Ambient Music as Popular Genre

397 Pages·2015·5.16 MB·English

Ambient Music as Popular Genre: Historiography, Interpretation, Critique

Victor Louis Franco Szabo
Cleveland, Ohio

B.Mus., Music Theory, University of Michigan, 2007
B.A., Philosophy, University of Michigan, 2007

A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty
of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Music

University of Virginia
May, 2015
© Copyright by
Victor Louis Franco Szabo
All Rights Reserved
May 2015
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ABSTRACT

In September 1978, Brian Eno coined the term “Ambient music” to describe a
type of audio recording designed to create atmosphere. Ambient music, he proposed,
should foster calm while registering doubt, and accommodate various different levels of
listening attention. Since Eno’s proposal, Ambient music has become a genre of drone-
and loop-based electronic music within the popular music market.
This dissertation examines several key recordings in the formation of the Ambient
genre of popular music, with focus on releases from the U.S. and England between the
late 1960s and early 1990s. Through music analyses of these recordings, as well as media
analyses of their promotional rhetoric, this dissertation traces the sonic tropes and social
practices discursively organized by the “Ambient” label. It describes how Ambient music
serves users as a means of relaxing, regulating mood, and fostering an atmosphere or
sense of place. Unlike most extant accounts of the genre, it also explores how Ambient
recordings reflect aesthetically upon their instrumentality through musical techniques,
metaphors, and moods. A survey of approximately one-hundred Ambient listeners rounds
out the study, illuminating from a diachronic perspective how reception practices relate to
the production and interpretation of Ambient recordings.
Chapters 1 and 3 examine two proto-Ambient recordings from the Environments
series of LPs (Atlantic, 1969–78), released by Syntonic Research, Inc. These analyses
elucidate the aesthetics and technological uses that have since consolidated Ambient
music as a genre, with special focus on shifting attitudes toward consumer technology in
the Western environmental and countercultural movements. Chapter 2 compares and
contrasts Environments with recordings from the concurrently emerging Acoustic
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Ecology movement.
Chapters 4 and 5 investigate various artistic and conceptual practices that
informed Brian Eno’s conception of Ambient music. Chapter 4 identifies precedents for
Eno’s concept in the experimental avant-garde practices of Erik Satie, John Cage, La
Monte Young, and Steve Reich. Chapter 5 analyzes the title recording on Eno’s Discreet
Music album (Obscure, 1975), placing its production in the context to 1960s and ‘70s
English experimentalism, as well as the research field of cybernetics. It concludes with a
media analysis of the record as a consumer product, illustrating how the elimination of
authorial intention in experimental composition and cybernetics translates into popular
art.
Chapters 6 and 7 outline Ambient music’s explicit emergence as a term in the
popular music market. Chapter 6 examines Brian Eno’s Music for Airports (Editions
E.G., 1978) through a comparative analysis with The Black Dog’s Music for Real
Airports (Soma Quality Recordings, 2010), illuminating the relevance of Ambient
music’s contexts of consumption to interpretation. It concludes with a brief reading of
Eno’s On Land (Editions E.G., 1982), which cemented Ambient music’s significance
within private, individualized reception. Chapter 7 concludes the study with an overview
of various recordings by The Orb, KLF, Mixmaster Morris, and Pete Namlook in the
“ambient house” subgenre of electronic dance music, illustrating their connections with
the aesthetic themes and promotional discourses of earlier Ambient recordings.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would first like to thank the faculty at UVa who have deepened, challenged, and
broadened my perception of academic scholarship over the last seven years, all the while
helping me navigate the winding course to the Ph.D. degree. Seminars and conversations
with Scott DeVeaux, Michelle Kisliuk, Eric Lott, Michael Slon, Heather Wiebe, and
