Origins & How Ambient Music Was Born In The Words Of Brian Eno — And An LP Called ‘Music For Motion’

It’s fair to say that Brian Eno is a revolutionary musician. His efforts and creation of the ambient genre in the 1970s; a time when everything was rock and roll or rock and roll centric, was perhaps one of the most innovative decisions by an artist of the era.

His decision to make ambient music was visionary and far ahead of its time and constituted the use of technology in a way it hadn’t been done before.

With the advent of computers and music production software since the 90s up to current day in 2023 we’ve seen music take on and morph and develop and grow into several new genres of music.

However, ambient music has its own little charm and space in the vast ocean of genres we see today.

In an old article, I recounted the effect Eno’s music had on me when I just discovered his body of work: The Music Of Brian Eno — Music Designed For Places, Spaces & Peace Of Mind

In a nutshell, I was intrigued and inspired.

So after my sister gifted me his book, or diary rather, which is a must-read for musicians, I decided to make my own ambient LP.

But before I post my album, here are some excerpts from Brian Eno’s book where he explores how he pioneered the ambient genre.

The Story Of How Brian Eno Created Ambient Music

In his book, Brian Eno recounts the story of how he was inspired to create ambient music

“By the early seventies, when I started making records, it was clear that this was where a lot of the action was going to be. It interested me because it suggested moving the process of making music much closer to the process of painting (which I thought I knew something about).”

“New sound-shaping and space-making devices appeared on the market weekly (and still do), synthesizers made their clumsy but crucial debut, and people like me just sat at home night after night fiddling around with all this stuff, amazed at what was now possible, immersed in the new sonic worlds we could create.”

“And immersion was really the point: we were making music to swim in, to float in, to get lost inside.”

“This became clear to me when I was confined to bed, immobilized by an accident in early 1975. My friend Judy Nylon had visited, and brought with her a record of 17th-century harp music. I asked her to put it on as she left, which she did, but it wasn’t until she’d gone that I realized that the hi-fi was much too quiet and one of the speakers had given up anyway.”

“It was raining hard outside, and I could hardly hear the music above the rain — just the loudest notes, like little crystals, sonic icebergs rising out of the storm. I couldn’t get up and change it, so I just lay there waiting for my next visitor to come and sort it out, and gradually I was seduced by this listening experience. I realized that this was what I wanted music to be — a place, a feeling, an all-around tint to my sonic environment.”

“After that, in April or May of that year, I made Discreet Music, which I suppose was really my first Ambient record (though the stuff I’d done with the great guitarist Robert Fripp before that gets pretty close). This was a 31-minute piece (the longest I could get on a record at the time) which was modal, evenly textured, calm and sonically warm.”

“At the time, it was not a record that received a very warm welcome, and I probably would have hesitated to release it without the encouragement of my friend Peter Schmidt, the painter. (In fact, it’s often been painters and writers — people who use music while they work and want to make for themselves a conducive environment — who’ve first enjoyed and encouraged this work)”

“In late 1977 I was waiting for a plane in Cologne airport. It was early on a sunny, clear morning, the place was nearly empty, and the space of the building (designed, I believe, by the father of one of the founders of Kraftwerk) was very attractive.”

“I started to wonder what kind of music would sound good in a building like that. I thought, ‘It has to be interruptible (because there’ll be announcements), it has to work outside the frequencies at which people speak, and at different speeds from speech patterns (so as not to confuse communication), and it has to be able to accommodate all the noises that airports produce. And, most importantly for me, it has to have something to do with where you are and what you’re there for — flying, floating and, secretly, flirting with death.’”

“Thus was born the first Ambient record — Music for Airports — which I released on my own label (called Ambient Records, of course).”

Excerpt From: Brian Eno. “A Year With Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno’s Diary”

The Ambient Music Manifesto

Eno further created the manifesto for Ambient music as follows:

“The concept of music designed specifically as a background feature in the environment was pioneered by Muzak Inc. in the fifties, and has since come to be known generically by the term Muzak. The connotations that this term carries are those particularly associated with the kind of material that Muzak Inc. produces — familiar tunes arranged and orchestrated in a lightweight and derivative manner. Understandably, this has led most discerning listeners (and most composers) to dismiss entirely the concept of environmental music as an idea worthy of attention.”

“Over the past three years, I have become interested in the use of music as ambience, and have come to believe that it is possible to produce material that can be used thus without being in any way compromised. To create a distinction between my own experiments in this area and the products of the various purveyors of canned music, I have begun using the term Ambient Music.”

“An ambience is defined as an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint. My intention is to produce original pieces ostensibly (but not exclusively) for particular times and situations with a view to building up a small but versatile catalogue of environmental music suited to a wide variety of moods and atmospheres.”

“Whereas the extant canned-music companies proceed from the basis of regularizing environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncrasies, Ambient Music is intended to enhance these. Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities.”

“And whereas their intention is to ‘brighten’ the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms), Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.

“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.”

Excerpt From: Brian Eno. “A Year With Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno’s Diary”

My Ambient LP — Music For Motion

After reading all of Brian’s notes in his book, and my love of his music, it got me thinking about what kind of ambient music I would be able to make.

Something that typified my life, my sound, my love of the Bombay monsoon, my love of melancholic music, my current skill level, while also my desire to be at peace more than any other state of mind.

And so, was born my first fully ambient LP which has no beats in it. I had flirted with ambient music with my first release ‘Transit’ in 2020, but that still had beats, the beats weren’t very good, but after 3 years since the release of ‘Transit’, I began working my full ambient LP “Music For Motion” earlier this year.

The result is a 10-track LP which echoes my style and my imprint and spin on the Ambient genre. It starts off slightly melancholic but evolves as you listen to it, and it’s a release I’m very proud of.

You can stream it here

Although I made this in the summer, I can’t wait to play it during the Bombay Monsoon which is coming up next month, to see how it goes with the rain.

I hope you like this post and my LP!

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