Ambient 1: Music for Airports is the sixth studio album by Brian Eno, released in 1978 by Polydor Records. It is the first of Eno's albums released under the label of ambient music, a genre of music intended to "induce calm and a space to think" while remaining "as ignorable as it is interesting".^[1][2] While not Eno's earliest entry in the style, it is credited with coining the term.

The album consists of four compositions created by layering tape loops of differing lengths, and was designed to be continuously looped as a sound installation, with the intent of defusing the anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal. Eno defined his approach in opposition to "canned" Muzak and easy listening practices. The album was the first of four albums released in Eno's Ambient series, which concluded with 1981's Ambient 4: On Land.

In 2004, Rolling Stone credited the album with defining the ambient genre.^[3] In 2016, Pitchfork ranked it the greatest ambient album of all time.^[4]

Eno became interested in ambience when he suffered an automobile accident that sent him to the hospital in the mid-1970s. His friend Judy Nylon visited Eno in the hospital and left an album playing quietly before leaving.^[5] The sound blended with the rain outside the room and, unable to get up and adjust the volume, Eno allowed it to create an ambience aligned with his fluctuating attention.^[6] The album Discreet Music (1975), per Eno's own judgement, was his first foray into ambient music.^[6][7][8][9]

After spending several hours waiting for a flight at Germany's Cologne Bonn Airport and becoming annoyed by its uninspired atmosphere, Eno conceived an album of music "designed for airports". He intended for the album to still function within various other situations.^[10][11][12] Ambient music was then a "relatively modest field", "more a concept than a genre", and mostly created against the context of dominant muzak practices.^[7][13][14] Eno's concept was distinct from elevator music and easy listening's "derivative" background noise approach,^[4] and was instead to be used as a means of creating space for thought.^[15] In the album's liner notes, Eno explained:

Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to `brighten' the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms) Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think. Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.^[16]

Eno later named the Ray Conniff Singers and the "Borgesian idea" of a self-generated "world in reverse" which is centered around music as inspirations during this period.^[17][18]

All tracks were composed by Eno except "1/1", which was co-composed by Eno with former Soft Machine drummer and vocalist Robert Wyatt and with producer Rhett Davies.

Music for Airports makes use of spliced tape loops.^[19] Recalling its creation, Eno said it was "conceived as deliberately austere and unemotional" and "was essentially made by machines".^[17][20] He began work during the creation of David Bowie's Low.^[21] With regards to their instrumentation, dynamic range, timbre, harmony, tonality and texture, the tracks are confining and feature a "contained repertory of pitches, gestural shapes, and motivic content that lasts throughout its entirety".^[9][22] Variations of timbre are seen when comparing the tracks, such as the warm "1/1" contrasting with the cold and dark "1/2".^[9] They are without backing rhythms and instead irregular repetition.^[23]

He has stated a connection to death. Not wanting it to be "all bright and cheerful", Eno, a self-proclaimed "nervous flyer", considered the feelings that arise from being at an airport, including the supposed mortality salience and hoped the album would bring solace: "Really, it’s music to resign you to the possibility of death".^[24][25] John L. Waters described the album as a "logical progression from the work of the experimental and systems-based 'serious' musicians (John White, Gavin Bryars, Christopher Hobbs, Michael Parsons, Michael Nyman) that Eno recorded and championed for his label Obscure".^[26] David Stubbs noted similarities to the work of Erik Satie.^[27]

"1/1", features piano loops performed in an arrhythmic manner – piano being the dominant instrument throughout the album.^[6][28] The track arose from two pianists improvising whereby neither could clearly hear the other, leading to separate yet complementary melodies being played.^[29] Various motifs, played in a fitful manner, are featured.^[30] Philosopher of art John Lysaker, while discussing the album's general sense of aimless direction, noted that "1/1" "holds together no better (and no worse) than a cloud".^{[6][lower-alpha 1]} The music throughout is down-tempo, without "distinct melodic or harmonic development[;] no highs or lows".^[12] "1/1" is the only track to feature a melody.^{[31][clarification needed]}

"2/1" and "1/2" make use of vocal loops; the former designed to have them fluctuate in synchrony.^[32] The disparate lengths of "2/1" were the result of each singer's differing capabilities. He modified the tape recordings offhandedly to loops,^[33] desiring "a silence at least twice as long as the sound" and "complicated rather than simple relationships". "And then I started all the loops running, and let them configure in the way they chose to configure".^[34] Music professor Victor Szabo described the track as "ghostly", writing that the "non-vibrato" tape loops are "uncannily lifeless": "Through such compositional techniques and affective-expressive codes, ‘2/1’ intimates human absence more overtly than any other track".^[9]

"2/2" was performed with an ARP 2600 synthesiser. Brian Eno described how this piece was recorded:

[...] The second piece on the second side of Music for Airports was done with an ARP 2600. It's a beautiful sound, I think, and one that I couldn't have got from any other synthesizer that I know of. The thing that makes it so luscious is that it's slowed down, and it has three kinds of echo on it.^[35]

The track labelling refers to the album's first release (1978) as an LP, and so the first track means "first track, first side", and so on. The CD pressing adds 30 seconds of silence after every track, including "2/2".

The album's back cover features four abstract graphic notation images, one for each track, representing their structure and instrumentation.^[6][70]

• Brian Eno – synthesiser, electric piano, vocals
• Christa Fast – vocals ("2/1", "1/2")
• Christine Gomez – vocals ("2/1", "1/2")
• Inge Zeininger – vocals ("2/1", "1/2")
• Robert Wyatt – acoustic piano ("1/1", "1/2")

Recording

• Brian Eno – producer, engineer
• Dave Hutchins – engineer ("2/1", "1/2")
• Conny Plank – engineer ("2/2"),
• Rhett Davies – engineer ("1/1")

Design

• Brian Eno – cover art

Recording Location

• London ("1/1", "1/2", "2/1")
• Plank's Studio, Cologne ("2/2")

• Mistaken Memories of Mediaeval Manhattan is a 1981, 47-minute ambient video created by Eno which uses music from both the albums Ambient 4: On Land and this album.^[72] This title was later included with his Thursday Afternoon video on the Rykodisc DVD compilation 14 Video Paintings.^[73]
• Music from the album has been covered by:
  • Makyo — "2/1 (Night Flight Mix)", on the double compilation CD Minimalism: More Or Less, 1998, Law & Auder (LA05CD)^[74][75]
  • nalptenalp, "Re: 1/1" (2020), which is a reconstruction of "1/1".
• Arrangements of the album performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars were made into a video filmed and edited by Frank Scheffer, entitled Music For Airports / In The Ocean^[76]
• The first track is used in the PBS special The Creation of the Universe.^[77] Eno is the sole music credit, and he also wrote original music for the documentary.
• "1/1" is frequently used as background music on the US public radio program This American Life.
• "1/1" is used as background music in the 1986 film 9½ Weeks.^[78]
• "1/1" features prominently in the opening scene of the 2009 motion picture The Lovely Bones.^[79]
• Excerpts of Ambient 1 appear in Robert Hughes' documentary on Modern Art The Shock of the New, episode 4 Trouble in Utopia.
• Prior to the first hosted live broadcast of Apple's Beats 1 internet radio station, music from the album was played on the service's audio stream.^[80]

• Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror
• Ambient 3: Day of Radiance
• Ambient 4: On Land