AMBIENT 4 - ON LAND

Brian Eno's fourth chapter of the Ambient series, the album where he get's rid of everybody that previously surrounded him and does the album all by himself. So we get a near perfect album, almost as good as the first Ambient "Music For Airports".

"Ambient 4: On Land" is most definitely Eno's darkest album, or at least of the Ambient series. In fact, with this album we already start talking about "Dark Ambient", a genre that will interest especially a few composers of film scores. Other than synthetisers, we can also find field and nature recordings, especially nocturnal sounds that accompany the other instruments, creating in this way, like in the wonderfully creepy "The Lost day", a dark, mysterious and tense atmosphere that Eno was never able to reproduce this effectively. The title of the songs here are mostly places that Eno himself keeps in his heart, places where he used to go in his childhood and early manhood, so the artist gave a bit more of himself in this album, making it one of his most personal efforts. The music also wanted to evoke paintings (Eno was thinking particularly about French abstract expressionism).

I like to think of "On Land" as a dark, mysterious, creepy, at times melancholic and sad, journey through a dark clouded covered rural landscape, like the cover implies. Unfortunately, like I said earlier, the songs, even though they do want to represent places, they represent very precise places, so almost all the listeners of the album have to imagine a landscape that could apply with the music.

Almost all the songs are genius, great pieces of art, from the famous "Lizard Point", very minimalistic, to the masterful "The Lost Day", as well as the creepy vocals of "Shadow", eerie atmospheres in "Lantern Marsh", or the miraculously peaceful "a Clearing". All of these songs, and others, made an excellent album, a near perfect effort that is essential to whoever loves music. 4.5 stars.