Thursday, September 22, 2011

Brian Eno - Discreet Music


Discreet Music (1975) is an album by the British ambient musician Brian Eno. While (No Pussyfooting) may be his first ambient album and Another Green World features many ambient pieces, this is Brian Eno’s first purely ambient solo album. It is also Eno's first album to be released under his full name "Brian Eno", as opposed to his previous rock albums released simply under the name "Eno".
Brian Eno’s concept of ambient music builds upon a concept composer Erik Satie called "furniture music".[citation needed] This means music that is intended to blend into the ambient atmosphere of the room rather than be directly focused upon.

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Brian Eno - Ambient 1: music for airports





Ambient 1: Music for Airports is an ambient album by Brian Eno released in 1978. First album on which a term ambient was used.


The roots of ambient music go back to the early 20th century. In particular, the period just before and after the first world war gave rise to two significant Art Movements that encouraged experimentation with various musical (and non musical) forms, while rejecting more conventional, tradition-bound styles of expression. These art movements were called Futurism and Dadaism. Aside from being known for their painters and writers, these movements also attracted experimental and 'anti-music' musicians such as Francesco Balilla Pratella of the pre-war Futurism movement and Kurt Schwitters and Erwin Schulhoff of the post-war Dadaist movement. The latter movement played an influential role in the musical development of Erik Satie


As an early 20th century French composer, Erik Satie utilised such Dadaist-inspired explorations to create an early form of ambient / background music that he labeled "furniture music" (Musique d'ameublement). This he described as being the sort of music that could be played during a dinner to create a background atmosphere for that activity, rather than serving as the focus of attention. From this greater historical perspective, Satie is the link between these early Art movements and the work of Brian Eno, artist who first used a term 'ambient' to describe the music he played. 

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Brian Eno - Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror


Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror is a 1980 album by ambient musicians Harold Budd and Brian Eno. This is the second installment of Eno's Ambient series which began in 1978 with Music for Airports, identifiable by its similar cover art which looks like it depicts rural terrain on a map.

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Brian Eno - Ambient 3: Days of Radiance


Ambient 3: Day of Radiance (1980) is an album by the American ambient musician Laraaji (alias Edward Larry Gordon) which was produced by Brian Eno.This album is the third edition of Eno’s Ambient series, which began in 1978 with Music for Airports, and was followed by The Plateaux of Mirror. The series ended with On Land.
Compared to the rest of the series, Day of Radiance features very little in the way of electronics. Laraaji uses a variety of acoustic stringed instruments such as a hammered dulcimer and 36-stringed open-tuned zither.
Personnel and instruments:
Cover art and production – Brian Eno
Music – Laraaji
Instruments – treated and amplified zither; hammered dulcimer

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Brian Eno - Ambient 4: On Land





Ambient 4: On Land (released April 1982) is an album by the British ambient musician Brian Eno. It was the final edition in Eno’s ambient series, which began in 1978 with Music for Airports.On Land is arguably the "darkest" of Eno's 4 as-titled Ambient albums, and could be said to be an archetypal example of dark ambient, though it does possess a wistful, meandering, longing, organic quality as well.It is a mixture of synthesizer-based notes, nature/animal recordings and a complex array of other sounds, most of which were unused, collected recordings from previous albums and the sessions which created them. As Eno explained "... the making of records such as On Land involved feeding unheard tape into the mix, constant feeding and remixing, subtracting and "composting" 1.
Eno actually found, in the long process of making the album (over 3 years) that the synthesizer came to be of "limited usefulness" and that his "instrumentation shifted gradually through electro-mechanical and acoustic instruments towards non-instruments like pieces of chain and sticks and stones .... I included not only recordings of rooks, frogs and insects, but also the complete body of my own earlier work" 2.
Despite the music's dark leanings, it is, in a sense, still highly "ambient" in that the tracks tend to blend-in to each other and thus fulfill all of Eno's original expectations of what the term means.



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Brian Eno - Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks



Apollo: Atmosphere and soundtracks was written, producd and performed by Brian Eno, his brother Roger a Roger and Daniel Lanois. Music from the album appeared in the films 28 Days Later, Traffic and Trainspotting, whose soundtrack sold approximately four million copies. Two of the songs from the album, "Silver Morning" and "Deep Blue Day", were issued as a 7" single on EG Records.The album contains a variety of styles. "Under Stars", "The Secret Place", "Matta", "Signals", "Under Stars II" and "Stars" are all dark, complicated textures similar to those on Eno’s previous album Ambient 4/On Land. "An Ending (Ascent)" "Drift" and "Always Returning" are smoother electronic pieces. "Silver Morning", "Deep Blue Day" and "Weightless" are country and western inspired ambient pieces featuring Daniel Lanois on guitar.


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Wednesday, November 3, 2010

John Cage - Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1946 - 48)



John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer, philosopher, poet, music theorist, artist,printmaker,[1] and amateur mycologist and mushroom collector. A pioneer of chance music, electronic music and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.

One of the 
famous creation of Cage's is the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by placing various objects in the strings), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert pieces, the best known of which is Sonatas and Interludes(1946–48)


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