Richard Will importantly shaped how I understand, write about, and make music. Special
thanks to Heather and Michelle for spurring me early on to consider Ambient music as a
research focus. Fred Maus has provided invaluable guidance and support from my first
day at UVa; I could not have asked for a more caring advisor and mentor. Michael Puri
also provided thoughtful mentorship, spiritedly indulging my intellectual curiosities while
encouraging expressive clarity. I have immensely enjoyed listening to recorded sounds
with Ted Coffey; his passion for the art of craft reminds me to love what I do. Bonnie
Gordon has offered not only generous financial support over my last several years at
UVa, but also candid advice and humor that has kept me grounded. I would like to thank
her for always keeping her door open (literally) to respond to questions and concerns.
Finally, I would like to thank Rita Felski for her generosity as a reader, and the
confidence she inspires in me to invent and pursue novel theories and concepts.
I am grateful to those who have contributed their personal insights and materials
toward this project, including Jennifer Ballow, Miriam Berman, Gavin Bryars,
Christopher Hobbs, Marco Iacoboni, Dave Swindells, and Zachary Wallmark. Thanks to
Mack Hagood for sharing his in-progress work on the Environments series, and to Mark
Butler, Sumanth Gopinath, and Martin Scherzinger for their feedback during the early
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stages of this project. Claire Maiers and her colleagues at UVa Sociology generously
provided crucial feedback on the listener reception study. The staff at UVa’s Music
Library, especially Winston Barham, Stephanie Hunter, and Matthew Vest, eased the
research process tremendously, and did so with cheer. Thanks to Thea Giovannini at the
Museum of Arts and Design, and Sally DeBauche and Aryn Glazier at The Dolph
Briscoe Center for American History at UT Austin, for helping locate and deliver
archival materials related to Environments.
I consider myself incredibly fortunate for the camaraderie, laughter, and support
from my fellow UVa Musgrads. Thanks to my cohort, Matt Jones and Emily Gale, for the
fun times, fashion, style, and reminders that things will go my way (if I just hold on for
one more day). Sarah Culpeper, Liz Lindau, and Chris Peck have been not only
stimulating interlocutors about all things music, but also a blast to hang out with—not to
mention dynamite karaoke performers. Kevin Davis lent me an ear during trying times, a
couch during lazy times, and a steady hand during tricky graphic notation times (see
Chapter 6). Stephanie Doktor read several chapter and conference paper drafts, asking
great questions and making me laugh throughout. Kristina Warren (salamé!) provided
helpful feedback while I was formulating the Ambient listener survey. Amy Coddington,
Craig Comen, Jarek Ervin, and Stephanie Gunst—y’all are cray (in the best possible
way). Keep the fun alive in Charlottesville for me!
Which reminds me: thanks, Escafé, for the merry moments and terrible tunes.
Thanks to Shenandoah Joe Coffee Roasters, Milli Joe, La Taza, and Shark Mountain for
providing delicious daily writing fuel and temporary workspaces. And thank you, WTJU,
for giving me a much-needed creative outlet every other week.
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Finally, I would like to thank my mother, sister, and brother for believing in me.
To the Coyles, thank you for making me feel at home and part of the family. Laurel, Lee,
Lauren, Erin, and Robin—thanks for sticking with me throughout this whole grad school
thing; here’s hoping we get to spend more time together in the years ahead. Zephyr:
you’re a cat! And last, but most of all, I would like to thank my partner, Ian Coyle, for his
love, patience, kindness, and willingness to listen to every single one of my academic
presentations. Ian, you make me a better, calmer person, and I am very lucky to have you
by my side.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract .............................................................................................................................iii
Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................v
List of Examples and Figures ...........................................................................................ix

