From: dacc@yiffy.tigerden.com ()
Subject: Re: Reviews of Eno?
Date: 27 Jan 1994 18:22:30 GMT

I've been following this, and it's interesting that I've seen references
to the later ambient works, but none to either the one recording that
Eno used to launch the "ambient" term, namely "Music for Airports", nor
to the recording that started much of this, that being "Discrete Music".
So here's some info on those two:
     "Music for Airports" dates from 1977 or thereabouts, and consists
of four works that were intended as audio installations at JFK International
Airport in NYC. The short versions of these works are essentially the
incipient form of what later got covered in tons of reverb and other
processing to give us the "Apollo" and "Thursday Afternoon" releases.
Personally, I prefer the less-dense atmosphere of this release as one gets
a much better insight into what makes Eno's musical material in the
ambient works _tick_.
     "Discrete Music", from 1975, is another beast altogether, though.
The title work, which is a shade over 30 minutes long, consists of short
melodic phrases fed by a an EMS Synthi AKS into a long-period tape delay
system that he and Robert Fripp had worked with on both the "No Pussy-
footing" and "Evening Star" collaborations. This is the work that fed
the fire that led to the later ambient works...but the _other_ work on
this release is _quite_ different. The "Three Variations on the Canon in
D Major by Pachelbel" is a pure experiment in directed alteration of
an existing work, performed by a string quartet conducted by Gavin Bryars.
     Whereas "Music for Airports" is a finished thing in of itself,
"Discrete Music" is much more of an experimental project, specifically
one dealing with what Eno terms "self-regulating systems". For more info
on "Discrete Music", I'll direct you to the liner notes of that release,
which does a much better job of explaining what Eno was up to and why.
Nevertheless, both are wonderful and important works, and some of Eno's
finest works of both music and artistic exploration.

D.A.C. Crowell
Audio Design and Programming
KnowledgeMedia/The Aerodyne Works
Champaign, IL, USA.
(dacc@tigerden.com)