What I was listening to last week…

(listen to the playlist with all of these songs here)

Ambient 1: Music For Airports – Brian Eno
In the late 1970s iconic producer and creator of ambient music Brian Eno was waiting on a delayed flight in the Cologne Airport. The building was beautiful, the light was beautiful, “everything was beautiful except they were playing awful music,” he says. Up to that point ambient music was not a genre, there was only elevator music or “muzak.” Eno felt that there was room for something that would “induce calm and a space to think,” but that wasn’t dismissed entirely. He told Ezra Klein recently that he was wondering, “what about if you could make a kind of music that made you less worried about the idea of dying? What about if you could make a piece of music that made your life seem less the center of your attention?” While working on David Bowie’s Low he started to experiment with female vocal loops run through tape machines. Then he took a piano recording, looped it, slowed it down, and added reverb. Through this experimentation he discovered a new method of writing music, “putting in motion something and letting it make the thing for you.” The result was Music For Airports which became the first album explicitly labeled as ambient music. Over the last year I’ve been putting this album on repeat as I fall asleep. I’ve also been reading his new book What Art Does which is really great.

Supernova – Dreamwake
In Brian Eno’s book he says that “we are unfinished beings whose task is constantly to re-examine and remix our ideas and our identities.” This band is remixing nostalgic synthwave with metal in a way that seems familiar but brand new (they call themselves wavecore). There are saxophone solos, soaring synths, intricate metal guitar riffs, and earworm vocal melodies. It reminds me of what Bilmuri (who I wrote about a few weeks ago) is doing but leaning more into the 80s synth vibe. There are moments all throughout the album that have me stopping whatever I’m doing and getting a good head bang going. But this song specifically has been on repeat. The chorus melody is like a drug that I need injected into my veins. 

We Fell In Love In October x On One Tonight – Girl In Red, Gunna
This is the perfect example of re-examining and remixing two pieces of music that could not be more different. It’s Girl In Red, a quiet indie singer-songwriter, and Gunna, a rapper who was recently released from jail. Total opposites but this works so well. It’s got an ethereal feeling which you wouldn’t normally get from either artist. I think it came from this producer on TikTok… It’s hard to tell but it’s been on repeat!

Hope you listen to great music this week!
Dawson

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