There is a lot of cre­ative­ly revised his­to­ry in the Net­flix hit show Stranger Things, and I’m not just talk­ing about extra-dimen­sion­al mon­sters and Sovi­et sci­en­tists under shop­ping malls. There’s also the puls­ing synth score by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein. Deserv­ing of all its praise, the music nonethe­less gives the impres­sion that the sound of the 1980s was made by instru­ments of the 60s and 70s—analog syn­the­siz­ers like the Min­i­Moog Mod­el D and effects like the Roland Space Echo.

Such clas­sic instru­men­ta­tion does cre­ate the per­fect weird, fuzzy, wob­bly, lush accom­pa­ni­ment to the show’s com­pelling mix of sci-fi body hor­ror and cud­dly nos­tal­gia. But the 80s was the gold­en age of new sound tech­nol­o­gy, dig­i­tal, and the dawn of syn­the­siz­ers like the Yama­ha DX7, released in 1983, the year the saga of the Upside-Down begins. Along­side mas­sive­ly-pop­u­lar dig­i­tal synths like the Roland Juno-60, the DX7 defined the 80s like few oth­er elec­tron­ic instru­ments, quick­ly ris­ing “to take over the air­waves,” as the Poly­phon­ic video above explains.

Bri­an Eno, Ken­ny Log­gins, Whit­ney Hous­ton, Her­bie Han­cock, Depeche Mode, Hall & Oates, Van­ge­lis, Steve Win­wood, Phil Collins, The Cure… one could go on and on, nam­ing a major­i­ty of the artists on the charts through­out the decade. Why was the DX7 more appeal­ing than the ana­logue sounds we now asso­ciate with the height of synth qual­i­ty? Poly­phon­ic explains how the DX7 used an algo­rithm called FM (fre­quent­ly mod­u­lat­ed) syn­the­sis, which allowed for more refined con­trol and mod­u­la­tion than the sub­trac­tive syn­the­sis of ana­log synths built by Moog, ARP, Buch­la, and oth­er spe­cial­ized mak­ers in the 70s.

That meant dig­i­tal key­boards had a wider range of tim­bres and could con­vinc­ing­ly sim­u­late real instru­ments, like the marim­bas in Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F.” Dig­i­tal synths were pre­dictable, and could be pro­grammed and cus­tomized, or used for their many already excel­lent pre­sets. And just as Fal­ter­mey­er’s Bev­er­ly Hills Cop theme was inescapable in the mid-80s, so too was the sound of the DX7. It was “damned near ubiq­ui­tous,” writes Music Radar. “After years of exclu­sive­ly ana­logue synths, musi­cians embraced the DX7’s smooth, crys­talline tones and for a while the air­waves were rife with FM bells, dig­i­tal Rhodes emu­la­tions and edgy bass­es.”

Though it’s hard­ly as well known, the DX7 may be as influ­en­tial in 80s music as the Roland TR-808 drum machine. Yama­ha’s dig­i­tal synth was so pop­u­lar that it “almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly spawned the third-par­ty sound design indus­try, and forced oth­er syn­the­siz­er man­u­fac­tur­ers to take a hard look at how they were build­ing their own instru­ments.” Learn about the his­to­ry, ver­sa­til­i­ty, and cus­tomiza­tion of the DX7 from Poly­phon­ic in the video above. And stream a playlist of songs fea­tur­ing the DX7 below. While our 80s nos­tal­gia moment favors the rich­ly har­mon­ic tones of ana­log synths from ear­li­er decades, you’ll learn why the real 1980s belonged to the dig­i­tal DX7 and its many com­peti­tors and suc­ces­sors.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

The Roland TR-808, the Drum Machine That Changed Music For­ev­er, Is Back! And It’s Now Afford­able & Com­pact

Admit it, your list of favorite Bowie songs is full of the big hits. Hell, maybe it’s all hits; there’s no shame in that. Dig­ging deep into the crates will yield many an over­looked sur­prise, many a sub­tle sleep­er, cut-up clas­sic, and elec­tron­ic exper­i­ment. But if all you’ve got is Changes­bowie—the 1990 com­pi­la­tion that became, for some gen­er­a­tions, a defin­i­tive state­ment of his career—you’ve still got a col­lec­tion of songs the likes of which have nev­er been heard before or since in mod­ern pop.

