Episode 115: Transience & Immersion: On Brian Eno's 'Music for Airports'

Soft, soothing, and understated as a rule, ambient music may seem the least weird of all musical genres. Not so, say JF and Phil, who devote this episode to Brian Eno's Ambient 1: Music for Airports, the 1978 album in whose liner notes the term "ambient music" first appeared. In this conversation, your hosts explore the aesthetic, metaphysical, and political implications of a kind of music designed to interact with the listener -- and the listener's environment -- below the threshold of ordinary, directed awareness. Eno and Peter Schmidt's famous Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards designed to heighten and deepen creativity, lends divinatory support to the endeavor. Support us on Patreon Find us on Discord Get the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau! Get your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack REFERENCES Brian Eno, Ambient 1: Music for Airports Gabriella Cardazzo, Duncan Ward, and Brian Eno, Imaginary Landscapes Oblique Strategies Deck Theodore Adorno, Introduction to the Sociology of Music Marc Auge, Non-Places Anahid Kassabian, “Ubiquitous Music” Sigmund Freud, “On Transience” Weird Studies, Episode 104 on Sgt. Pepper Joris Karl Huysmans, A Rebours Roger Moseley, Keys to Play