Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music For Airports was designed to do pretty much exactly what it says on the (pushing) tin: Provide a calming, anxiety-easing background for some of the most inherently stressful places on the planet. To celebrate the album’s 40th anniversary this week, one particular airport is finally stepping up and playing Eno’s masterpiece in its proper, transit-adjacent context, with the London City Airport treating visitors to some of Eno’s soothing tunes on repeat throughout the day.
This isn’t the first time Music For Airports has been music in an airport, of course; at least one other hip, cool hub—New York’s LaGuardia—treated visitors to the quiet, peaceful, slightly sad album back in the 1980s. Still, it’s nice to know that at least a few travelers will be soothed by the 1978 album as they go about their aviating day
Meanwhile, if you don’t have an airport of your own handy, you can simulate the experience by cueing up the album on your speakers, and then asking your friends and family to surround you with coughing, hysterical phone conversations, and the smell of a thousand competing shitty fast food restaurants, with a few inaudible PA announcements cutting through the mix.
Ah, bliss.