Coryphe

*Bung!*

The sound, not the biological term. You know, when you sit in an airplane, and they turn the fasten seatbelts signs on or off? *bung*

Airplanes and airports are interesting places. They have their own sounds, their own smell, their own particular interactions. Time becomes an abstract concept, as people come together from who knows where – you wouldn’t be shocked to find someone drinking a beer at 8:30 in the morning. 

Browse the latest Bluetooth speakers and headsets, buy a questionable sandwich at 350% market value, check the latest Louis Vuitton collection, or spend some time in a massage chair, as Suits push along Rimowa suitcases and parents push along children that aren’t privy to the urgency of getting to the gate on time. 

In 1978, Brian Eno set out to capture something that sounds like it would fit here. Not hold music or elevator music, not soulless muzak that drives storefront employees mad. Not invasive, not forgettable – alive, purposeful, worth listening to, but not demanding attention. You might pose that ambient is to sound what perfume is to scent. 

(Eno as a person is a whole detour in himself – if you are at all interested in how he established a genre, while calling himself a non-musician, and also helping production of albums by Bowie or working with Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins, I encourage you to do a deep dive on the man. )

For Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1987), the story goes that Eno was spending time in hospital after an accident and had a visiting friend leave on soft music for him that he felt blended with the falling rain outside his window. While this experience had put him to thinking, it was an extended layover at a German airport, where he brooded over the uninspired atmosphere and decided to do away with it. 

Et voilà: the ambient genre was born – go immerse yourself in the sound of the periphery.