Google Scholar
Barbiero, Daniel. ‘After the Aging of the New Music’. Telos 82 (Winter 1989–90), 144–50.Google Scholar
Barnes, Stephen H. Muzak: The Hidden Messages in Music. Vol. 9: Studies on the History and Interpretation of Music. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Barrow, Jack. ‘The Orb’, booklet notes to Trance Europe Express by various artists. CD, Total Record Co. via BMG (UK) Ltd., TEEX 1, 1993. 120–4.Google Scholar
Bates, Eliot. ‘Ambient Music’. MA diss., Wesleyan University, 1997.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. ‘Surrealism’, in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, ed. Bullock, Marcus and Jennings, Michael W.. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2004. 207–18.Google Scholar
Berland, Jody. ‘Locating Listening’, in The Place of Music, ed. Leyshon, Andrew, Matless, David, and Revill, George. New York: Guilford, 1998. 129–50.Google Scholar
Binkley, Sam. Getting Loose: Lifestyle Consumption in the 1970s. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Birch, Ian. ‘Ambient 1/Music for Airports’. Melody Maker, 17 March 1979, 32.Google Scholar
Björnberg, Alf. ‘On Aeolian Harmony in Contemporary Popular Music’, trans. Tagg, Philip. Department of Musicology, University of Göteborg, 1984. www.tagg.org/others/othxpdfs/bjbgeol.pdf (accessed 20 March 2015).Google Scholar
Dog, Black, The. ‘Music for Airports – Please Wait Here’. Internet Archive. http://web.archive.org/web/20130121072521/http://www.musicforrealairports.com/live/index.php (accessed 14 January 2014).Google Scholar
Black Dog, The and Human. ‘Music for Real Airports’. Article Magazine, 22 April 2010, 57–9.Google Scholar
Bloom, Michael. ‘Ambient 1: Music for Airports’. Rolling Stone, 26 July 1979, 80.Google Scholar
Brecht, Berthold. ‘A Short Organum for the Theatre’, in Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. Willett, John. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001. 179–208.Google Scholar
Brown, Mick. ‘Life of Brian according to Eno’. Arts Guardian, 1 May 1982, 10.Google Scholar
Brown, Steven and Theorell, Töres. ‘The Social Uses of Background Music for Personal Enhancement’, in Music and Manipulation: On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music, ed. Brown, Steven and Volgsten, Ulrik. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006. 126–60.Google Scholar
Bull, Michael. Sounding Out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life. New York: Berg, 2000.Google Scholar
Bull, Michael. Sound Moves: iPod Culture and Urban Experience. New York: Routledge, 2007.Google Scholar
Carroll, Noël. ‘Art and Mood: Preliminary Notes and Conjectures’. The Monist 86/4 (2003), 521–55.Google Scholar
Casey, Edward S. ‘How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Phenomenological Prolegomena’, in Senses of Place, ed. Feld, Steven and Basso, Keith H.. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1996. 12–52.Google Scholar
Casey, Edward S. Remembering: A Phenomenological Study, 2nd edn. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Christgau, Robert. ‘Brian Eno: Music for Airports’. Village Voice, 2 July 1979.Google Scholar
Christgau, Robert. ‘Brian Eno: On Land’. Village Voice, 31 August 1982.Google Scholar
Clarke, Eric F. Ways of Listening: An Ecological Approach to the Perception of Musical Meaning. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Debord, Guy. ‘A User's Guide to Détournement’, in Situationist International Anthology, rev. edn, ed. and trans. Knabb, Ken. Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006. 14–20.Google Scholar
Demers, Joanna. Listening through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Demers, Joanna. Drone and Apocalypse: An Exhibit Catalog for the End of the World. Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2015.Google Scholar
Demorest, Stephen. ‘The Discreet Charm of Brian Eno: An English Pop Theorist Seeks to Redefine Music’. Horizon, June 1978, 82–5.Google Scholar
DeNora, Tia. Music in Everyday Life. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Douglas, Susan J. Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination. New York: Random House, 1999.Google Scholar
Eisenstein, Sergei. ‘A Dialectic Approach to Film Form’, in Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, ed. and trans. Leyda, Jay. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace, 1977. 45–63.Google Scholar
