Ambient 1: Music For Airports by Brian Eno

Pros: Great soundtrack for mental exercise
Cons: Some might find it boring

Brian Eno wrote MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS as a form of “white noise” for the airports of the world. Its purpose: to float through the air, presenting a subtle counterbalance to the sense of frenzy and crowding that tends to dominate the experience of airline...

Pros: Beautiful work from Brian Eno
Cons: Not for those who have enough courage to listen to this album

In the late 1970s, Brian Eno had been making seminal albums for artists like David Bowie, the Talking Heads, and Devo. Around the same time, the former Roxy Music keyboardist had been experimenting with atmospheric soundscapes in which he would call...

Pros: Given a chance, it will wipe your mind clean
Cons: Could have done with slightly better remastering

True story: when this came out in the late 70's, I was trying to stay alive in my rather aggressively blue-collar high school by dressing like a typical suburban stoner kid. This camouflage fooled most people, but one day I nearly blew it all by playing...

Pros: Lovely, haunting, melodic
Cons: Can often be quite stark and melancholy

Scene: Aurora, IL
Date: August 1999
Event: E-faction

Unrelentlingly hot. Luckily, our small conference had found a tiny air conditioned room at a Motel 6 or somesuch. When I came back from crossing a field to get to a mall with an...

Pros: A classic - the origins of popularly recognized ambient
Cons: A bit too new-agey and synthetic for my tastes

Eno is the man who popularized music as wallpaper and is considered responsible for the word 'ambient' being used to describe it. Although all of Eno's Ambient albums are nice to have around as historical documents, most of them are a bit too melodic for...