[LAU] RIP the inventor of ambient music

[Paul Davis]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2020 at 10:48 AM Andrew A. Grathwohl <andrew at grathwohl.me>
wrote:

> I don't know... chant musics are frequently intended to bring on a trance
> in the listener. Chants are used in the ritualistic events that underpin
> certain cultures, traditions, religions, etc.
>
> I've been brought to places while in a deep focus (aided by chant musics)
> that parallel experiences I've had on psychoactive drugs.
>
> In that sense, Eno's description is sort of perfect to me. Gregorian chant
> was used to induce religious focus, so the music itself does sort of fall
> out of primary consideration when "used" correctly.
>

Eno absolutely meant "ignorable" in the normal dictionary way. He did not
mean "trance-inducing", or "religiously focused". Eno's coinage had
absolutely nothing to with "inducing" anything.

-------
Eno remembers the event somewhat differently. “After she had gone, and with
considerable difficulty, I put on the record,” he recalls. “After I had
lain down, I realised that the amplifier was set at an extremely low level,
and that one channel of the stereo had failed completely. Since I hadn’t
the energy to get up and improve matters, the record played on almost
inaudibly. This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music – as
part of the ambience of the environment just as the colour of the light and
sound of the rain were parts of the ambience.”

[ ... ]

All this sounds like a recipe for boredom, and for many people that’s
exactly the result when they listen to Music for Airports. For others, the
fact that the music is so quiet and so content to circulate such thin
little scraps is the secret of its appeal. Eno himself describes the album
as being “as ignorable as it is interesting”.

--------  (from:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/artists/how-brian-eno-created-a-quiet-revolution-in-music/
)

[ and may the universe not react to harshly to me citing the Daily
Telegraph ]
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