Com­pletists may grouch, but even res­i­dent Bowie scholars/local record store clerks have an “Ash­es to Ash­es,” “’Heroes’,” “Changes,” or “Mod­ern Love” in their top ten. Whether ardent or casu­al fans, we con­nect with Bowie’s music through mile­stones, both in his career and in our own lives. This truth has been exploit­ed. In 2008, Mike Schiller at Pop­mat­ters bemoaned the fact that almost 20 Bowie com­pi­la­tion albums had been released, a few of which “don’t real­ly seem to court any greater pur­pose what­so­ev­er.”

Giv­en this sur­feit of Bowie com­pi­la­tions on the mar­ket, Schiller’s ini­tial groan­ing reac­tion to news of yet anoth­er (“Oh, good Lord. Anoth­er David Bowie col­lec­tion?”) seems appo­site. Except this col­lec­tion, iSE­LECT: BOWIE, released in 2008 to read­ers of the U.K.’s Mail on Sun­day, then lat­er in an offi­cial CD and dig­i­tal edi­tion, “is actu­al­ly some­thing spe­cial.” Bowie “picked the track­list him­self. Even more than that, the track­list actu­al­ly looks like some­thing he’d have picked him­self, rather than hav­ing a man­ag­er or pub­li­cist pick it for him.”

iSE­LECT: BOWIE
1. “Life On Mars?” (from the album Hunky Dory)
2. “Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing” (from the album Dia­mond Dogs)
3. “The Bewlay Broth­ers” (from the album Hunky Dory)
4. “Lady Grin­ning Soul” (from the album Aladdin Sane)
5. “Win” (from the album Young Amer­i­cans)
6. “Some Are” (cur­rent­ly exclu­sive to this com­pi­la­tion)
7. “Teenage Wildlife” (from the album Scary Mon­sters)
8. “Rep­e­ti­tion” (from the album Lodger)
9. “Fan­tas­tic Voy­age” (from the album Lodger)
10. “Lov­ing The Alien” (from the album Tonight)
11. “Time Will Crawl (MM Remix)” (new remix by David Bowie)
12. “Hang On To Your­self [live]” (from the album Live San­ta Mon­i­ca ’72)

See the full track­list above and hear a playlist of his picks at the top. If we put all our lists of favorites togeth­er, we might see a very high per­cent­age of “Life on Mars?” picks. We’re in excel­lent com­pa­ny; it’s Bowie’s num­ber one favorite song of his. But how many of his oth­er picks might we choose? The eight-and-a-half minute “Sweet Thing”/”Candidate”/”Sweet Thing (Reprise)” from Dia­mond Dogs? “Win” from Young Amer­i­cans or “The Bewlay Broth­ers” from Hunky Dory?

Aside from “Life on Mars?” and the far less­er-col­lect­ed “Lov­ing the Alien” and “Time Will Crawl,” none of his twelve selec­tions were released as sin­gles. There are no songs from two of the most acclaimed Bowie albums, Low and ’Heroes’, unless we count “Some Are” a bonus track includ­ed on the Low 1991 rere­lease. There are two tracks from Lodger, the third and least acces­si­ble of his vaunt­ed Berlin tril­o­gy, and only one selec­tion from Zig­gy Star­dust, and it ain’t “Zig­gy Star­dust.”

If any­one else hand­ed you this list of favorite Bowie tracks, you’d be skep­ti­cal. Who puts “Hang On to Your­self” (Live in San­ta Mon­i­ca ’72) above any of the stu­dio tracks on that clas­sic 1972 break­out album? David Bowie, that’s who. And who knows, if you’d asked him the day before or after, he might have picked twelve dif­fer­ent songs. There’s no telling how seri­ous­ly he took the exer­cise, but in the news­pa­per release, he did “casu­al­ly [pen] his inspi­ra­tions for the songs and the record­ing process­es behind them,” notes Allmusic’s Jason Lyman­grover.

On his choice of “Teenage Wildlife,” for exam­ple, Bowie com­ment­ed: “So it’s late morn­ing and I’m think­ing, ‘New song and a fresh approach. I know. I’m going to do a Ron­nie Spec­tor. Oh yes I am. Ersatz just for one day.’ And I did and here it is. Bless. I’m still very enam­oured of this song and would give you two ‘Mod­ern Love’s for it any­time…” Bowie got to expe­ri­ence his own music in a way no one else could. iSE­LECT: BOWIE gets behind the great­est hits col­lec­tions for a glimpse at the way he heard and remem­bered his cat­a­logue.

