Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. It may lack net composition, beat, or structured melody. It uses textural layers of sound that can reward both passive and active listening and encourage a sense of calm or contemplation. The genre is said to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual", or "unobtrusive" quality. Nature soundscapes may be included, and the sounds of acoustic instruments such as the piano, strings and flute may be emulated through a synthesizer.
The Black Dog is a British electronic music group, founded in 1989 by Ken Downie along with Ed Handley and Andy Turner. The group are considered pioneering figures of techno's ruminative "home-listening" aesthetic in the early 1990s.
Ambient 1: Music for Airports is the sixth studio album by Brian Eno, released in 1978 by Polydor Records. It is the first of Eno's albums released under the label of ambient music, a genre of music intended to "induce calm and a space to think" while remaining "as ignorable as it is interesting". While not Eno's earliest entry in the style, it is credited with coining the term.
Angel Dust is the fourth studio album by American rock band Faith No More, released on June 8, 1992, by Slash and Reprise Records. It is the follow-up to 1989's highly successful The Real Thing, and was the band's final album to feature guitarist Jim Martin. It was also the first album where vocalist Mike Patton had any substantial influence on the band's music, having been hired after the other band members had written and recorded everything for The Real Thing except vocals and most of the lyrics. The band stated that they wanted to move away from the funk metal style of their prior releases, towards a more "theatrical" sound.
Discreet Music is the fourth studio album by Brian Eno, and the first released under his full name. The album is a minimalist work, with the titular A-side consisting of one 30-minute piece featuring synthesizer and tape delay. The B-side features three variations on Canon in D Major by Johann Pachelbel, performed by the Cockpit Ensemble and conducted by Gavin Bryars.
Roger Eugene Eno is an English ambient music composer. He is the brother of Brian Eno.
Laid is the fifth studio album by British rock band James. It was released on 27 September 1993 through Fontana Records. The album's sound, which is "stripped-down" compared to their prior releases, was inspired by their recent experience touring as supporting act to Neil Young. Enlisting Brian Eno as producer, James recorded for six weeks at The Windings in Wrexham, Wales, and Real World Studios in Box, Wiltshire. The sessions also resulted in the experimental sixth studio album Wah Wah (1994). Laid is a folk and pop rock album that was reminiscent of their earlier releases with its atmosphere and minimal arrangements.
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is the first collaborative studio album by Brian Eno and David Byrne, released in February 1981. It was Byrne's first album without his band Talking Heads. The album integrates sampled vocals and found sounds, African and Middle Eastern rhythms, and electronic music techniques. It was recorded before Eno and Byrne's work on Talking Heads' 1980 album Remain in Light, but problems clearing samples delayed its release by several months.
Wah Wah is the sixth studio album by the Manchester-based English indie rock band James. After the success of their fourth album, Seven (1992), the band entered Real World Studios, Box, Wiltshire, to record their fifth album Laid in early 1993 with producer Brian Eno, with whom the group had longed to work. Prior to recording Laid, Eno observed the band's jam sessions at their Manchester rehearsal room, and considered these improvised pieces to be as important to the band's music as their eventually crafted songs. He requested to the group that whilst they were recording Laid, they would also concurrently record an album of their improvisations which Eno and, by Eno's request, second producer Markus Dravs would produce in a secondary studio in the Real World complex. Each composition started off with the band's improvisation being recorded, which Dravs would then edit, generally alone whilst James and Eno were recording Laid. Eno and Dravs would take a "promising" part of a recording and then mixed them only once. Tim Booth's desire to re-record some of his vocals caused friction in the studio.
Bytes is the debut studio album by English electronic music group The Black Dog, credited under the name Black Dog Productions. It was released on Warp on 8 March 1993. The album consists of tracks produced by the members of the group – Ed Handley, Andy Turner, and Ken Downie – under various aliases, including Plaid, Close Up Over, Xeper, Atypic, I.A.O., Discordian Popes and Balil. Black Dog Productions is also the name of their own record label.
Lux is the twenty-fifth solo studio album from Brian Eno, released through Warp on 13 November 2012. The album is a collection of ambient soundscapes that have been installed in art galleries and airport terminals. Critical reception has positively compared it with Eno's previous ambient work and noted that it is both relaxing as well as challenging music for those who engage it critically. In 2013, Brian Eno created a number of limited edition prints featuring the cover artwork from Lux made available only from his website.
