Music for Films, Vol. 3

More Music for Films Limited Edition Japanese "Mini Vinyl" CD, faithfully reproduced using original LP artwork including the inner sleeve. Features most recently mastered audio including bonus tracks where applicable.	Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks If you ever wondered what ambient music is all about, you could do worse than listen to the soundtrack by Brian Eno that accompanied the stunning visuals of NASA's Apollo missions to the moon. Created with an intoxicating mixture of acoustic and electronic, the music makes the no...	Music for Films	Ambient 3: Day of Radiance	Discreet Music
Ambient 4: On Land Released in 1982, On Land is Eno's most mature, perfect ambient work. Combining low, rumbling synths with eerie banging and clanking and the occasional wild-animal chirp or grumble, this recording places the listener alone, in the midst of a massive piece of sonic landscaping. An...	Thursday Afternoon	The Equatorial Stars	Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror	Ambient 1: Music for Airports Eno's theory of the "discreet music" he called ambient was far from the modern chill-out room: the idea was that it should function at very low volumes, unobtrusively coloring the atmosphere of a room. Evolving by tiny gradations, the long pieces of Music For Airports (the first ...

Great Through And Through
I really enjoyed this release. Not only does it put forward the musical persona of Brian Eno himself, always enjoyable-- it includes excellent works by other artists. The Eno pieces found earlier on the disc are to me the strongest, then slowly spiralling down into the more average pieces-- though all were at least average. The collaborative piece "For Her Atoms" was strong, combining elements from different types of instuments. Very intriguing and full of mystery- I only wished it was longer. I think my favorite piece on the disc is the solo piece by Harold Budd, which is nice through and through with nary an off note. All in all, this cd takes you through moods light and dark and successfully holds your interest. For sleeping to? No! I think for intent listening.

Buy it for "Tension Block"
The only good, or even great cut is Tension Block. Daniel lanois has never done anything as good. Following this I mistakenly bought his horrible solo CD's. I bought it back when it came out and the packaging is deceptively different so that in a hurry one might by mistake buy it again. However as I wrote, Tension Block is great.

Less intriguing due to new sequencing.
A collection of tracks by Brian Eno and musicians associated with him over for use in soundtracks, of all the reissues of Eno's work put out over the previous year or so, this one actually seems to suffer for the rerelease. The most noticable thing immediately is that the track order is scrambled up-- what I find curious is that they seem to have taken all the pieces I really enjoyed and thrown them at the beginning. The net result of this is that the recording feels to drag for me after the opening few cuts-- it's not that "Quixote" (by Roger Eno) or "Balthus Bemused by Colour" (by Harold Budd) are particularly BAD pieces, its just they're not particularly exciting, innovative, or attention grabbing, so when there's a bunch of them stacked in a row, it makes it hard to sustain interest (and by the way, I LOVE ambient music, this stuff is well in my domain). So what makes the good stuff new-- either its lovely, in its layers of synths and hazes ("Theme From Creation" by Brian Eno), it is so simple as to be deceptive (solo kalimba performance by Laraaji, "Kalimba", Roger Eno's piano performance on "Fleeting Smile"), or its totally unique and demands to be heard (John Paul Jones' "4-Minute Warning"). The rest is nice enough, but it is what it is-- atmospheres designed for movies, and quite a bit of it doesn't hold attention well. That the pieces are all rather brief only seems to accentuate this-- you sort of hope for development that never arrives. The reissue, in addition to scrambling the track list, does include two bonus pieces (the downright irritating "Shark 12" by Brian Eno featuring a tightly oscillating synth line and lovely piano piece "Slower and Slower" by Roger Eno) and is remastered. It does sound quite good, crisp, clean, not a trace of analog noise. Still, this one is for Eno fans and collectors only. It's not unlistenable, but it's not particularly exciting either.