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A 6-Hour Time-Stretched Version of Brian Eno's Music for Airports

Robert Wyatt, Music for Airports started the idea of slow, meditative music that abandoned typical major and minor scales, brought in melodic ambiguity, and began the exploration of sounds that were designed to exist somewhere in the background, beyond the scope of full attention.

Cre­at­ed in 1978 from sec­onds-long tape loops from a much longer improv ses­sion with musi­cians includ­ing Robert Wyatt, Music for Air­ports start­ed the idea of slow, med­i­ta­tive music that aban­doned typ­i­cal major and minor scales, brought in melod­ic ambi­gu­i­ty, and began the explo­ration of sounds that were designed to exist some­where in the back­ground, beyond the scope of full atten­tion. The album seemed des­tined for per­son­al use only, but then in 1997 the mod­ern ensem­ble Bang on a Can played it live, trans­lat­ing the ran­dom­ness of out-of-sync tape loops into music nota­tion. Writ­ing for KCET, Alex Zaragoza report­ed that “cry­ing babies, echoes of rolling suit­cas­es and board­ing pass­es serv­ing as tick­ets to the con­cert failed to remind any­one that they were, indeed, at one of the busiest air­ports in the coun­try.

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