Customer Reviews

Ambient 4 On Land

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Brian Eno created a minor masterpiece with this CD. As a longtime heavy metal fan, I'm surprised at how often I listen to this. The music is deceptively simple, based on isolated keyboard notes and a background of natural sounds. It doesn't sound like a field recording --- you can tell it was created in a studio --- but it has a wonderfully organic feel to it.

The biggest surprise is that the tracks have so much variation. Like Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II, each song maps out a different piece of sonic territory. These songs are full of beautiful ideas and restraint. Buy this and you'll listen to it every day for years.

No Ambient recording has come this close to being a classic. Ambient one was a acoutic piano new age sound alike while Ambient 4 truely defines ambient. The album contains tracks which Eno has masterfully uses sound from the environment (your ambient) to create music. Truly profound is the way how silence could be made audible and then slowly create mood and finally a tune in the silence. Every environmental sound blends in beatifully. The most amazing track is "Unfamiliar Wind" where frogs croak was used as a wind instrument, beautiful music was composed using the sound of frogs croaking in the night. This record challendges you to listen intently to the sound of silence and the music that nature plays for us every moment of our life. This is truly ambient.

I SQUIRM WHEN A CUSTOMER ASKS ME TO SUGGEST AN AMBIENT RECORDING AND THEN THEY SEE TIM JANIS, YANNI OR JOHN TESH. ENO'S 'ON LAND' IS ONE OF THE MOST SOOTHING, LONELY, SPARSE, REVERIE INDUCING, ATMOSPHERIC AND HAUNTING SOUNDSCAPES I'VE HEARD. I SUGGEST IT NOW TO ONLY MY BEST FRIENDS...ISN'T THAT ELITIST?

I enjoy the music of Mr Brian Eno on this CD immensely. "ON LAND" contains environmental music which invokes for me a wide range of emotions. THE LOST DAY is a brooding piece from which I experience remorse, sadness and dismay. The piece titled UNFAMILIAR WIND (LEEKS HILLS) draws me slowly into a palpable experience of walking into a marsh. These are mind-pictures of the experiences of remembering a place rather than picture postcards. A word of caution about the term "ambient". In 1982, when Mr Eno first released this album, there was no classification, or permit me to write, marketing term, for ambient cds. This cd has no similarity with what currently is classified as "ambient" music. I'm afraid someone anticipating "ambient" music within the current context will be as disappointed as one reviwer who wrote, "Brian Eno's 'ambient music' is certainly ambient ... but it's certainly not music ... I'll bet plants love it. As for me, I'm just going to let it lull me to sleep." In the liner notes, Mr Eno explains some of the thought processes utilised in creating this landmark piece. "From 'Another Green World' onwards I became interested in exaggerating and inventing rather than replicating spaces, experimenting in particular with various techniques of time distortion. This record represents one culmination of that development and in it the landscape has ceased to be a backdrop for something else to happen in front of: Instead, everything that happens is a part of the landscape. There is no longer a sharp distinction between foreground and background." His instrumentation includes electro-mechanical and acoustic instruments as well as non-instruments like pieces of chain and sticks and stones. Mr Eric Tamm, author of "Vertical Colour of Sound", writes, "What sets ON LAND apart musically from most of Eno's quiet, contemplative music is that here the element of timbre takes over to the point of there being very few pitches in use, and often nothing that could really be called harmony." The musicians who participated in this project have successful careers of their own, Laraaji, Mr Michael Beinhorn, Mr Axel Gros, Mr Bill Laswell, Mr Jon Hassell, Mr Michael Brook, and Mr Daniel Lanois. I have done the best I could to explain what this album is and how it affects me. If you are interested in an extremely influential piece of music from the late twentieth century, this CD will interest you.

One of my favorite recordings of all time, and one that holds so many special memories. It's amazing the way a recording can change your mood and help you to think clearly, and with a different perspective. This album literally alters your mood. If you've ever played this album at low-ish volume on a lazy, cloudy day and taken a nap with it on - talk about Freudian dreams! This recording is a total masterpiece.