Introduction: Ambient Music in an Age of Ubiquitous Listening ......................................1

PART I Horizon

Introduction to Part I .........................................................................................................32

1. “Nature Abhors Silence”: Selling Sensuous Seclusion with The Psychologically
Ultimate Seashore .............................................................................................................34

2. Designing Acoustic Ecologies: Two Approaches .........................................................62
3. Tintinnabulation and the Missing Countercultural Link between Minimalism and
Ambient Music ..................................................................................................................82

PART II Background

Introduction to Part II ......................................................................................................126

4. Ambient Music as Experimental Music: Precedents ..................................................128

5. Locating Brian Eno’s Discreet Music .........................................................................165

PART III Foreground

Introduction to Part III ....................................................................................................242

6. Placing Brian Eno’s Music for Airports ......................................................................243

7. “Traveling without Moving” through Ambient House ...............................................290

Conclusion ......................................................................................................................334

Appendix: Reception Study: Ambient Music Listenership and Modes of Consumption
..........................................................................................................................................342
Selected Discography ......................................................................................................365
Bibliography....................................................................................................................367
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LIST OF EXAMPLES AND FIGURES

MUSICAL EXAMPLES

5.1. Loops in proto-Ambient recordings on Brian Eno’s Another Green World..................172
5.2. Melodic fragments used in “Discreet Music” ................................................................185
6.1. Transcription of “2/1” [0:00–1:40] ................................................................................253
6.2. Reduction of “1/1” [1:30–2:30] .....................................................................................256
6.3. Pitch repertories used on Music for Airports..................................................................257

FIGURES

1.1. Syntonic Research, Inc.’s many logos..............................................................................36
1.2. “Listening Test Responses” and other “user feedback,” back covers for Environments
discs One, Eight, and Nine.......................................................................................................38
1.3. The Psychologically Ultimate Seashore spectrogram......................................................50
1.4. Serenity: The Silent Surf spectrogram..............................................................................55
2.1. “The Music of the Future Isn’t Music”: Subtitle on Environments’s cassette re-releases
.................................................................................................................................................76
3.1. Album cover for Environments: Disc Two.......................................................................88
3.2. Advertisement for Teibel’s Contemplation Environments exhibit...................................90
3.3. Back cover for Environments: Disc Two..........................................................................91
3.4. Stills from Ben Van Meter’s film S.F. Trips Festival, An Opening.................................99
3.5. Album cover for Environments: Disc Three..................................................................101
3.6. “It takes cool to appreciate today’s ‘new’ music.” Music of Our Time advertisement.109
3.7. “Terry Riley gives music a chance.” Advertisement for Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air
...............................................................................................................................................111
4.1. Erik Satie, Tapisserie en fer forgé, Autograph Score.....................................................133
4.2. Event Score for George Brecht’s Drip Music (Drip Event), from Water Yam..............157
5.1. Operational diagram for “Discreet Music” ....................................................................184
5.2. Visual representation of “Discreet Music,” 0:00–2:20...................................................187
5.3. “Discreet Music” spectrogram, marked to indicate filtering..........................................190
6.1. Brian Eno’s Ambient series.............................................................................................245
6.2. Flughafen Köln/Bonn.....................................................................................................278
7.1. Martin Glover, AKA DJ Youth, spinning in the White Room.......................................293
7.2. Partygoers at Dream Age................................................................................................295
7.3. Vinyl disc sticker and back cover of packaging for The Orb’s “A Huge Ever Growing
Pulsating Brain...”..................................................................................................................297
7.4. Mr. Fingers, from “NEW AGE HOUSE” to “AMBIENT HOUSE” in eight months...300
7.5. Album covers for The KLF, Chill Out; Pink Floyd, Atom Heart Mother......................304
7.6. Album cover for The KLF, Space..................................................................................305
7.7. Album cover for The Air Collection; back cover...........................................................310
7.8. “I THINK THEREFORE I AMBIENT.” Liner notes to The Irresistible Force, Flying
High.......................................................................................................................................316
7.9. All aboard the “Trancentral” train! Advertisement for The KLF...................................320
1
INTRODUCTION
Ambient Music in an Age of Ubiquitous Listening

In the liner notes to his 1978 album, Music for Airports, experimental artist and
pop musician Brian Eno coined the term “Ambient music” to describe a new type of
recorded audio. Ambient music, Eno announced in the manifesto, would be music made
for use as “an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint.” Eno devoted the rest of the
essay to distinguishing Ambient music from “conventional” background music, singling
out the symphonic pop arrangements created by the Muzak corporation as a contrasting
example. Ambient music, he famously concluded, should “accommodate many levels of
listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is
interesting.”1
Today, nearly forty years since Music for Airports first appeared, people
throughout the industrialized world use recorded music of many different kinds as
ambience. In public and private places alike, from shoe stores and gyms to bedrooms and
bars, people program anything from classical concerti to Top 40, blues to bossa nova,
electro-funk to hardcore punk. Inhabitants adeptly shuttle between more or less attentive
modes of listening, often within a single song or piece. The practices of programming and
reception for which Eno designed Ambient music seem to have become, in the portable
and streaming audio environments of the 21st century, ubiquitous.
For this reason, some scholars have treated Eno’s Ambient idea as divinatory.
David Toop’s monograph Ocean of Sound explores how atmospheric music like Ambient

1 Brian Eno, liner notes to Ambient 1: Music for Airports, Editions E.G. AMB 001, 1978,
LP.