Feb 21: 'Music for Airports' and the birth of ambient music

A lot of music is written about particular places.

Airports, in the work of Marc Augé are "non places".

Non places are described as follows:

Non-place is a neologism coined by the French anthropologist Marc Augé to refer to anthropological spaces of transience where human beings remain anonymous, and that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as "places" in their anthropological definition. 

Examples of non-places would be motorways, hotel rooms, airports and shopping malls. The term was introduced by Marc Augé in his work Non-places: introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity, although it bears a strong resemblance to earlier concepts introduced by Edward Relph in Place and Placelessness

Source: Wikipedia

An article on its creation. Some quotes taken from that article.

In 1978, Brian Eno released "Ambient 1: Music for Airports", a quietly radical album that redefined the role of music in public and private space. The album was born out of frustration: after spending hours waiting at Cologne Bonn Airport, Eno found himself irritated by its sterile, uninspired atmosphere. Rather than simply complaining, he reimagined what sound in such a setting could be—composing an album "designed for airports" but meant to function in many contexts.

At the time, ambient music was more a concept than a genre, mostly existing in contrast to the formulaic "muzak" of elevators and lobbies. 

Eno’s approach was intentionally different. He didn’t want to stimulate or distract. Instead, he wanted to create space: for thought, for calm, for uncertainty. 

As he put it in the liner notes, ambient music:

“must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”

Each of the four tracks on 'Music for Airports' unfolds slowly, with a ghostly serenity:

“1/1,” the opening piece, features tape-looped piano patterns that feel both deliberate and weightless.

“2/1” stands out for its non-vibrato vocal loops, which Eno called “uncannily lifeless”—intimating not peace, but the eerie absence of human presence. 

“2/2,” created using an ARP 2600 synthesiser and layered with multiple echoes, is lush, slow-moving, and quietly immersive.

What makes "Music for Airports" so enduring is its conceptual clarity. Eno wasn’t just crafting background sound—he was rejecting the idea that music must entertain or dominate.

Over four decades later, "Music for Airports" still feels timeless. It’s not only a foundational work in ambient music, but a philosophical statement about how we listen—and why sometimes, the most profound sounds are the ones that ask the least of us.

It is part of a series of ambient albums.

The full album can be heard below:

Brian Eno is an interesting musician and polymath who has dipped into a huge number of projects over the decades, and collaborated with a wide array of musicians with different musical styles.

He played for some years with the band 'Roxy Music'. He is a producer and musician, as well as involving himself with a whole range of art projects.

This excellent London Review of Books review by Ian Penman of two biographies contains a large amount of detail about his life, and his projects, some of which have been criticised. It is well worth reading!

Eno also provided "enossification" to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway - adding to the sonic palette of the album - which has been blogged elsewhere.

Here, he explains how the idea of ambient music came about.

Eno's influence can be heard on other music which has already, or will be, featured on the blog, including David Bowie's 'Berlin Trilogy'.

We will return to this album later on the blog, as Carl Lee has also written about this set of albums and what they mean to him in another of his excellent blog posts.

What are your favourite ambient music pieces and artists? 

Let me know in the comments.