Brian Eno - Ambient 4: On Land (1982)

Been giving this Eno classic a lot of play in the last week or two, mostly at as low a volume as possible, letting it blend in with the ambient sounds coming through the open windows.  On Land was the last album in Eno's Ambient series, and was created via a kind of "musical composting" from previous recordings and environmental sounds.

Guest musicians give On Land a fresh perspective too, with no less than three on the opening track, including Bill Laswell on bass.  Jon Hassell also contributes trumpet to the all-too-brief Shadow.  As a whole, On Land conjures up (not least from the track titles and liner notes) half-forgotten landscapes from childhood, reconstructed as vague impressions.  It's both one of Eno's most organic-sounding ambient records and most alien, and does get a bit unsettling in places, verging on dark ambient, with the more soothing pieces towards the end.  Essential stuff, endlessly listenable at any volume.

link
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Previously posted at SGTG:
Another Green World
Cluster & Eno
Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror (with Harold Budd)
Apollo - Atmospheres & Soundtracks (with Daniel Lanois & Roger Eno)
The Pearl (with Harold Budd & Daniel Lanois)

Various Artists - A Brief History Of Ambient, Volume 1 (1993 compilation)

First charity shop rummage of the new year turned up this double-CD mix released by Virgin Records, which as the title suggests ran to a short series.  I vaguely remember these coming out, but despite my curiosity they'd have been too heavy an investment for me at the time: this one that I've just paid two quid for still has its Tower Records price sticker of £15.49, and that's pretty reasonable for a double set of 70+ minute discs back then, IIRC!

Everything here is naturally from artists licensed to Virgin, which gives a handy reminder of what canny risk-takers Branson & co were back in the 70s through to mid-80s.  Even into the 90s to an extent - oddly, Hillage/System 7 are conspicuous by their absence for whatever reason (of course, the Point 3 albums hadn't been released yet in '93).  Just take a look at the artist list in the labels below - and I couldn't fit them all in, ran out of space.

Good track choices too (can never say no to a good chunk of Tangerine Dream's Phaedra); full tracklist is here, along with info on an early mispress that led to the mastering cues for Disc 1 being inadvertently used again for Disc 2, the latter ending up with its track divisions all over the shop.  The copy I've just bought is actually one of those - I've re-sequenced Disc 2 now.  So here's a brief history of (Virgin) ambient, with some inevitable classics, and a few (for me) new surprises: loved the remix of early Killing Joke that sounds like an update of the first two Neu! albums, to name just one.

links:
Disc 1
Disc 2
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extra Phaedra...

As a postscript, for anyone who doesn't have Tangerine Dream's 1974 debut for Virgin that catapulted them to stardom with an interstellar, gaseous mix of Moog, Mellotron and flute - grab the full album below.  Was nice to see it featured in the recent Black Mirror episode, along with a faithful recreation of the WH Smith shopfronts that I remember from my childhood.

link
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