Link: Ahtisaari: Slow Art – 4 Furniture music. SLOW ART

“4. Thusday Afternoon. Brian Eno’s music piece entitled Thursday Afternoon (1984) was originally recorded for a video of the same name. It is a representative example of Eno´s ambient music which the composer has once described as “music to swim in, to float in, to get lost inside.” Lasting 61 minutes Thursday Afternoon is a spacious, bright tapestry of sound created by layering several musical events that recur each within cycles of differing length.

On the inner sleeve of one of his first ambient records Music for Airports (1978) Eno described his intentions with this kind of music:

[I] have become interested in the use of music as ambience, and have come to believe that it is possible to produce material that can be used thus without being in any way compromised…An ambience is defined as an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint. My intention is to produce original pieces ostensibly (but not exclusively) for particular times and situations with a view to building up a small but versatile catalogue of environmental music suited to a wide variety of moods and atmospheres…Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular: it must be as ignorable as it is interesting. Ambient music, music as furniture, music to live in.

Ambient music in Eno´s sense allows us but does not force us to listen. It creates a space in which to see our environment in a new enhanced calm. It gives us space to think and experience.”

Title Quote: Wordsworth