AMBIENT 1 - MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS

I think what I dislike most about this album is that it was really made to be background music. Eno in the liner notes talks about when background music was first made in the fifties by Muzak Inc. and how his goal was to make this ambient music but without in any way being compromised. Tough thing to do in my opinion, afterall who likes Muzak ? I was thankful for his thoughts in the liner notes though because it explained why I had these negative feeling towards it right from the first listen. It's not like Electronic soundscape music that I love. Heck he would even make good Electronic music for the most part on his "Apollo" album. This is a different beast entirely.

"1/1" is pretty much Robert Wyatt playing these relaxing acoustic piano melodies very slowly while we get some soft synths from Eno to help out for 16 1/2 minutes ! Yes it's somewhat pleasant but I really get impatient when listening to this. "2/1" is better with these three female vocalists offering up vocal melodies but without much variation for almost 9 minutes. "1/2" combines the sparse piano with the vocal melodies. "2/2" is the only track engineered by Conny Plank and in my opinion it's the best track by far. Spacey synths pulse and float throughout.

I just feel that this pales big time when compared to other ambient, Electronic albums I own. Considering this comes advertised as background music I guess I can't complain much. Apparently i'm just not that into background music.