Discreet Music

Personnel: David Hill (electronics).
Arranger: Gavin Bryars .
DISCREET MUSIC is Brian Eno's first break with pop music in favor of a quieter, more meditative form, and it came about by accident. When Eno was confined to bed after an auto accident, a visitor brought him an album of classical music, which he mistakenly put on the stereo at a very low volume. Unable to get up to raise the volume, Eno heard the quiet music blend with the natural sounds of his environment, and conceived a music designed for that purpose. The several lengthy pieces on DISCREET MUSIC are named after quotes from the liner notes of a recording of Pachebel's Canon in D, which also provides the structure of the pieces themselves. Built on subtle tape loops, the pieces retain just enough of those structures to avoid the deliberate formlessness of Eno's later ambient experiments. The very beginnings of ambient music are on this disc.