Emerson, Ken. ‘Brian Eno Slips into “Trance Music”’. New York Times, 12 August 1979, D22.Google Scholar
Eno, Brian. ‘Ambient Music’. Liner notes for Ambient 1: Music for Airports. LP. Editions E. G., AMB 001, 1978.Google Scholar
Eno, Brian. ‘Aurora Musicalis’. Interview by Korner, Anthony. Artforum 24/10 (Summer 1986), 76–9.Google Scholar
Eno, Brian. Liner notes to Ambient 4: On Land. CD. Editions E. G., EEGCD 20, 1986.Google Scholar
Eno, Brian. A Year with Swollen Appendices. London: Faber & Faber, 1996.Google Scholar
Eno, Brian. ‘Opening Holland Festival’. Interview by Martin Large. NOS (Netherlands Broadcasting Foundation), 5 June 1999. TV.Google Scholar
Felski, Rita. ‘The Invention of Everyday Life’. New Formations 59 (1999), 15–31.Google Scholar
Felski, Rita. The Limits of Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Fink, Robert. Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. ‘Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias’, trans. Miskowiec, Jay. Diacritics 16/1 (Spring 1986), 22–7.Google Scholar
Frohne, Ursula. ‘Brian Eno: Tegel Airport, Institute Unzeit, Berlin’. FlashArt, May 1984, 43.Google Scholar
Frow, John. Genre. New York: Routledge, 2005.Google Scholar
Gibson, James J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Gill, Andy. ‘Brian Eno: Towards an Understanding of Pop Past and Present’, Q, November 1993. www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/brian-eno-towards-an-understanding-of-pop-past-and-present (accessed 15 July 2013).Google Scholar
Goodman, David. ‘Distracted Listening: On Not Making Sound Choices in the 1930s’, in Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, ed. Suisman, David and Strasser, Susan. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. 15–46.Google Scholar
Grant, Steven. ‘Brian Eno against Interpretation’. Trouser Press, August 1982, 27–30.Google Scholar
Hesmondhalgh, David. ‘Popular Music Audiences and Everyday Life’, in Popular Music Studies, ed. Hesmondhalgh, David and Negus, Keith. London: Arnold, 2002. 117–30.Google Scholar
Hobson, Chris. ‘Music by Real People for Real People (in Real Airports)’. MNML SSGS. http://mnmlssg.blogspot.com/2010/06/music-by-real-people-for-real-people-in.html (accessed 16 December 2013).Google Scholar
Holmes, Thom. Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture, 3rd edn. New York: Routledge, 2008.Google Scholar
Husch, Jerri Ann. ‘Music of the Workplace: A Study of Muzak Culture’. PhD diss., University of Massachusetts, 1984.Google Scholar
Jahdi, Robin. Review of Music for Real Airports (2010) by The Black Dog. FACT. www.factmag.com/2010/07/14/the-black-dog-music-for-real-airports/ (accessed 15 May 2012).Google Scholar
Jones, Simon C. and Schumacher, Thomas G.. ‘Muzak: On Functional Music and Power’. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 9/2 (June 1992), 156–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kassabian, Anahid. Ubiquitous Listening: Affect, Attention, and Distributed Subjectivity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Keightley, Keir. ‘Music for Middlebrows: Defining the Easy Listening Era, 1946–1966’. American Music 26/3 (Fall 2008), 309–35.Google Scholar
Krims, Adam. ‘The Changing Functions of Music Recordings and Listening Practices’, in Recorded Music: Performance, Culture and Technology, ed. Bayley, Amanda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 68–85.Google Scholar
Lanza, Joseph. Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong. New York: Picador, 1995.Google Scholar
Le Guin, Elisabeth. ‘Uneasy Listening’. Repercussions 3/1 (Spring 1994), 5–19.Google Scholar
MacDonald, Ian. ‘Another False World: Part 2: How to Make a Modern Record’. New Musical Express, 3 December 1977, 31–4.Google Scholar
Marcus, George H. Functionalist Design: An Ongoing History. Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1995.Google Scholar
McKean, Colin. Review of Music for Real Airports (2010) by The Black Dog. The Quietus. http://thequietus.com/articles/04326-the-black-dog-music-for-real-airports-album-review (accessed 15 May 2012).Google Scholar
McKenna, Kristine. ‘Eno’. Wet, July/August 1980, 41–5.Google Scholar
Moore, Lee. ‘Eno = MC Squared’. Creem, November 1978, 67.Google Scholar
Morton, Timothy. Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Murphy, Scott. ‘Scoring Loss in Some Recent Popular Film and Television’. Music Theory Spectrum 36/2 (2014), 295–314.Google Scholar
