Brian Eno - Ambient 4: On Land (1982)

Been giving this Eno classic a lot of play in the last week or two, mostly at as low a volume as possible, letting it blend in with the ambient sounds coming through the open windows.  On Land was the last album in Eno's Ambient series, and was created via a kind of "musical composting" from previous recordings and environmental sounds.

Guest musicians give On Land a fresh perspective too, with no less than three on the opening track, including Bill Laswell on bass.  Jon Hassell also contributes trumpet to the all-too-brief Shadow.  As a whole, On Land conjures up (not least from the track titles and liner notes) half-forgotten landscapes from childhood, reconstructed as vague impressions.  It's both one of Eno's most organic-sounding ambient records and most alien, and does get a bit unsettling in places, verging on dark ambient, with the more soothing pieces towards the end.  Essential stuff, endlessly listenable at any volume.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Another Green World
Cluster & Eno
Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror (with Harold Budd)
Apollo - Atmospheres & Soundtracks (with Daniel Lanois & Roger Eno)
The Pearl (with Harold Budd & Daniel Lanois)

Terry Riley - In C (1968)

One of the foundational texts of minimalism, and one that still gets interpreted afresh every so often.  A large part of the enduring appeal of In C to new generations of musicians is that the basic score is so open to interpretation: it simply consists of 53 phrases, to be played in numbered order; skip some if you like, and change the instrumentation around at will.

This, though, was the album that preceded them all.  Recorded just four years after Riley devised the score (with a little help from Steve Reich who suggested the underlying 'pulse'), this March 1968 recording was Riley's first album for CBS Masterworks, and significantly raised his profile.  Riley plays sax, Jon Hassell trumpet, Margaret Hassell 'the pulse', and the other instruments are oboe, bassoon, clarinet, flute, viola, trombone, vibraphone and marimbaphone.  The piece spends its opening minutes gathering momentum, and then opens out into a self-sustaining fractal web of hypnotic bliss.  More Riley next week.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Rainbow In Cologne
Descending Moonshine Dervishes