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, also mononymously known as Eno, is an English musician, composer, record producer and visual artist. He is best known for his pioneering contributions to ambient music and electronica, and for producing, recording, and writing works in rock and pop music. A self-described "non-musician", Eno has helped introduce unconventional concepts and approaches to contemporary music. He has been described as one of popular music's most influential and innovative figures. In 2019, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Roxy Music.
Temple of Transparent Balls is the second album by Ed Handley, Andy Turner and Ken Downie, the first under the name The Black Dog, and was released on double vinyl, cassette and CD in 1993. It continued to delight their hardcore followers but confused many with its complexity and inaccessibility. “From the opening digital skank of ‘Cost I’ to the closing circuit board tears on ‘The Crete that Crete Made,’” critic Peter McIntyre wrote, it “took every single strand of modern music, mixed it all up and produced something that sounded like nothing else on the planet.”
The second effort had been recorded at Techno Island Studio, the sonic forge of R&S Records, during an extended stay in Ghent, Belgium. "Temple is filled with tinker toy melodies and drunken electronics, at times astray in a sad metropolis or jumping for joy in a sonic junkyard of the future."
Music for Adverts (and Short Films) is the first solo album by Ken Downie under the name The Black Dog which was released in 1996 on double vinyl, cassette, and CD. It was the first without participation by Ed Handley and Andy Turner who left to continue their work as Plaid.
Unsavoury Products is the fifth full-length studio album by The Black Dog featuring the Parisian spoken word artist Black Sifichi. It was released in 2002 on CD.
Silenced is the sixth full-length studio album by The Black Dog released in 2005 on CD. It's the first album Ken Downie recorded and produced together with Martin and Richard Dust, owners of the label Dust Science Recordings.
It harks back to Black Dog's debut Bytes, a record that remains a landmark album in electronic music's development. Martin Dust explained: "We never set off to make it like Bytes. My idea was to create something that you could come home to after you'd just been to a club or gig, that would start at the right pace and then just wind down into a great album and just chill out."
Martin Dust had been "friends with Ken for probably nine or ten years. The main connection is that we both had an interest in internet bulletin board systems and punk. I used to run a bulletin board with an old style modem and communication and information file exchange and hacking and stuff, so right from the beginning I've always been talking to Ken, about that, about music, about everything really. We just struck a friendship up like that and swapped music and ideas and continue from there."
Radio Scarecrow is the seventh studio album by The Black Dog released in 2008 on CD and vinyl. It was written and produced by Ken Downie, Martin and Richard Dust.
Further Vexations is the eighth full-length studio album by The Black Dog released in 2009 on CD and vinyl. It was written and produced by Ken Downie, Martin and Richard Dust.
There is a political dimension to the album, which is revealed through some of the track titles. "'Biomantric L-if-e' and 'You’re Only SQL' hint at the powerful information databases being used by governments in the name of security, while 'CCTV Nation' spells out unequivocally how Britain especially has become a nation under constant surveillance. To complete the picture, the cover shows part of a fingerprint on a backdrop of video surveillance images and electronic voices can be heard saying, among other things, "ID card," "biometric measures," and "computer world" at the end of 'Northern Electronic Soul '.
Liber Dogma is the tenth full-length studio album by The Black Dog released in 2011 on CD and vinyl. It was written and produced by Ken Downie, Martin and Richard Dust.
The album "represents a radical shift toward dry minimalism, where the beat is pushed to the fore, served by pulsating bass lines and only a sprinkle of additional sounds for each piece. Closer by nature to Berlin’s minimal and hypnotic techno than to Detroit’s more luxurious sound, Liber Dogma has been devised with one aim and one aim only: the dance floor."
The title of the final track is in Japanese, read as "Kā Kurasshu Majutsu" and meaning loosely "car-crash sorcery". On streaming services, the title has been translated to "Car Crash Magick".
Parallel is a compilation album by the intelligent dance music artists Ken Downie, Ed Handley and Andy Turner, aka The Black Dog. It was released in 1995 on double vinyl and CD. The album compiles three EPs released on the GPR label in 1991 and 1992.
