Author: Andrew Leslie Hooker (University of Huddersfield)

Nõ Music for Abandoned Airports (The Stupefied Landscape…It’s Fake, But It Works)

This paper briefly speculates on a philosophical paradox concerning Brian Eno’s use of the word ambient in relation to his compositional work between 1975 and 1982 and indeed, what ambient has come to mean in a broader cultural sense in 2018. Three important definitions of the word are considered for this argument. 1) The Latin root of ambient (ambire) is discussed with particular reference to Eno’s various press statements c. 1978 that Ambient music is intended to produce calm and a space to think. 2) Music for Airports is identified as an example of monocratic composition (one that subtly reinforces borders) within an historical timeline beginning in 1975 and is juxtaposed with Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, which is considered as a parallel (albeit unintended) Ambient experiment and identified as a mutable composition (one that subtly annihilates borders). 3) The broader, philosophical implications of ambient are addressed in particular reference to current notions of dark ecology.

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