Ambient music is background music. This "hook-less" music intrigued Brian Eno who recorded his first minimal record,Discreet Music, in 1975. Eno, who had by his own admission not been a musician in the first place, began his career with Roxy Music in 1972 playing keyboards in an unusual manner shunning lead lines for atmospheric effects.

These humble origins of Eno's style grew into an ever expanding series of recording experiments. Eno left Roxy to collaborate with Robert Fripp, Peter Gabriel's Genesis, Jon Hassel, Laraaji, Harold Budd, Daniel Lanois, David Byrne, U2 and others to create soundscapes in the background with varying amounts of foreground. This music's more soothing sonic appeal has spread across continents stretching the boundaries of music and the role of the musician. A good example is this clip from Ambient 4: On Land "Shadow."

Eno has also continued to release vocal albums and produce for other groups while further developing his ambitions by creating a series of dedicated Ambient albums. 1978's Ambient 1: Music For Airports involved nothing but minimalist piano musings and was the first record to bear the official Ambient imprimatur. Most recently in 1993 his Neroli investigated new ambient and electronic textures showing that Eno had not lost interest or power in this widespread revolution in sound.

In 1995, Eno recorded with familiar collaborators David Bowie on Outside, and U2 members Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen on a new project under the name the Passengers. While Outside forces a song cycle onto many fine soundscapes, it still yields classics such as "Hearts Filthy Lesson," and many masterful quilts of sound. On the Passengers' Original Soundtracks Volume I, the superstar musicians who have obviously made a lot of hits together embark on an art project heading in an entirely different direction. The freedom to disavow conventions yields excellent songs such as "Your Blue Room" and "Elvis Ate America" that have some relationship to U2 on its 90's work. Many spacier tracks relate only to imaginary film works.

From Kraftwerk to Ambient House
In 1974 Kraftwerk recorded the 27 minute keyboard and vocal minimal manifesto "Autobahn." The lyrics in German mocked the Beach Boys chorus of "Fun, Fun, Fun" and the song offered little to latch onto yet still sounds great today. Kraftwerk's later albums showcased mechanical but catchy classics overtones of which are heard in modern electronic and dance music. In 1993, Kraftwerk opened some European dates for U2, whose "Numb" pays hommage to Kraftwerk's brand of minimalism.

Many recent developments in ambient based music come from the rave, acid house, and techno fronts. Alex Paterson's Orb took took the spacey Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd and Ashra Tempel sound and turned it into a cool version of the manic dance music familiar at a rave. Richard James (with Aphex Twin and other bands) has used analog technology to make more mellow dreamscapes understood mainly by trippers. The ambient ball continues to roll into this exploratory area of music.

Ambient Dub?
The use of analog effects became a cornerstone of the dub sound of Jamaican Reggae which often departs from conventional song structure to feature patches of reverb, echo, and delay. The result is spacey shuddering bass lines, songs which end falsely and pick up again carrying rhythms through empty space. Dance remixes owe a great debt to the grandfather of dub, Lee "Scratch" Perry. Perry, and contemporaries The Mad Professor, King Tubby and Jah Shaka were putting together very hempy tracks in the early Seventies which made their way to Britain. As a result new dub comes from roots groups in England such as Tricky, Zion Train, Aloha, Judah and Omega.

On Tricky's Maxinquaye elements of soul, low-fi, and slow grooves combine with an interesting point of view. The path of ambient now leads through tracks like "Hell is Around The Corner" with its ominous pulse and crooner rap. The atmospherics of the album build on the ambient foundations by confecting an elaborate sound environment in the studio.

Ambient Dub brings the Ambient story full circle. Eno in a recent Wired interview claimed that a nerd was someone who does not have enough Africa in them. Ambient Dub might bridge this Africa/Nerd gap as ambient nerds and African influences have just begun to collide in the last 15 years and progress as a musical force. A ambient/gospel styled U2 track such as "One Tree Hill" and a dub masterworks such as Prince Far I's "The Right Way" may just have more in common than was once thought.