Music Beyond Airports is a collection of essays, developed from papers given at the Ambient@40 International Conference held in February 2018 at the University of Huddersfield.

The premise of the conference was not merely to celebrate Eno’s work and the landmark release of Music for Airports in 1978, but to consider the development of the genre, how it has permeated our wider musical culture, and what the role of such music is today.

The book does not seek to provide an in-depth analysis or a comprehensive history of the last 40 years of ambient music. Rather it provides a series of ‘provocations, observations and reflections’.

Authors & topics include:

• David Toop: How Much World Do You Want? Ambient Listening And Its Questions
• Ambrose Field: Space In The Ambience: Is Ambient Music Socially Relevant?
• Ulf Holbrook: A Question Of Background: Sites Of Listening
• Richard Talbot: Three Manifestations Of Spatiality In Ambient Music
• Simon Cummings: The Steady State Theory: Recalibrating The Quiddity Of Ambient Music
• Monty Adkins: Fragility, Noise, And Atmosphere In Ambient Music
• Lisa Colton: Channelling The Ecstasy Of Hildegard Von Bingen: “O Euchari” Remixed
• Justin Morey: Ambient House: “Little Fluffy Clouds” And The Sampler As Time Machine
• Axel Berndt: Adaptive Game Scoring With Ambient Music

Music Beyond Airports is a free download from the University of Huddersfield Press.

via Gregory Taylor