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Bowie Used William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method to Write His Unfor­get­table Lyrics

The “David Bowie Is” Exhi­bi­tion Is Now Avail­able as an Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty Mobile App That’s Nar­rat­ed by Gary Old­man: For David Bowie’s Birth­day Today

How David Bowie Deliv­ered His Two Most Famous Farewells: As Zig­gy Star­dust in 1973, and at the End of His Life in 2016

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Pink Floyd is one of few bands in rock his­to­ry who could play the ruins of Pom­peii with­out seem­ing to over­reach, but it wasn’t their idea to put on a con­cert for Roman ghosts in 1971, the year before they record­ed their mag­num opus Dark Side of the Moon. Accord­ing to the direc­tor Adri­an Maben, who filmed the per­for­mance in the ancient necrop­o­lis, he decid­ed upon the loca­tion after los­ing his pass­port dur­ing a hol­i­day in Italy in 1971. He wan­dered Pom­peii alone in search of it and had an epiphany.

It was strange. A huge desert­ed amphithe­ater filled with echo­ing insect sounds, fly­ing bats and the dis­ap­pear­ing light which meant that I could hard­ly see the oppo­site side of this huge struc­ture built more than two thou­sand years ago.

I knew by instinct that this was the place for the film. It had to be here.

Mak­ing cre­ative deci­sions from a chance encounter with echoes and shad­ows was, nonethe­less, ful­ly in keep­ing with the band’s process. Despite their deci­sion to write acces­si­ble lyrics fit­ting togeth­er under a loose con­cept for their cur­rent album, serendip­i­ty and chance oper­a­tions had always played crit­i­cal roles in the com­po­si­tion of their post-Syd Bar­rett sound­scapes, and became inte­gral to Dark Side’s cre­ation.

As David Gilmour told Gui­tar World’s Alan Di Per­na, ear­ly exper­i­ments like “Saucer­ful of Secrets” (inspired by “weird shapes” drawn by Roger Waters and Nick Mason) gave rise to “Atom Heart Moth­er” and Med­dle’s “Echoes,” which the band played in two parts at the begin­ning and end of the Pom­peii con­cert film. These songs, Gilmour says, “all lead log­i­cal­ly to Dark Side of the Moon.”

And they led through Pom­peii, where the band was first “unleashed on film,” as one the­atri­cal poster put it, before they were unleashed on thou­sands of new fans after Dark Side’s release in Decem­ber. Where the filmed con­cert high­light­ed the band’s mas­tery of exper­i­men­tal space rock, the album brought this sen­si­bil­i­ty under the dis­ci­pline of Roger Waters’ sharp song­writ­ing and Gilmour’s stun­ning gui­tar play­ing and arrang­ing.

Though he is mod­est about it, Gilmour’s con­tri­bu­tions came increas­ing­ly to define the band’s mas­sive sound in the ear­ly 70s. His role, as he told Di Per­na, was “to help cre­ate a bal­ance between form­less­ness and struc­ture, dishar­mo­ny and har­mo­ny.” He was, writes Rolling Stone, “a fiery, blues-based soloist in a band that hard­ly ever played the blues,” but he was just as “adept at dron­ing avant-garde improv,” “Chic-like flour­ish­es,” and “float­ing, dreamy tex­tures,” all qual­i­ties ensur­ing that Pink Floyd’s music rose to the lev­el of their cre­ative ambi­tions.

So when Gilmour returned to Pom­peii in 2016, with­out his Pink Floyd band mem­bers, to play the first live pub­lic con­cert the city’s amphithe­ater had seen in almost 2000 years—and the only laser light show it had ever seen—the per­for­mance didn’t seem like over­reach at all. Above, see him play “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond” and “Com­fort­ably Numb” with a full back­ing band (includ­ing Chuck Leavell on key­boards, singing Roger Waters’ parts on the lat­ter song). The mas­sive stage show and huge, smart­phone-tot­ing audi­ence makes this footage more are­na rock show than the per­for­mance art of the orig­i­nal con­cert film, but the grandeur of the music, and Gilmour’s soar­ing solos, still jus­ti­fies the grandeur of the set­ting.

