Brian Eno was a pioneer of ambient music. I first found out about Brian Eno through his work with David Bowie especially on his albums Low and Heroes. I have also listened to all of his solo albums with Here Comes The Warm Jets being my favourite. I found out about his ambient work after listening to a lot of his more pop / rock music. Music for Airports was released in 1979, Music for Airports consists of four songs, 1/1, 1/2, 2/1 and 2/2. All four of the songs are around the 10 minute mark which is a lot longer than the conventional song length ( 3-5 minutes long). The album was made with very long tape loops playing various piano, choir and synth 3-4 note phrases.
“The particular piece I’m referring to was done by using a whole series of very long tape loops, like fifty, sixty, seventy feet long. There were twenty-two loops. One loop had just one piano note on it. Another one would have two piano notes. Another one would have a group of girls singing one note, sustaining it for ten seconds. There are eight loops of girls’ voices and about fourteen loops of piano. I just set all of these loops running and let them configure in whichever way they wanted to, and in fact the result is very, very nice. The interesting thing is that it doesn’t sound at all mechanical or mathematical as you would imagine. It sounds like some guy is sitting there playing the piano with quite intense feeling. The spacing and dynamics of “his” playing sound very well organized. That was an example of hardly interfering at all.“
I have listened to this album many times before finding it for this reserarch and it has definitely inspired a lot of my work outside of uni.
https://www.discogs.com/master/6265-Brian-Eno-Ambient-1-Music-For-Airports
https://reverbmachine.com/blog/deconstructing-brian-eno-music-for-airports/