by Ben Hogwood
I had to end #AmbientAugust with Brian Eno. Music for Airports has proved a timeless piece of music with real inner calm and unexpected versatility, and it arranges so well for the Bang On A Can ensemble. This is truly mindful music:
Thanks for following all the posts this month!
Published post no.3,002 – Monday 31 August 2026
by Ben Hogwood
Michael Brook’s Cobalt Blue album from 1992 has just been re-released by 4AD, bringing his form of studied guitar ambience to new audiences, while reminding those who listened the first time around just how good it is.
Brook played the ‘infinite guitar’, an instrument he created that could sustain notes indefinitely. He was joined by ambient music royalty, with Brian and Roger Eno contributing, along with Daniel Lanois. The result is a rather beautiful long-form composition dividing nicely into 12 parts. The second, Breakdown, is particularly blissful:
Published post no.2,972 – Friday 6 August 2026
by Ben Hogwood
What’s the story?
Building on the success of his first album of Brian Eno reinterpretations, pianist Bruce Brubaker goes deeper into the ambient master’s output.
In his explorations, Brubaker continues to use a Steinway concert grand piano with electromagnetic bows that help him create sustained drone textures.
Here he takes two sections from the 1978 ambient classic Music For Airports album alongside three others, using advanced IRCAM spatialization tools to create an “immersive acoustic experience, turning the piano into a supernatural synthesizer.”
What’s the music like?
The Music For Airports excerpts, not surprisingly, are incredibly calming – and beautifully played. The second version of 1/2 uses the electromagnetic bows to create a sound almost like the clarinet in timbre. Brubaker judges the critical elements like attack and sustain just right, a faithful recreation of the original Eno work but one that gives him plenty of room and space around in the acoustic.
The slow tracks work beautifully, especially Failing Light from Eno’s Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror, the collaboration with Harold Budd, which is lovingly shaded here. The big surprise, however, is The Big Ship, where he recreates everything by hand, including the shift of rhythmic emphasis that Eno originally performed with an organ drum machine. Here it is commanding and delivered with impressive poise.
Does it all work?
Very much so. Brubaker’s eye for detail and virtuosity work hand in hand.
Is it recommended?
Enthusiastically. Eno Piano 2.0 is an obvious complement to the first instalment but shows Eno’s music in a new and enchanting light. Ambient music has lasted a lot longer than we dared imagine, and reinterpretations like this will only prolong its appeal further.
For fans of… Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Philip Glass, Michael Nyman
You can read an extensive interview with Bruce on Arcana, where he talks about interpreting Eno’s work for piano.
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Published post no.2,349 – Friday 1 November 2024
by Ben Hogwood
What’s the story?
William Doyle returns to the LP format with this response to the ‘ecstasies and agonies of the 2020s’ . On it, he is assisted by Brian Eno, Alexander Painter and Genevieve Dawson.
What’s the music like?
This time Doyle shows his musical versatility through a collection of intricate art pop songs. Drawing on late 1960s pop and psychedelia for inspiration, he updates them with cultural references for today, a kind of coping mechanism for life in the digital age.
Doyle’s lyrics show an awareness of the changing climate, and as he found nearly all the songs mention water in some way. They are clever and well written, with songs like Relentless Melt that are knowing commentaries on modern life dressed with catchy tunes. The orchestration is bright and suits Doyle’s delicate tones.
Does it all work?
Largely – though on occasion the feeling persists that the music on this album is just a bit too bright eyed and bushy tailed, that darker thoughts below the surface are not fully expressed.
Is it recommended?
It is. Springs Eternal is an optimistic statement proving once again how versatile William Doyle can be.
by Ben Hogwood
What’s the story?
To read the full story behind Eno Piano, you can read Arcana’s recently published interview with Bruce Brubaker. In it he sets out his quest to recreate Brian Eno’s ambient masterpiece Music For Airports, made through tape loops and studio techniques, for a living and breathing musician to play on the piano.
To get the necessary sustain Brubaker has employed a number of intriguing techniques, not least the use of electro-magnetic bows over the piano, enabled by Florent Colautti.
While Music For Airports is the main act, Brubaker places it in the context of shorter works by Eno that have a more descriptive edge – The Chill Air, a collaboration with the late Harold Budd, By This River, co-written with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Rodelius, and Emerald and Stone, where his collaborators are Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams, with whom he still works a great deal.
What’s the music like?
Incredibly restful – which of course is a description you could level at the original Music For Airports. Job done, you would think, but the reproduction of this music in human hands does reveal a slight and unexpected intensity, the performer having to maintain a very high degree of concentration and control to get close to honouring Eno’s original music.
Brubaker certainly does that, and the electro-magnetic bows help the sustain very subtly at the start of Music For Airports 2/1. The whole thing is so carefully thought through that each note feels researched but also instinctive, especially in 2/2 where the angular lines create an extraordinary sense of space.
While Music For Airports is indoors, the other three pieces are very much outside, and have a refreshing clarity. The Chill Air and By This River are bracing, wintry piano music.
Does it all work?
It does. When Bang On A Can released their chamber ensemble version of Music For Airports in 1998 it gave a new dimension to Brian Eno’s thinking. This piano work will have a similar effect, and is even more intimate in its confines.
Is it recommended?
Yes. Any Eno fan will want to hear this, and Bruce Brubaker shows just how imaginatively and thoughtfully he can attend to the music of others. This is a quiet revelation.
Listen & Buy
Published post no.2,046 – Thursday 21 December 2023
Arcana.fm 