Brian Eno - Music for Prague (2001)

This music was conceived for a 1998 installation of Brian Eno, collaborting with Jiri Prihoda in Prague. The CD was donated to an auction in aid of South London Arts in January 2001 and raised £ 400. 

As Thursday Afternoon, Music for Prague is a long ambient track, where piano notes and melodic lines evolve very slowly. It is another perfect realization of Eno's concept of generative music, where different tracks are blended together in a randomly way, and one should listen to the installation at least 10.000 years to hear the entire possibilities of a single piece. 

Quiet music for our hectic times, Music for Prague is the perfect soundtrack for a winter evening... To be played and listened to in infinite repeat mode !

link: mp3

Be.MfP.zip

password: olduvai

Russell Mills & Undark - Pearl & Umbra (1999)

Russell Mills should be a familiar name to all the ambient music fans, since he designed the artwork of many Brian Eno's and David Sylvian's recordings, among many other artists. Russell Mills also created many installations and designed stage set up for Harold Budd and David Sylvian's concerts, among others.  His paintings and his sound installations are displayed in art galleries all around the world.

Russell Mills is also a musician and a sound sculptor, and he released several beautiful CDs, mixing ambient soundscapes and post-rock climates in a very creative way.

Pearl & Umbra is a rare and impressive recording, involving 34 musicians. The gotha of the new musics scene is contributing to this album: Eraldo Bernocchi, Michael Brook, Harold Budd, Sussan Deyhim, Brian Eno, Roger Eno, Peter Gabriel, Robin Guthrie, Bill Laswell, Paul Schutze, David Sylvian, Ian Walton and Hector Zazou, to name but a few...

Enjoy...

link / mp3

RM.PaU.zip

password: olduvai

Brian Eno - Lightness. Music for the Marble Palace. The State Russian Museum (1997)

"The music of this CD is a 1 hour section of a hypothetically endless piece composed and recorded by Brian Eno for his installation at the marbe palace, The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, in November 1997".

The two tracks of this album, "Atmospheric Lightness" (32:00) and "Chamber Lightness" (25:00) are made with slowly evolving electronic layers, using the generative capabilities of the Koan Pro software.  The result is a very quiet and minimal music, with beautiful harmonics created by the randomly driven polyphony. In the large room where this installation was displayed, computer-programmed projectors created randomized and colourful patterns on a series of screens, while another part of the room was dark.

This is a quiet music for a quiet times in a quiet place... 

link : mp3 / 320

BELight.zip

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Bang on a can - Music for Airports / Brian Eno (1998)

Brian Eno's Music for Airports (1978) played a very important part in the concept and development of ambient music. One could say that ambient music is not a music to be listened to, but a music to be heard, as a subliminal background creating a soundscape for various places or buildings. Supermarkets and elevators are usually places where a poor music is played, one calls it muzak. Brian Eno's idea was to conceive a sophisticated musical soundscape instead of this anonymous FM music, and he chose airports as the best places where such a music could be heard and understood, creating an unusual and quiet sonic background among all the noises and announcements of a airport terminal.

Music for Airports is a masterpiece, with its subtle piano tracks, its complex electronic treatments, its choral parts, and its slow and organic development.

In 1998, Point Music, a label directed by Philip Glass, released this amazing interpretation of Music for Airports by Bang on a Can: Robert Black (bass), Lisa Moore (piano, keyboards), Evan Ziporyn (clarinet, bass clarinet), Maya Beiser (cello), Steven Schick (percussion), a choir of female voices and additional musicians playing pipa, flute, horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, cello, mandolin and mandocello.

This chamber music ensemble plays Eno's compositions with fidelity and creativity at the same times. The acoustic instruments create a rich harmonic soundscape and add a very original touch to the original recording. 

This peaceful, quiet and slow music is very evocative and poetic: the cover version is as beautiful as the original...

link: mp3 / 320

BoaCMfA.zip

pass: olduvai

Harold Budd - The Pavilion of Dreams (1978)

Harold Budd is an American composer (b. 1936) who played (and still plays)  a very important part in the minimalist and ambient scene, either as a solo artist or through his collaborations with musicians such as Brian Eno, Zeitgeist, Hector Zazou, Andy Patridge, John Foxx, Daniel Lentz, Ruben Gardia, Cocteau Twins, Robin Guthrie.

The Pavilion of Dreams was released in the famous series Obscure Records, where Brian Eno produced still unknown composers such as Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman. It was Harold Budd's second album, and it revealed him to a wider international audience.

Ambient and impressionist music, intimate chamber music, quiet melodies in the vein of Satie and Debussy, The Pavilion of Dreams offers "an extended cycle of works begun in 1972". Harold Budd (electric piano) is accompanied by a small ensemble of musicians (harp, celeste, marimbas, percussion, vibes and vibraphone, chorus). Among them, Lynda Richardson (mezzo soprano), Marion Brown (Alto sapophone), Michael Nyman (marimba) and Gavin Bryars (glockenspiel, voice, celeste). 