You can pur­chase online the Direc­tor’s cut of Pink Floyd — Live at Pom­peii.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Pink Floyd’s “Com­fort­ably Numb” Was Born From an Argu­ment Between Roger Waters & David Gilmour

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

When Pink Floyd Tried to Make an Album with House­hold Objects: Hear Two Sur­viv­ing Tracks Made with Wine Glass­es & Rub­ber Bands

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Play­ing music live onstage invites any num­ber of mishaps. Break­ing a string may not rank that high­ly as one of them for most pro­fes­sion­al gui­tarists. But the expe­ri­ence can still be tem­porar­i­ly embar­rass­ing. It inter­rupts the groove and forces the kind of cre­ative adap­ta­tion not every play­er appre­ci­ates on the spot. Even if you’ve got a per­fect­ly-tuned gui­tar offstage—or, bet­ter yet, a gui­tar tech to hand you one from a rack of tuned-up guitars—you might only want that gui­tar: that exact gui­tar and no oth­er.

If you’re B.B. King, that gui­tar has a name. While there were many Lucilles over the blues master’s career, when he stood in front of an audi­ence of tens of thou­sands at Farm Aid in 1985, he wasn’t about to relin­quish the cur­rent Lucille for a back-up instru­ment just because he broke a string in the mid­dle of “How Blue Can You Get.” His tech rush­es in, but instead of hand­ing him a gui­tar, he hands King a high E string, and the leg­end pro­ceeds to restring Lucille with­out so much as drop­ping a line of the song.

It helps that he’s got an ace band behind him, but it’s still a bravu­ra dis­play from a per­former who wouldn’t get rat­tled in front of an audi­ence three times this size. (Though he did once say that watch­ing Peter Green play gave him the “cold sweats.”)

As attached as King was to his sig­na­ture Gib­son 335s, so was too Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an to his Fend­er Stra­to­cast­ers, espe­cial­ly to the gui­tar he called his “first wife,” bet­ter known as “Num­ber One.”

It’s not got as pret­ty a name as Lucille, and may not have as col­or­ful a back­sto­ry to go with it, but the specs of Vaughan’s vin­tage ’63 Strat were just as inte­gral to his tone and play­ing style as Lucille’s were to King’s. In the video above, we see Vaugh­an break a string on Num­ber One while play­ing an intense solo on “Look at Lit­tle Sis­ter” in Austin in 1989. He opts for the switcheroo instead of chang­ing a string mid-song, but what a switcheroo it is.

First, he tears through the solo with a string hang­ing loose, then he launch­es into the cho­rus, churn­ing out the rhythm after a two sec­ond-pause to grab a new gui­tar from his tech, who attach­es his gui­tar strap while Ste­vie chugs away. If you turned away for a moment, you’d be sur­prised to find him play­ing a dif­fer­ent, num­ber two, gui­tar. And, as in B.B. King’s onstage-string-change, if you closed your eyes, you’d nev­er know any­thing went wrong at all, a sign of how a true pro­fes­sion­al deals with the unex­pect­ed.

via Twister Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Great­est Per­for­mances (1972)

Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Plays the Acoustic Gui­tar in Rare Footage, Let­ting Us See His Gui­tar Vir­tu­os­i­ty in Its Purest Form

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

In 1991, Nir­vana changed pop music with Nev­er­mind. We know this, and we know—or can con­firm with a few clicks—that “Pol­ly,” the 6th track on that album, sits at its very cen­ter. We can call to mind, or pull up in sec­onds, the lul­la­by cho­rus melody and the sound of Cobain’s five-string, pawn shop Stel­la acoustic gui­tar. And we may even remem­ber the lyrics, or some of them, ellip­ti­cal, deeply dis­turb­ing descrip­tions of a girl named “Pol­ly,” from the point of view of some­one doing hor­ri­fy­ing things to her.

“Pol­ly,” as Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as video-essay­ist Nerd­writer, explains above, in fact describes an actu­al occur­rence near Cobain’s home­town of Aberdeen, WA: the abduc­tion, rape, and tor­ture of a 14-year-old girl, writ­ten from the per­spec­tive of her abduc­tor, rapist, and tor­tur­er. “Of all the dark songs” Cobain wrote, says Puschak, “and there are a lot to choose from, the most dis­turb­ing to me is ‘Pol­ly.’” The inci­dent hap­pened in 1987; Cobain first wrote “Pol­ly,” then called “Hitch­hik­er,” in ’88.

“It’s a hard song to talk about,” Puschak admits, but an impos­si­ble song to ignore, giv­en its place in one of the biggest-sell­ing albums from one of the biggest bands in the world. And com­ing from Cobain, whose out­spo­ken activism defined his pub­lic per­sona, it’s a song we must hear in the larg­er con­text of a writer per­pet­u­al­ly hor­ri­fied by sex­u­al vio­lence and misog­y­ny, and unable to look away and ignore it.

