Ambient music pays more attention to sound and space rather than melody and form and below are some ambient music reviews. Ambient music is perfect for background music, but is also great to listen to. Ambient music is static with slow evolving sounds and repetition. Brian Eno’s Ambient 1, Music for Airports was first released in 1978. It was the time of the huge popularity of disco music and the album was therefore largely ignored. Over the years however, Music for Airports has become very popular. Ambient 1 is today considered a beautiful manifesto and an amazing album. Ambient 1 is a artfully packaged set of absorbing sounds. Ambient 1 is also the start of ambient music. Ambient music is, according to Eno, an alternative to Muzak. Composers and serious listener did not pay too much attention to Muzak as, in Eno’s opinion, it was too lightweight. He created the term “ambient music” to distinguish his music from the background music available at that time. Eno wanted his music to support reflection and space to think. His music was beautiful but did not demand one’s attention as it did not have a center of focus. Eno says in his notes, “It is important that Ambient Music does not enforce one particular level of listening attention, and is as fascinating as it is ignorable”. In his set of four works called Ambient series, Eno covered a lot of territory. His first album, Ambient 1, Music for Airports, has four pieces which are the aural equivalent of a mobile. Sounds float by the listener in a random collage to later combine to make subtle variations. Ambient 2, The Plateaux of Mirror, was created by Eno and Harold Budd. It is a collection of unhurried piano work. Eno uses a variety of electronic effects which allows him to obtain strange but interesting sounds. Another side of Eno’s ambient idea is shown in Ambient 3, Day of Radiance. Day of Radiance is a work of Eno and Laraaji and it has two groups of pieces. The first set features dances and hammered-dulcimer rhythmic, upbeat music. The remaining pieces are slow and reflective. Ambient 4, On Land is Eno’s darkest ambient album. The album is mostly electronic with some treated acoustic sound. It is not easy to recognize the sounds on the album – you will have a hard time to know whether you hear an instrument, electronic sound or treated recording. Eno’s approach in Ambient 4 is similar to this in Music for Airports, but the outcomes are totally different. Sounds on the album On Land are strange are sometimes even frightening giving you an impression of being in an alien land. Brian Eno is the best know ambient music composer and creator, but other musicians also tried to explore this area. Lately there has been a large increase in podcast’s, there are lots of great ambient music podcast sites availabe to get free muisc for your ipod. Now, there are many sub-genres of ambient music and these include ambient techno and ambient trance. Active ambient artists include Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, UtopiaXO, Steve Roach, Robert Rich and the Orb.