Eno - The Studio As Compositional Tool

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"Which puts me in mind of the first piece on Music For Airports (Editions EG). I had four musicians in the studio, and we were doing some improvising exercises that I'd suggested. I couldn't hear the musicians very well at the time, and I'm sure they couldn't hear each other, but listening back, later, I found this very short section of tape where two pianos, unbeknownst to each other, played melodic lines that interlocked in an interesting way. To make a piece of music out of it, I cut that part out, made a stereo loop on the 24-track, then I discovered I liked it best at half speed, so the instruments sounded very soft, and the whole movement was very slow. I didn't want the bass and guitar - they weren't necessary for the piece - but there was a bit of Fred Frith's guitar breaking through the acoustic piano mic, a kind of scrape I couldn't get rid of. Usually I like Fred's scrapes a lot, but this wasn't in keeping, so I had to find a way of dealing with that scrape, and I had the idea of putting in variable orchestration each time the loop repeated. You only hear Fred's scrape the first time the loop goes around." from Downbeat, 1979

Interview with Drew Sullivan of Slow Dancing Society

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I’ve always loved the idea of music that has a function or purpose.

Depending on what you mean by "purpose", I can't say I disagree. According to one of my favorite literary theory professors from undergrad, this places Mr. Sullivan firmly on the Augustine side of the great Kant vs. Augustine divide.

Me, I like to slide around depending on, oh, I don't know. Never really figured it out.

This post courtesy of Ambient Music Blog's number one, long time reader Dave P. Yo, Dave!