Brian Eno- Discreet Music

My Dad loves playing the radio in the background while he works. Even when he’s not working there’s always some kind of classical music playing. And yet, I never get the feeling he’s absorbing it so much as just setting a mood. If he really cared about listening to it, he wouldn’t leave it on after he left the room, which he does, leaving someone else to turn it off. My point is, that Dad treats the radio in the same way that Brian Eno intended people to listen to Discreet Music. And the comparison is even more apt because Discreet Music sounds like an album of classical music. And part of it is, in a way. Let me explain.

The album is divided into two parts: the first is an original composition, the second riffs on, or remixes Pachelbel’s Canon. The first part sounds like a classical composition, except it goes nowhere. Classical music tends towards a climax or an end of a movement, this just keeps going. That’s not a bad thing, in fact it helps one get lost in the music, but it is a little off putting. One keeps expecting an end, or some kind of musical motion, but instead there’s just stasis.

The variations on Pachelbel’s Canon have a bit more movement. The first variation, “Fullness of Wind” sounds like someone mining. It’s all downward motion without end. It’s rather amazing. The variations themselves deviate farther and farther from the original composition. At first there are snippets of the original here and there, but by the end they’ve all been lost in the distortion.

I wish I could say this is classical music through some kind lens, since that would be easy, but this record is more like an original classical composition. It is unconventional yes, but the instrumentation and the spirit are still there. By “spirit” I mean the aspirations of the music, to make you feel something transcendent. Perhaps therein lies the difference: Eno is looking for a different kind of transcendence, something not so much sublime as meditative.  Classical music wants to convey beauty, Eno wants to change consciousness.

5/5 This is not quite an ambient record. Rather, it’s its own separate work that just happens to have some ambient qualities. Regardless, it’s worth checking out. Put it on the background and go about your business. You won’t be disappointed.