One influential, yet fairly unknown album that has been under my radar for a while is Ambient 1: Music for Airports by Brian Eno. Today, I decided to finally give it a go, and, for what it is, it’s quite a good album.

Ambient 1: Music for Airports is made up of 4 very long songs. The songs are extremely simple and minimalistic in nature, with the album goal’s being the defusing of the tense, anxious environment of a busy airport. Simultaneously, their production was complex with spliced tape loops being used quite heavily. Personally, my favorite song is 1/1, the opening track on the album.

The song is very piano heavy with piano loops making up the song. Apparently, the loops come from two pianists who couldn’t really hear each other well improvising, leading to different melodies that complement each other being played. The song meets the album’s goal, with it being a relaxing piece of music.

Ambient 1: Music for Airports essentially created the ambient genre of music. A large number of musicians would begin to consider the sonic textures of a work after the album came out.

This is a great piece of music to relax and play in the background while doing homework. Unfortunately, it doesn’t play well in other settings. It’s still good for what it is. I rate it a 7.5/10 and would recommend giving it a look.