North, Adrian C. and Hargreaves, David J.. ‘Music in Business Environments’, in Music and Manipulation: On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music, ed. Brown, Steven and Volgsten, Ulrik. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006. 103–25.Google Scholar
O'Brien, Glenn. ‘Eno at the Edge of Rock’. Interview, June 1978, 31–2.Google Scholar
Palmer, Robert. ‘Brian Eno, New Guru of Rock, Going Solo’. New York Times, 13 March 1981, C17.Google Scholar
Peters, John Durham. The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Petry, Daniel. Review of Music for Real Airports (2010) by The Black Dog. Resident Advisor. www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=7404 (accessed 15 May 2012).Google Scholar
Pratt, R. L. and Doak, P. E.. ‘A Subjective Rating Scale for Timbre’. Journal of Sound and Vibration 45/3 (1976), 317–28.Google Scholar
Prendergast, Mark. The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Trance: The Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2000.Google Scholar
Priest, Eldritch. ‘Felt as Thought (or, Music Abstraction and the Semblance of Affect)’, in Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience, ed. Thompson, Marie and Biddle, Ian. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. 45–63.Google Scholar
Radano, Ronald M. ‘Interpreting Muzak: Speculations on Musical Experience in Everyday Life’. American Music 7/4 (Winter 1989), 448–60.Google Scholar
Reyland, Nicholas. ‘The Spaces of Dream: Lutosławski's Modernist Heterotopias’. Twentieth-Century Music 12/1 (March 2015), 37–70.Google Scholar
Richardson, Mark. ‘As Ignorable As It Is Interesting: The Ambient Music of Brian Eno’. Pitchfork Media. http://pitchfork.com/features/resonant-frequency/5879-resonant-frequency-17/ (accessed 3 May 2017).Google Scholar
Roquet, Paul. ‘Ambient Landscapes from Brian Eno to Tetsu Inoue’. Journal of Popular Music Studies 21/4 (December 2009), 264–83.Google Scholar
Roquet, Paul. Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Roquet, Paul. ‘Atmosphere as Culture: Ambient Media and Postindustrial Japan’, PhD diss., UC Berkeley, 2012.Google Scholar
Rose, Frank. ‘Four Conversations with Brian Eno’. The Village Voice, 28 March 1977, 69–72.Google Scholar
Rush, George. ‘Brian Eno: Rock's Svengali Pursues Silence’. Esquire, December 1982, 130–2.Google Scholar
Sargent, David. ‘Recordings’. Vogue, July 1979, 26.Google Scholar
Schaberg, Christopher. The Textual Life of Airports: Reading the Culture of Flight. New York: Continuum, 2012.Google Scholar
Sheppard, David. On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Shklovsky, Viktor. ‘Art as Technique’, in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 3rd edn, ed. Richter, David H.. Boston and New York: Bedford/St Martin's, 2007. 775–84.Google Scholar
Sterne, Jonathan, ‘Sounds like the Mall of America: Programmed Music and the Architectonics of Commercial Space’, Ethnomusicology 41/1 (Winter 1997), 22–50.Google Scholar
Sun, Cecilia. ‘Resisting the Airport: Bang on a Can Performs Brian Eno’. Musicology Australia 29/1 (2007), 135–59.Google Scholar
Szabo, Victor. ‘Ambient Music as Popular Genre: Historiography, Interpretation, Critique’. PhD diss., University of Virginia, 2015.Google Scholar
Tagg, Philip. ‘“Universal” Music and the Case of Death’. Critical Quarterly 35/2 (1993), 54–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tannenbaum, Rob. ‘A Meeting of Sound Minds: John Cage & Brian Eno’. Musician, September 1985, 65–72 and 106.Google Scholar
Toop, David. Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds. London: Serpent's Tail, 1995.Google Scholar
Vanel, Hervé. Triple Entendre: Furniture Music, Muzak, Muzak-Plus. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Watkins, Holly. ‘Musical Ecologies of Place and Placelessness’. Journal of the American Musicological Society 64/2 (Summer 2011), 404–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Andrew. Portable Music and Its Functions. Vol. 6: Music (Meanings). New York: Peter Lang, 2007.Google Scholar

Discography

Dog, Black, The. Music for Real Airports. Soma Quality Recordings, CD083, 2010, CD.Google Scholar
Eno, Brian. Ambient 1: Music for Airports. Editions E. G. AMB 001, 1978, LP.Google Scholar
Talking Heads. Fear of Music. Sire. SRK 6076, 1979. LP.Google Scholar