Brian Eno - 'Ambient' (EMI) Release 27/09/04

This is the second in a series of four remastered Eno 'classics' documenting Baldy's experiments in silence and sound.

There's a lot to be said for furniture music modelled on the background buzz of everyday life. In the perfect office environments of United States oil towns, isolated from the heat and dust of outside behind triple-glazing, they discovered broadcasting low-level white noise increased productivity by 21%.

When I was tiny I was always particularly soothed by the sound of water going down the plughole, or a hoover or a hairdryer in another room, and the sound tyres on wet
tarmac coming from the A1 as it careered north to Newark, Doncaster and Leeds is best described the sonic equivalent of a night-light.

Whilst perhaps not the most exciting of the art/music vanguard - think of Gam's experiments with the tape recorder, Throbbing Gristle 'playing' on cement mixers and nailing down the keys of a piano, or fluxmusic's pioneering cement violin or ice trumpet that melts whilst you're playing it - Eno's music is still the most viable alternative to the brace of tailored 'chill-out' albums the Ministry of Sound like to churn out every year.