“Dis­gust­ed,” writes Juli­et Macy at Go Mag, after “some of his fans spread anti-gay mes­sages in tune to his music,” Cobain left a mes­sage for them in the lin­er notes to Inces­ti­cide: “If any of you, in any way, hate homo­sex­u­als, peo­ple of col­or or women, please do this one favor for us—leave us the fuck alone. Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.” He meant it, and left an even more furi­ous mes­sage for in the notes for In Utero.

“On rape cul­ture,” Macy writes, “Cobain assert­ed, ‘The prob­lem with groups who deal with rape is that they try to edu­cate women how to defend them­selves. What real­ly needs to be done is teach­ing men not to rape. Go to the source and start there.” “Pol­ly” rep­re­sents such an attempt to go to the source, Puschak argues, to get clos­er than we’d ever want to get. Its spare arrange­ment helps cre­ate its sense of inti­ma­cy. “’Pol­ly’ is basi­cal­ly Cobain and his gui­tar.”

Musi­cal­ly, this was not the kind of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty Cobain was at all com­fort­able putting on dis­play. Two years lat­er, when Nir­vana went on MTV’s Unplugged, he “wor­ried the band didn’t have the grace to pull off some­thing so sub­tle,” as Mike Pow­ell notes at Pitch­fork. Notably, one of the songs Cobain chose to play in that exposed, uncom­fort­able set­ting venue was Leadbelly’s “In the Pines,” a song writ­ten from the point of view of a man inter­ro­gat­ing a woman; a man who may be a father, jeal­ous lover, or some­thing much more sin­is­ter.

In every ver­sion of this old, vague­ly trag­ic Amer­i­can folk-blues, from its first, 1929 record­ing as “Black Girl” by Peg Leg How­ell to “In the Pines” to wordier, and white­washed, ver­sions by coun­try pick­ers and croon­ers, a sense of men­ace hov­ers, near or far, fraught with inti­ma­tions of rape and mur­der, the klax­ons the Rolling Stones rang to announce the end of the flow­ery, folky ’60s. Bands in the ’90s culled from a much dark­er strain of the coun­try’s ear­li­est pop­u­lar music than Pete Seeger, or even Dylan, and “Pol­ly,” in its old-timey instru­men­ta­tion and blues sim­plic­i­ty, touch­es into this under­cur­rent.

In “Pol­ly,” Cobain “forces an emo­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with evil, to stop us from sup­press­ing this bru­tal­i­ty,” Puschak says, search­ing­ly, or “to stop us from evad­ing it.” Per­haps. Maybe he’s ask­ing us to empathize with a mon­ster, but he also push­es us to look at a dis­turb­ing Amer­i­can tradition—one evoked by “In the Pines” as well: mur­der bal­lads, songs, books, and films about stalk­ing, pos­ses­sion, manip­u­la­tion, and rape (see the Stones’ “Brown Sug­ar”): a near-con­stant aes­theti­ciza­tion of vio­lence against women.

This kind of exca­va­tion was lost on many of the fans who bought Nev­er­mind—those same fans whom Cobain came to loathe. His evo­ca­tions of dark Amer­i­cana were part of a gen­er­al trend of the time. In 1994, when the Unplugged episode aired, many Nir­vana lis­ten­ers of the band were also howl­ing, “Do you want to die!” to the The Toad­ies hit “Pos­sum King­dom,” anoth­er song that reached into south­ern U.S. folk­lore to tell what seems to be a sto­ry of rape and tor­ture in the woods from the per­spec­tive of the rapist and tor­tur­er. (The song’s video explic­it­ly plays with ser­i­al-killer film tropes.)

“Pol­ly” is nei­ther mourn­ful nor play­ful, and it decid­ed­ly does not rock like “Pos­sum King­dom.” Almost total­ly acoustic, drum­less, deliv­ered in a mum­bled monot­o­ne in the vers­es, and an off-key dead-eyed sing-song in the jar­ring­ly catchy cho­rus­es, it lulls and repuls­es at the same time. Like every oth­er artist, Cobain had no con­trol over what lis­ten­ers did with his music. After Nev­er­mind’s suc­cess, reports emerged of two men com­mit­ting a rape while singing the song. Cobain replied, “I have a hard time car­ry­ing on know­ing there are plank­ton like that in our audi­ence.”

