The Weird Studies podcast’s latest Episode 115 drifts into the observation lounge of Brian Eno’s famous and seminal album Ambient 1: Music for Airports.

This album followed the instrumentals on Another Green World and Before and After Science, and the instrumentals on the Bowie collaboration albums. It then heralded a small but perfectly formed set of such music spread across three solo albums and two made with Cluster.

Much of this then-new type of music could certainly evoke a sense of big weird empty landscapes.

The introductory listening-list of albums would be, in date order:

Another Green World (just the instrumentals)

Before and After Science (just the instrumentals)

Low (with David Bowie, just the instrumentals)

Heroes (with David Bowie, just the instrumentals)

Then the albums:

Ambient 1: Music for Airports

Music for Films

Cluster & Eno (with Cluster)

After the Heat (with Cluster)

Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror

An argument might also be made that Eno’s early lyrics are also profoundly weird, if in a dreamy ‘British surrealist’ way rather than horror-shocker kind of way. But that’s for another post.