I had a friend that I bought this for years ago... telling him that it was one of my favorite recordings and it was genius and that I hoped he got as much out of it as I had. He called me back the next day after playing it at home and told me he thought it was really "scary" sounding... and it freaked him out and he didn't like it at all. Years pass... one day in conversation he unexpectedly tells me that "...that weird Brian Eno CD I got him... the one with all the grumbles and hums and distant animal sounds..." has ever so slowly been pulled out of hiding and has now turned into one of his favorite CDs. He says it initially scared him... but there was something about it that made him keep thinking of it and going back to it again and again. He now listens to it almost every day while working because it clears his mind and inspires him. He says "...it sounds like something God would record."

I would love to see this CD re-released by Eno one day, perhaps with extra recordings that never made it onto the final album... or longer versions of each track (they all fade out at the end). THAT would be a revelation!!!

This monumental tour de force indubitably represents the culmination of what Eno was trying to achieve with the Ambient genre. The sheer brilliance, with which he was able to translate the places he envisaged into their aural equivalents, is nothing short of staggering; he is unquestionably in his element here. With this landmark recording, Eno has created a masterpiece that is illimitably greater than the sum of its parts, and stands amongst the greatest artistic works of the 20th century.

(There are a few guest appearances here and there, but they're mostly notable for how Eno incorporates their contributions into the blend - Bill Laswell's ominous rumblings on "Lizard Point", Jon Hassell furnishing "Shadow" with his trademark 'vocal trumpet' shadings to great effect, Michael Brook's poignant guitar work on the timeless "Dunwich Beach, Autumn, 1960".)

These are eight masterworks of Eno's ambient music. As the title "On Land" suggests, places are evoked--some forbidding, some inviting, some dislocating. The last track, "Dunwich Beach 1960", is such an aloof and nostalgic and strange piece, it's as if the sound of loneliness has been captured. If it's possible to invent new moods--or find new ways of evoking a familiar mood--Eno has succeeded at this task.
His "Thursday Afternoon" and "The Pearl" are also equally perfect expression of this "aural landscape" ethos.

Here's something I've been doing lately: Synchronize "On Land" with track 2 of David Sylvian's "Plight and Premonition". Put both CDs on infinite repeat and start them up (make sure the sylvian goes from track 2 on to track 1, then 2, then 1, etc.) The two seem to mesh together in a really weird way. And they're not the same length, so you could keep this going on and on forever if you wish. I like to think of this as in the same spirit as Eno's recent "generative" work: a mini-installation, if you will.
Try it out. You might like it. The Sylvian seems to be unavailible on Amazon, but I found it for sale at the All Music Guide [website]

Classic Eno Ambient. Obscure, fuzzy, hidden behind layers of acoustic fog and quasi-natural ostinato. Particularly good is track 4, "Shadow." I won't spoil the surprise at who is "singing" on that track; you will have to read the credits.

Good ambient music creates a distinctive mood, a world all its own ... Eno has definitely accomplished that here. Atmospheric, haunting, yet strangely comforting, "On Land" takes you away from your stereo and gently lands you on the surface of a distant planet. You can almost feel oddly-shaped eyes looking at you, checking you over -- but you get the idea They probably won't hurt you. Probably. A masterful bit of work.

Another feature of good ambient music (and one that is very rarely actually accomplished) is that it is very interesting to actually listen to. Eno subtly mixes the textures and colors here to give you a varied listening experience. Each piece even has its own "shape," just like a piece of more formally composed, conventional music -- yet the structure is delicately hidden and never made too apparent. As a result, there is -- in a very unique way -- passion and even drama throughout.

In short, you can zone out to it, or you can listen intently to it -- and it will become a part of your life. Every morning at work, this is the first CD I play. I find it refreshing and stimulating to wake to Eno's world each day, as I also wake to my own. On the best days, both worlds seem one and the same.

Highly recommended as one of those CDs that will sound like nothing else in your collection and will always find its way to the top of the pile.