Ambient 1: Music for Airports is the sixth studio album by English musician Brian Eno, released in March 1978 by Polydor Records.

[5] The sound blended with the rain outside the room and, unable to get up and adjust the volume, Eno allowed it to create an ambience aligned with his fluctuating attention.

[7][13][14] Eno's concept was distinct from elevator music and easy listening's "derivative" background noise approach,[4] and was instead to be used as a means of creating space for thought.

And whereas their intention is to `brighten' the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms) Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.

[16]Eno later named the Ray Conniff Singers and the "Borgesian idea" of a self-generated "world in reverse" which is centered around music as inspirations during this period.

[21] With regards to their instrumentation, dynamic range, timbre, harmony, tonality and texture, the tracks are confining and feature a "contained repertory of pitches, gestural shapes, and motivic content that lasts throughout its entirety".

Not wanting it to be "all bright and cheerful", Eno, a self-proclaimed "nervous flyer", considered the feelings that arise from being at an airport, including the supposed mortality salience and hoped the album would bring solace: "Really, it’s music to resign you to the possibility of death".

[30] Philosopher of art John Lysaker, while discussing the album's general sense of aimless direction, noted that "1/1" "holds together no better (and no worse) than a cloud".

[35]The first album of ambient music to become popular – and later recognised as the "first deliberately 'ambient' recording" – it was initially dismissed by critics, audiences and some of Eno's peers alike, bewildering some of the former.

"[50] In another contemporary review for The Village Voice, critic Robert Christgau wrote that "these four swatches of modestly 'ambient' minimalism have real charms as general-purpose calmatives.

[9] Writing for The Globe and Mail, around the time of its release, Alan Niester categorized the album as alien, calling it "background grunge" that was best suited for "dish-doing [and] bed-making".

[52] In a 1979 interview with Eno for Musician, critic Lester Bangs described Music for Airports as having "a crystalline, sun-light-through windowpane quality that makes it somewhat mesmerising even as you half-listen to it," and recounted a personal experience in which the album induced him into a dream state featuring Charles Mingus.

[53] PopMatters journalist John Davidson was enthusiastic in a retrospective review, deeming Music for Airports a masterpiece whose value "can only be appreciated by listening to it in a variety of moods and settings.

"[36] Sasha Frere-Jones wrote that, by strength of its compositions, Music for Airports fails to facilitate an easily disregarded listening experience: "the album is too beautiful to ignore".

"[56] In a positive review, Pitchfork's Grayson Haver Currin wrote that "to hear Music for Airports as more than a background balm, these four tracks remain wondrous and transformative, able to rearrange the air in a room.

[13] Due in part to Music for Airports, perception of Eno's career shifted and he became aligned with highly influential minimalist composers: Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young.

[20] He felt the rendition's emotive quality was the result of the supposed human element; it moved him to tears, he said, and others he knew – such as Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson – had similar reactions.