Brian Eno's Ambient album from 1982 has been Half Speed Mastered by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios, London and is now presented in a gatefold sleeve on 2 heavy weight albums which are played at 45rpm for a superior listening experience. Now housed in a gatefold sleeve with an Obi and Abbey Road Certificate. Contains a Download Voucher Released 16th November 2018. Available for pre-order now. Deluxe, limited edition. Though not the earliest entry in the genre (which Eno makes no claim to have invented), ‘Ambient 1 (Music For Airports)’ was the first album ever to be explicitly labelled ‘ambient music’. Eno had previously created similarly quiet, unobtrusive music on albums ‘Evening Star’, ‘Discreet Music’, and Harold Budd's ‘The Pavilion of Dreams’ (which he produced), but this was the first album to give it precedence as a cohesive concept. He gave his explanation of and aspirations for ambient music in this short 1978 essay.
Eno conceived the idea for ‘Music For Airports’ while spending several hours waiting at Cologne Bonn Airport, becoming annoyed by the uninspired sound and the atmosphere it created. The recording was designed to be continuously looped as a sound installation, with the intent of defusing the tense, anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal, by avoiding the derivative and familiar elements of typical ‘canned music’.
The album features contributions from Robert Wyatt and Rhett Davies. ‘Ambient 1 (Music For Airports)’ was followed by Harold Budd and Brian Eno’s ‘Ambient 2 (The Plateaux of Mirror)’ and ‘Ambient 3 (Day Of Radiance)’ by Laraaji, which was also produced by Eno.