Ambient 1/Music for Airports (1978) is one of Brian Eno's first ambient albums. Music for Airports employs phasing tape loops of different length in some tracks, where, for example, in "1/1", a single piano melody is repeated and at different times other instruments will segue in and out, and this happens pseudorandomly due to the phenomenon of phasing: at some point these instrumental sounds will clump together, at some points, be spread apart.

The music on this album was designed to be continuously looped as a sound installation, with the intent to defuse the tense, anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal. It was installed at the Marine Air Terminal of New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

The first three tracks on the album are sparse compositions with moments of silence between notes. The last track (“2/2”) is a smooth, billowy, electronic texture.

Track listing

The track labelling is so because of the album's first release (1978) as an LP, and so the first track means "first track, first side", and so on.

1. "1/1" : Acoustic piano, electric piano and synthesizer - 16:39
2. "2/1" : Vocals only. - 8:25
3. "1/2" : Vocals and acoustic piano. - 11:36
4. "2/2" : Synthesizer only. - 9:38

All tracks were composed by Eno except "1/1", which was composed by Eno, Robert Wyatt, and Rhett Davies.

The back cover features four abstract music-notation images, one for each track.

The Bang on a Can All-Stars, an offshoot of the Bang on a Can music festival, arranged Music for Airports for live musicians. They have played their arrangements on tour and for a CD released in 1997 by Point Music.

See also

• Brian Eno
• Ambient 2/The Plateaux of Mirror
• Ambient 3/Day of Radiance
• Ambient 4/On Land
• Ambient music
• Electronic music

External links

• Liner notes of initial American release (http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/MFA-txt.html)
• Info about Bang on a Can's version (http://www.bangonacan.org/mfa.html)