"Sitting among the gleaming steel fixtures and softly glowing concrete lines of the modernist Cologne Bonn Airport on a sunny Sunday morning in late 1977, en route to his homebase, the perennially nervous flier recoiled once again at the canned pop pleasantries mindlessly piped into such an inspired space. The music was not only an afterthought but also insulting to the idea that you would soon climb into a sleek metal tube and be propelled by engines through the sky at 40,000 feet. “I started thinking, ‘What should we be hearing here?’ I thought most of all you wanted music that didn’t try to pretend you weren’t going to die on the plane, ” Eno, laughing but serious."
If anyone would like to play with something more interactive, I'm testing out some new effects on Ambiphone, my ambient soundscape web app. The test version is at https://test.ambiph.one
There's a basic playback speed control now (basic in as much as it doesn't preserve pitch) plus things like reverb and delay effects
When the AI songs started happening, I've been hoping someone would make a very long version of 1/1 from Music for Airports. This is not that. I don't mean stretched out. I just mean that it gets interpolated outwards after the original composition ends.
It seems like the website is region locked?
I haven't seen an 405 error mentioning a specific country yet though, it seemed interesting.
https://imgur.com/a/AiY9xMJ
It's a must-read! It has analysis of all Eno's tape loops and an interactive note randomizer. Mentioned in the article's related content but it's worth an extra shout.
Fun to play around with for anyone who likes the album or ambient music in general.
I bought Bang On A Can's version soon after it was released in 97, and it remains one of my favourite pieces of music to code to. For reasons that I can't adequately explain I prefer it to the (itself wonderful) original.
Interesting bit there about music for facing mortality. An ambient classic from that same era is Steve Roach “Structures from Silence”. He had an NDE and that music is what he heard during.
I heard this music off on for decades, but couldn’t place it. I doubled down and only having a memory of it I was certain it was by Brian Eno.
It took me a while to stumble upon it, it was music written for an ITV Science programme’s April Fool’s episode; which due to strike action was delayed until July.
This comes up repeatedly with regards to conspiracy theories, I assume not by people who think the Moon landings are a hoax, that would be insane. Erm wait a minute…
God is this annoying. How can I listen to music where a single note stretches longer than my window of attention? My mind perceives this the same way as the sound of my fridge working, except much louder.
A 6-Hour Time-Stretched Version of Brian Eno's Music for Airports
(openculture.com)191 points by vinhnx 30 March 2025 | 79 comments
Comments
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/brian-eno-ambient-1-mus...
For anyone curious how to produce something that sounds like this, paulstretch is the way to do it. https://sonosaurus.com/paulxstretch/
My personal favorite use of this: https://youtu.be/XiKWfcy-Z70?si=iJTP0XTEAAObI_rU
There's a basic playback speed control now (basic in as much as it doesn't preserve pitch) plus things like reverb and delay effects
Here's some slowed-down ambient music: https://test.ambiph.one/?m=1-Slow+Realisation-ap50a25c60
And a cat purring at 50% speed makes a pretty convincing lion: https://test.ambiph.one/?m=1-Lion's+Den-aa8a34c60e37f100ac50...
(Audio may be a little glitchy on Android Chrome if you have lots of sounds playing - I'm debugging that at the moment)
Does anyone know what can make that?
https://youtu.be/c4E6RO4muLU?si=6QbUatQXm0zzWy0N
For fans of the film Heat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHP4qbgAN6s One of my absolute favorites to work to.
It's only streaming right now and each streamed version is unique, riffing off of Eno's "generative" music.
https://reverbmachine.com/blog/deconstructing-brian-eno-musi...
It's a must-read! It has analysis of all Eno's tape loops and an interactive note randomizer. Mentioned in the article's related content but it's worth an extra shout.
Fun to play around with for anyone who likes the album or ambient music in general.
Also now wondering if there’s any research on how music affects (cognitive) performance.
https://www.youtube.com/live/Uu_03mUPgHU?si=ggJYSJH8SUy0AcKO
https://youtu.be/TTHF2Dfw1Dg?si=PKvJpnG88hjV2-St
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H9AldyuIh5A
I heard this music off on for decades, but couldn’t place it. I doubled down and only having a memory of it I was certain it was by Brian Eno.
It took me a while to stumble upon it, it was music written for an ITV Science programme’s April Fool’s episode; which due to strike action was delayed until July.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3
This comes up repeatedly with regards to conspiracy theories, I assume not by people who think the Moon landings are a hoax, that would be insane. Erm wait a minute…