But he could not have made his own inten­tions clear­er, or the bur­den he felt to con­front a cul­ture that would not lis­ten to women. “A man using him­self as an exam­ple toward oth­er men,” he once said rue­ful­ly, “can prob­a­bly make more impact than a woman can.” Iron­i­cal­ly, giv­en how much he came to resent Nev­er­mind’s mas­sive suc­cess, one of its effects was to show cyn­i­cal male record label exec­u­tives that rock stars could be edgy and also out­spo­ken about sex­ism and rape cul­ture and also sell mil­lions of albums: which helped open doors for an explo­sion of female artists and bands through­out the decade who issued sear­ing punk man­i­festos and right­eous­ly angsty alt-rock against the patri­archy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nir­vana Plays an Angry Set & Refus­es to Play ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it’ After the Crowd Hurls Sex­ist Insults at the Open­ing Act (Buenos Aires, 1992)

Nir­vana Refus­es to Fake It on Top of the Pops, Gives a Big “Mid­dle Fin­ger” to the Tra­di­tion of Bands Mim­ing on TV (1991)

33 Songs That Doc­u­ment the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nist Punk (1975–2015): A Playlist Curat­ed by Pitch­fork

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Bri­an Eno debuted Music for Air­ports in 1978 and in terms of ambi­ent music he’s been remak­ing it ever since. This ground­break­ing album was both com­posed and left to chance. “Com­posed” in that for each piece Eno select­ed a num­ber of notes and sim­ple melod­ic frag­ments that would work togeth­er with­out dis­so­nance. And “left to chance” because each frag­ment was giv­en a tape loop of dif­fer­ent length. Once Eno set the loops in motion, the piece cre­at­ed itself in all sorts of per­mu­ta­tions and inter­sec­tions.

Eno no longer uses tape loops, but he still believes in “gen­er­a­tive music,” cre­at­ing albums that are hour-long cap­tures of ran­dom­ly gen­er­at­ed tones that could con­ceiv­ably go on for­ev­er.

Dan Carr over at his site Reverb Machine has writ­ten a decon­struc­tion of two of the four pieces on Music for Air­ports, reverse engi­neer­ing them to fig­ure out their orig­i­nal loops. And the best thing is, you can set the loops rolling and have your own ver­sion play out all day long if you wish.

The first, “2/1” is rec­og­niz­able from the choral voic­es used in the score. Each loop con­tains one note sung for a whole bar, but the note and the length of the tape con­tain­ing the bar changes. This is the most basic of all the four tracks, but there is some­thing quite mag­i­cal when all sev­en loops sync up.

The sec­ond “1/2” con­tains eight loops con­tain­ing either a sin­gle piano note, a melod­ic phrase, or a glis­san­do chord. (Although the arti­cle doesn’t men­tion it, it also con­tains the choral loops of “2/1”)

You can play the loops at Reverb Machine sim­ply by click­ing on the arrow beneath each bar, or at the bot­tom “play all” or “pause all.”

For musi­cians think­ing they’d like to make their own loops and fol­low Eno’s method­ol­o­gy, Dan includes some instruc­tions.

In the com­ments sec­tion, musi­cian Glenn Sogge notes that he took the loops and cre­at­ed his own decon­struct­ed take on Eno’s clas­sic, Blooms Engulf­ing Decon­struct­ed Air­ports, which you can play at the top of this post. As he explains, the piece start­ed with down­load­ing the WAV files from Reverb Machine’s post. Then:

Beside the 15 clips of voic­es and piano, 10 long loops were build from the 10 worlds of the Bri­an Eno & Peter Chil­vers gen­er­a­tive music app Bloom: 10 Worlds (Android Ver­sion). A mix­ture of impro­vised clip-launch­ing and more stuc­ture form result­ed in 25 audio files that then mixed & mas­tered. In keep­ing with the Oblique Strate­gies dic­tum, “Hon­our thy error as hid­den inten­tion,” even a ran­dom phone noti­fi­ca­tion sound has been left in.

What do you think of Sogge’s trib­ute to the mas­ter? Let us know in the com­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Six-Hour Time-Stretched Ver­sion of Bri­an Eno’s Music For Air­ports: Med­i­tate, Relax, Study

The “True” Sto­ry Of How Bri­an Eno Invent­ed Ambi­ent Music

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.