I’ve written before of my love of Tangerine Dream’s classic, analogue Virgin albums, but one direction that love led me in was to develop a love of what came to be known as ‘ambient’ music, though I’ve long felt that is a term which undersells it. At first, this just developed into loving Can, especially the Future Days record. That was very accessible to me. After that, I remember enjoying No Pussyfooting and Here Come The Warm Jets by Eno and Another Green World. I loved how the Eno records inhabited their own landscapes and you felt transported to a different place.
Then I heard some Steve Reich music and became obsessed with those repeated patterns which would subtly change a little bit and ended up in a very diffrerent place. Naturally from there I discovered Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet.
Now, I am, as you know, an acolyte of the lead guitar and this music is the complete opposite. But because of that it presses a different nerve in my brain. Criticism of the ‘nothing happens’ variety, misses the point. These are intentionally subtle pieces of music with glacial changes, like shifting light on a cloudy day and they demand your attention to respond to the minor changes. They usually don’t do dramatic shifts or sonics, everything is subtle and understated. In some ways, it’s like a whispered foreign language and you can reject or embrace it.
And once you’re knee deep in this stuff, electronic music like Silver Apples Of The Moon by Morton Subotnik playing the Buchla synthesizer becomes accessible. The music of Suzanne Ciani is extended synth music and is, perhaps, not commercial but is very creative. A Rainbow In Curved Air by Terry Riley is a must-have classic of the genre.
My old hippy pal, Nigel, used to say you could only like Tangerine Dream if they ’fitted’ your head and I think it’s the same with all this music. I think it bounces off some people, who just don't hear anything of interest in this noise, whereas people who get it are sent into a blissful, meditative state. And it feels like it exists all the time and you’re just dipping into it. It’s timeless. You have little sense of the era it was created in. In fact it often seems to exist outside of time.
It really is a brilliant and broad genre of music which rewards a deep dive into it, even though it’s decidedly obscure and uncommercial. If you’re new to it, the Eno albums are a good place to begin and then jump into Steve Reich. There are loads of records to enjoy.