Quiet music for an hectic age, The Pavilion of Dreams explores the poetics of slowness. Mysteriously ambient, lightly melancholic, deep as an horizon, these compositions opened new perspectives in the trend of ambient musics, and they could be considered as a foreword to Ambient 2 / The Plateaux of Mirror, composed in 1980 with Brian Eno.

link / mp3 320

HB.TPofD.zip

password: olduvai

Brian Eno - "An Ending (Ascent)" remixed by Leama and Moor

An Ending (Ascent) is one of my favorite songs in Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, the ambient masterpiece of Brian Eno, Roger Eno and Daniel Lanois (1983).

Two famous DJs of the dance / trance scene, Leama &  Moor (aka Andy Beardmore and Martin Smith)  remixed this song and produced an amazing result: ambient dance music, mixing together an uptempo techno rythm with a subtle enhancement of Eno's original piece.

I love very much this inspired remix, and although I admit it is a radical change from the original, it adds a great mood and feeling, and it is a floating and psychedelic song.

Here are the original Eno's piece and the remix by Leama & Moor:

ELMoor.zip

password: olduvai

Michael Brook (with Brian Eno & Daniel Lanois) - Hybrid (1985)

Michael Brook is an unclassifiable composer and producer: from U2 to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, from Brian Eno to U. Srinivas and Youssou N'Dour...

At the beginning... Michael Brook was a sound engineer and worked in Daniel Lanois' studio. He met Brian Eno in this studio perhaps during the recording and mixing sessions for Apollo: Soundtracks and Atmospheres (released in 1983).

Hybrid was Michael's first album, and featured Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois on most of the tracks and as co-producers. Hybrid could be defined as a meeting point between Eno's On Land and Jon Hassel's Fourth World Music. Michael Brook played guitar in a very specific way, with customized electronic treatments allowing a played note to be infinite. The "infinite guitar" was (and still is) the trademark of Michael Brook's sound and music: Brook shared his secrets and his equipment with The Edge, and the "infinite guitar" sound added its specific colour to U2's The Joshua Tree (1987).

Hybrid is a great album of ambient music, where the treated guitar sounds like a trumpet or a human voice, where the background sounds and textures and the percussions sound like a field recording in some remote African tribe.

It was the starting point of an amazing career and we could list some of Michael Brook's albums:

- Captive (soundtrack, with The Edge) (1986)

- Mustt Mustt (with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) (1990)

- Cobalt Blue (solo album) (1992)

- Live at the Aquarium (live recording) (1993)

- Night Song (with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) (1996)

- Sleeps with the fishes (with Pieter Nooten) (1996)

- Albino Alligator (soundtrack) (1997)

- Black Rock (with Djivan Gasparyan) (1998)

- RockPaperScissors (2006)

- Americanese (soundtrack) (2008)

etc

link: mp3/320

MBH.zip

password: olduvai

Brian Eno - "Prophecy Theme" (1984)

The soundtrack of Dune, the David Lynch's movie, was composed by the pop band Toto, except one track: "Prophecy Theme" (n°9 on the CD) was written, composed and performed by Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Roger Eno.

In 1984, Brian Eno was working with Daniel Lanois on the production of U2's new album, The Unforgettable Fire. But "Prophecy Theme" is closer to their common work on Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks (1983), a splendid and unforgettable album. In 1985, Brian Eno released Thursday Afternoon, his master piece of ambient music, a one hour long composition. 

"Prophecy Theme" is a haunting melodic track, relying on a multi-layered electronic polyphony, processed by a long reverb treatment.

Its slow development and its infinite depth create an unforgettable climate.

This is such a beautiful track that I would like to share it with you: it is a 4:19 track (usually I set Itunes in an infinite repeat mode ;-)

Link: mp3 / 320

BEPT.zip

password: olduvai

Brian Eno - Pellisero Wine (Promotional CD, 2003)

Brian Eno is another of my all-times favorite artists. With his many collaborations, his video and multimedia installations, his work as a music producer and composer, Brian Eno is one of the most influential and innovative artists of our time... 

"Pellisero Wine" is a rare promotional CD, celebrating an Italian wine and offered to wine sellers. It features five unreleased tracks, in the same mood as Brian Eno's 2003 album, "Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now": these compositions experiment possible melodies and atmospheres for bell towers. Relying on  digital bell sounds (from FM synthesizers such as the Yamaha DX7), processed through various reverbs and delays, these compositions create strange and hypnotic soundscapes, between ambient and experimentation, with cycles of repetition ruled by mysterious mathematical laws.

Track list: 

1. Study 16 (x5, x3, series ratios)

2. Study 17 (Pythagorean ratios)

3. If a bell became a drone

4. Campion Vells

5. Bell Study with distant delay

Link to the mp3: BEPW.zip

password: olduvai