DISCREET MUSIC

This incredibly placid and haunting album is Eno's first fully ambient work. The first side, Discreet Music, was intended as a backing track for Robert Fripp's Frippertronics performances, but on its own takes on a quality not unlike Tangerine Dream's Zeit. The second side consists of three increasingly chaotic variations on Pachelbel's Canon In D Major, the performers gradually getting more and more out of sync with one another with the result that the piece is transformed in unexpected and unpredictable ways into an entirely new work before collapsing into chaos at the close of the third part, Brutal Ardour. Simple experiments, yes, but in this simplicity Eno founded a new genre.