1982@40: AMBIENT 4 - ON LAND - BRIAN ENO

A booming drone. It might be a synthesiser or something found and processed. The high pitched whining rhythm over it sounds like mosquitoes. There is a slow moving melodic figure on a keyboard that seems to deteriorate. Sounds are hard to differentiate. There is no guiding light of central harmony or tone. As a listener you are lost and by the time the squirmy figures emerge to take a look at you before retreating back into the cave and dripping pools you are in a darkness that holds mystery but no real danger. Ghosts, perhaps, but your only harm would come from yourself. Just don't, at any cost, turn it off before the whole record finishes.

The first three Ambient albums, whether collaborative or solo made suggestions for the music of mood and atmosphere and all kept, however strangely, to notions like musical motif and definition of voice (e.g. piano or synthesiser). This final outing all but abandons this, only very occasionally providing a line of tone shifting in time that might otherwise be called a melody. But the point of these is to add further texture and mood. The record is about exploration, slow exploration, the kind of sortie done in the dark on your back with his recommended three speaker system. 

Bubbling mud fields here, the echoes of beaches long swallowed by the sea there, lantern marshes and unfamiliar winds. There is development on recognisable musical grounds but it takes the whole album to hear it. No songs, no vocals (the little girl's voice in Shadow is a processed muted trumpet) but so very much personal vision and genuine composition. If you think of spiky dance tracks when you hear the term electronic music locate a copy of this and live with it without pausing until the end.

I expected to have some fun describing what I see when I listen but it's different every time and wouldn't be what you see. Find it and listen to it while doing the dishes or go all in and lie on the floor with the lights off. You might not agree that this is some of the finest music made since electric recording began but you will have to admit it has something you don't get from other music, something fascinating and compelling.

If you wonder why you think you've heard all of it before you might cast you mind over some of the more strangely scored films you've seen since the '90s from which time this kind of goulash of natural sounds and big twisting subterranean drones made it into almost every horror movie that didn't have an orchestral score. It works beautifully as an ingredient in cinematic creepiness but more generally, weirdness, the confronting experience of nature itself. Seee, I'm doing it again, I'm recalling distant lights and purple grey skies and desert canyons. But no, if you want to go on this journey you need your own mind to guide you.

Some of the finest music made since electric recording began.