A new book brings Eno and Enya together in an exhaustive history of electronic and ambient music, writes Shane Hegarty
The key to reading Mark Prendergast's The Ambient Century is to first pay attention to the book's subtitle: From Mahler to Moby - The Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age. This is both an encyclopaedia and history not just of ambient music as we may categorise it, but of 20th-century music as a whole. The ambient tag may suggest pastoral electronica or new-agey soundtracks for yoga classes, but Prendergast has cracked open the term and let it flow over all the major movements in modern music. Yes, Enya and The Orb are there, but so too are Donna Summer and Miles Davis, Faust and U2, Primal Scream and Erik Satie. It is an exhaustive but by no means exhausting work, but you can see why it took the Irish-born journalist four years to compile.
"The first question I always get asked is 'what is ambient?'," says Prendergast. "I just felt that the evolution of sound ended up being an ambient one. I don't think it's disparate at all. It's just that up until the mid-19th century there were no records, tapes or computers. If you wanted an out-of-body musical experience you had to go somewhere and you would have three or four hours of an emotional catharsis and remember it.
"You couldn't bring the music home with you. In the 20th century, though, you could and suddenly everyone had their own soundtrack."
For him, "ambient" is about music that paints a landscape and transports the listener and that is written away from the structures and forms previously so cherished by Western music before it.
It could be the industrial landscape of Krautrock, the emotion of the Romantic movement or whatever background noise comes through a recording of John Cage's 4' 33", in which the musicians down tools and play nothing and whatever sound leaks in becomes the composition.
It's also about pilfering from the environment, so that the sound of water dripping in a cave can become music or that the recording method itself becomes an instrument, such as the use of magnetic tape in contemporary classical.
He couldn't write about all this, he says, without crossing genres as the musicians did.
"In the early 1970s, Eno and Bowie saw Glass and were influenced by him. Glass, meanwhile, was influenced by rock 'n' roll and Indian music. So I wanted to write a book that would bring this music together."
For some, though, it may jar to find a book that corrals John Cage and Enya in the same pages. "On the surface you could think it's blasphemy, a bit like placing J.K. Rowling with James Joyce, but this is about the history of sound and its evolution and its incredible journey through the 20th century."
There are some very unlikely candidates. "The Beatles' music was fantastic, because you always wanted the tracks to go on and on and their endings became longer and longer and weirder with it. It might end with a ragga and all the time you're wondering what it would go on and become. There was always the promise of a different sound, of being brought to a new environment or place and not just of listening passively. You wanted to be brought to a place and then you would sit there and wish you could stay forever."
The recently updated edition of the book includes a foreword by Brian Eno, and the entry on him is longest of any. Prendergast argues persuasively that Eno is the point at which all roads meet.
"He totally changed everything. "He's incredibly important because of his success in the mainstream with Roxy Music and how he then decided that he was going to go very avant garde and take the audience with him. He also gave otherwise obscure composers, such as Gavin Bryars, a career by putting them on his b-sides."
There is a quote on the dust jacket that suggests that much of what is ambient will be considered the "classical music of the future". While it was said by ambient techno pioneer Peter Namlook, Prendergast explains, "people looked at the classical structures of the past as music that is the ultimate point of perfection and form and that it was all downhill from romanticism onwards. What he meant is that people will look back on many of the forms and structures of ambient music as being just as important".
The book finishes on Moby, a character who divides the critics and an end point that raises eyebrows. "A lot of people hate Moby, but he is a very interesting character with some very strange ideas. He comes from a strange place and is a great musician."
Prendergast questions whether modern music is losing its creative momentum. While the wide availability of recording equipment has meant almost anyone can make electronic music, he believes the records produced were 99 per cent crap.
"It's still quite easy to recognise whether the people behind the records are musicians or not. Eno is instinctive and had an understanding of music. Anything he touches is musical. A lot of these now just touch computers."
Today FM's Donal Dineen is one of the few Irish broadcasters to have joined the dots through playing the music. His show, Here Comes The Night, has often moved from Arvo Pärt to Aphex Twin with an organic ease. He now champions much of the electronic music being produced, especially from Europe, and would be much more effusive about the current direction of music.
"We really are in the age of the producer," says Dineen. "In the modern era, that really has become a fine art and they really are able to interact with their own environment. It is amazing how the smallest sound, like a cup on a saucer, can become its own track."
Dineen also sees Brian Eno as the focal point. "Apollo Atmospheres and Soundtracks has all the elements of ambient music. Try imagining a place more spectacular than the Moon and he scores it so that it really is 'space'. It's groundbreaking and for me that's year dot."
Modern technology, he insists, has not entirely dehumanised the sound. It is important to recognise that there is a purity in classical music compared to that built-on technology, but once you recognise this, "even on home PCs there can be brought warm textures. And some of the records I play on the show are probably not exactly hard to make, but they often have a gifted person behind it".
For those seeking out the leading edge of electronic music, he recommends M/A/R/R/S, Lackluster and Casino Versus Japan.
Prendergast, meanwhile, hints at certain acts that may make the cut if there is to be a future edition of The Ambient Century.
Icelandic band Sigur Ros, he says, sound like they are "recording music under the North Pole". And he admires Canadian group Set Fire To Flames, who improvise with "spectacular" results.
"Ambient is about music that holds you in a place," he says, "and maybe I'm getting old or something, but it's rare that music does that now."
The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Moby - The Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age by Mark Prendergast is published by Bloomsbury