20th Century Ambient
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- £12.99
Publisher Description
Through text and comics, 20th Century Ambient searches through ambient music's recent history to unearth how the genre has evolved and the role it plays in our daily lives.
Ambient music is a part of our daily lives, whether we all realize it or not. It's the undercurrent in some of our favorite songs. It's the mood-setting background music in our favorite movies and video games. We hear it in the placid music pumped through the speakers in department stores, on critically acclaimed albums from generational talents, and in synthesizer drones from the depths of Soundcloud. It's present in the peaceful sounds of spa music, new-age chants, and wellness resources like the Calm app that purport ambient's healing properties. You can find it on those strange, anonymous instrumental nature albums you can buy at Bed Bath & Beyond. It shows up in genres ranging from electronic and rock music to jazz and lo-fi beats. Ambient is everywhere.
20th Century Ambient details a crucial period in which ambient music became a fully realized idea and is secretly one of the most popular genres in the world. Ambient has existed debatably as long as music itself. It wasn't until the 20th century that it became a defined genre. This book walks through ambient's ambiguous timeline to uncover not just the genre's evolution but to understand why it resonates so deeply with the human spirit. From Erik Satie's classical compositions, hidden histories in blues and dub music, innovations by Brian Eno and Alice Coltrane, all the way through modern artists spearheading ambient in the still early 21st century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Music journalist Henry continues Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 series with this avid debut ode to a notoriously amorphous musical genre. The term "ambient music" was coined in 1975 by producer Brian Eno; while recovering from an injury, Eno was listening to a record of harp music that mixed with the sound of rain outside, sparking an idea for music that was "part of the ambiance of the environment just as the colour of the light and the sound of the rain." Henry also gives due to the genre's forebears, including early 20th-century blues singer Blind Willie Johnson, who didn't "so much sing as he wordlessly intone with his voice," and French composer Erik Satie, who introduced the concept of "furniture music," with "subtle, repetitive, and easily ignored" compositions that "enhance the ambiance of the room." Tracing the genre's evolution, Henry provides less of a concrete definition of ambient music than a meditation on the qualities it evokes (a sense of expansiveness) and its relationship with its listeners (ambient "can only exist with someone to hear it... to experience the way the environment and sound intertwine"). Enriched by vivid profiles of the genre's practitioners and capped by a list of essential tracks, it's a quirky love letter to an enigmatic sound. Illus.
