BRIAN ENO
LUX
(WARP)

The liner notes to Brian Eno’s Music for Airports (1978) act as a veritable Ambient Manifesto, outlining the philosophy of a genre he developed as an alternative to Muzak, and other background fluff. In the final sentence, he asserted, “Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.” By that count, Eno’s solo Warp debut, LUX, is his most successful foray into ambient territory in quite some time. Read more »

BIBI TANGA AND THE SELENITES
40 DEGREES OF SUNSHINE
(NAT GEO MUSIC)

From the bright electro-funk pulse of the opening track, "Poet of the Soul," sunlight infuses Bibi Tanga and the Selenites' latest album, 40 Degrees of Sunshine. An upbeat melange of esoteric samples, funky bass lines, polyrhythmic percussion, soulful, multi-lingual crooning, and Walt Whitman poetry, the twelve tracks distill the best of an array of influences into a potent brew. Read more »