Brian Eno's Ambient 1: Music for Airports

I wrote this book in the spirit of thinking hard but clearly about a musical work that has fascinated (and irritated) people since it appeared forty years ago. And I wrote it in the conviction that thinking hard about art draws us closer to it, and renders it all the more compelling. What I found was an album that drew me deeply into 20th Century avant-garde music, opened and energized many of the ways in which we listen, and further convinced me that we should not only be learning about works of art but also from them.

"MFA quietly and resolutely challenges many received ideas about music; John Lysaker's new book provides a wonderfully wide-ranging, non-technical guide to the record in all its aspects, musical, social and philosophical. A mindful, multi-faceted examination of a mindful, multi-faceted masterpiece." -- Evan Ziporyn, MIT, Producer/Arranger, Bang on a Can Music for Airports

"Lysaker empowers listeners and gives a deep lesson on the musical, cultural, and philosophical intersections they hear in Music For Airports. And beyond Eno, this book's ideas are valuable to the concerns and functions of ambient music at large. The focus here on coexisting levels of attentive depth is a welcome addition to our understanding of this, a music that proves itself more relevant every day." -- S. Alexander Reed, Ithaca College, author of Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music