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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Yoga for the mind, 19 Mar 2007
It could be argued that there's not much to this record; the first piece comprises a pair of tape loops drifting in and out of phase, but actually contains as much silence as tones (technically, it's done on a single piece of tape, but it's in stereo after all, and sounds like a pair of instruments responding to each other). The second suite is a piece by Pachabel played by a string quartet, with each part played to a different timing, causing the instruments to drift in and out of phase with each other.
So, in actual fact, Brian Eno isn't really even on the recording, so why am I rating "his" work so highly? Simply put, the result of his grand design is a pair of pieces of extreme beauty. The sparse and minimalist sounds have both a fascination - in as much as I am always wanting to hear what comes next - and a quality of inducing extreme relaxation. Frankly, if I put this on at night, I'm likely to drift off to sleep before the first piece finishes; it's so minimal that I rarely get to hear it!
So what's the point of buying a record that you're not necessarily going to listen to? Well, besides the beauty of the sounds, it's not often that a non-chemical can create such profound feeling of relaxation - it's like yoga for the mind. Subsequently imitated, but never in my opinion bettered, this is so good that it makes it onto my Desert Island list.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absolutely Stunning, 3 Sep 2007
Music like this is hard to come by, but Eno seems to churn it out at roughly the same rate as he does carbon dioxide. If I am not mistaken this is the album from which Ambient originated, Eno's first experiments with its form, here manipulating orchestral arrangments to absolutely stunning effect, as on the three "Canon in D Major" peices, or the subtly beauty of the title track, which is possibly the first Ambient peice Ever.
This is also my other favorite of the Eno Ambient albums, (The other being Apollo) bcause what it lacks in the avant-guarde experimantalism of his later albums, it more than makes up for in absolute beauty. You will rarely experience something as good as this, it is rare that I find a peice of music that actually defies words, but this does more than any other.
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13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Did ambient originate from this startling beautiful music?, 9 Mar 2006
A genius if ever there was one. Indeed such a genius I am even willing to forgive him for working with that pompous arse Bono, Eno has produced a body of work that just about blows out of the water every other artist …..ever. Now there are generally putting it in fairly simplistic terms two distinct areas of Eno, s work, the conventional (in relative terms) songs with lyrics and verses and chorus and stuff. Recommended examples of these include …err everything he has ever done actually. My favourites are “Before And After Science “and “Wrong Way Up” with John Cale but feel free to choose your own. Then there is his ambient work mainly released on his own “E.G.” label of which Discreet Music is arguably ( Some days I would argue vociferously it was another of his ambient works but mostly I would plump for this one) the zenith.
Whether it’s an apocryphal tale or not I don’t know , but apparently Eno conceived the idea for this album while convalescing in bed from an auto accident he put an album of classical music at very low volume by mistake and intrigued by the mixture of the music and the natural ambient sounds around him decided to produce music of his own that mirrored that effect. For the title track he used two complimentary musical phrases which he produced on a synthesiser then looped together so the two juxtaposed and interpenetrated each other , ebbing and flowing in a serene often nebulous piece lasting around 25 minutes, yet which could often seem to last much longer. As if time had somehow become infinitely elastic while the music was playing.
What was side two on the original vinyl version sees Eno take the fulsome irreducibly gorgeous Pachelbels “Canon Suite” set to a string quartet for an ever evolving , often fervid interpretation that occasionally sounds nothing at all like Pachelbels work but is always brought back to the original by the taut compositional structure of the piece.
Eno being Eno he has gone on to invigorate and embellish the medium using new technology, or new techniques to make more startling examples of what he calls “Self replicating music”. While I would heartily recommend investigating anything Eno has a hand in - yes even his work with bloody U2 though it pains me to admit it-i would strongly advocate anyone with an interest in ambient to hear “Discreet Music”, after all this is really where it all started , and it’s rarely been bettered.
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