Customer Reviews

Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have all of Brian Eno's ambient CDs. This one is my favorite. The dreamlike textures on this CD paint gauzy dreamlike worlds of filtered-light images. The piano used on this CD has haunting tonal qualities and sets the mood for the album. I use this CD as "wallpaper" while I work, for meditation, and to fall asleep to. Most of the ambient music I listen to is synthesizer-based (Steve Roach/Robert Rich) but the featured instrument on this CD is a piano. And it works beautifully. The track "First Light" sets the mood for the whole CD. A dreamy piece that defines the passage of time and love lost. Beautifully done. This CD is a flawless gem. If you like this CD check out "The Pearl" which is also by Eno/Budd. These two CDs could have been sold together as they both have the same tonal themes.

After his genre-defining AMBIENT 1: MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS, Brian Eno collaborated with minimalist composer Harold Budd for AMBIENT 2: THE PLATEAUX OF MIRROR, which proved to be a natural pairing. By taking Budd's solo piano compositions and applying his unique sound treatments, Eno managed to enhance a startlingly spare work, yet keep its simplicity intact. On many tracks, Eno's additional sounds are so subtle that they easily mesh with any background noise that may surround the listener. Budd's delicate piano work, though, is always at the fore, slowly creating a quiet, yet expansive, sonic landscape. Here both musicians are wholly in their element, making this an album of truly astounding beauty.

This album and the follow-up, "The Pearl", really have to be taken together in the same listen. They both feature the same sparse piano melodies over a treated Eno-scape. These two albums are my favorites for relaxation, reading, painting - you name it, they're great for it. That's why it's called "Ambient" music - it is made to fit in with almost any atmosphere, blending with, as Erik Satie once said, "The sounds of the knives and forks at dinner".
My favorite time to listen to these records is in a rainstorm, especially with distant thunder in the background. The rain sounds seem to bring out subtleties in the music that can't be heard otherwise.
So if you like Eno's "Ambient 1" or "Discreet Music" or Steve Roach's "Structures from Silence", this is the album for you.

Quiet. Almost-silence. A half-melancholy spill of soft piano notes fading into existence. As anyone familiar with Budd or Eno should expect, Plateaux is an album of simple melodies and warm tones that can lull you to sleep and color your dreams. Like its successor The Pearl (though shorter at 38 minutes), it weaves a hypnotic spell with almost nothing but an atmospheric piano, the only variety in sound coming from some Eno sound treatments. In "Not Yet Remembered" it sounds like a background voice adding some "ahh"s to the melody. In "An Arc of Doves" it sounds almost like a harp. Brian is credited with 'other instruments,' which probably explains some of the non-piano effects, but they're all so subtle that they all fade together into one uniform atmosphere of dreamy calm. Non-ambient fans may be better served by Ambient 1 or Apollo (also by Eno) as an introduction, although I think anyone looking for a peacefully calming listening experience won't be disappointed here.

As far as mood goes.. well, as some of the reviews below attest, different people can hear different things. I get feelings of cold starry winter skies and frozen nocturnal landscapes. It's probably because my only listening has been during this last frigid month (and partly because some titles suggest that mood - "Wind In Lonely Fences," "The Chill Air"). I find it a little darker and number than The Pearl, which I associate with cozy warm summer nights and sunny afternoons. However, I could just as easily imagine someone else buying The Plateaux of Mirror in mid-July and forming that same summery association with this cocoon of sound - it's that adaptable and that universal. Like the best truly ambient music, it allows the listener to create half the experience for themselves.

Though the melodies are as simple and understated as they can get, they still carry this album; by that I mean it's perfectly sublime as a quiet layer of background noise, but it doesn't provide the same break-from-actual-music that Ambient 1 and Thursday Afternoon do. But then, I guess it's not supposed to.

Enough talk - no matter what mood you associate with it, this is an aural experience both softly enveloping and shimmeringly beautiful. I'm glad I finally found it since it's back in print, and if these few comments might help someone else discover this overlooked gem, so much the better.

Okay, first off, I don't know where people get off comparing this to Pearl. Though the two use similar sound sources (piano with various synthy tweakings) it seems to me that they have two entirely different aims. The Pearl is on the whole more dreamlike and euphoric, whereas Plateaux seems more melancholic and downbeat. This is actually one of the few discs I own on which every track can illicit crying for me. Please don't take this as an overly-sentimental statement, but this is the most profoundly sad music I've ever heard. It's crystaline and paralyzing, the aural equivalent of watching snow fall at night in a lonely place(again, forgive the sentimentality.) The album is surely aptly named for my personal take; a plateau, a point where you can't climb any higher, a place to contemplate the past climbings, and "mirror" a looking inward. Put into non-pretentious terms, this music makes me think of past tendernesses, missed opportunities as well as opportunities taken and never to be had again.

I look at the reviews below and kind of cringe at the guy who mentions making love to this music. If it is a theme for love-making...it would be theme for making love with someone for the last time or something equally lamentably sublime. Again, this is my take on it, I admit. The nature of ambient music is to induce different visions in different people, I've found, so I'm not going to come out and say mine is the final word. Some accuse it of being too New Agey. This, I can understand somewhat, but am compelled to rebuff. It flirts with it, containing feelings of beauty that is associated with the genre, but avoids crossing that line that Pearl never goes near, and this is a good thing. It simply goes into more emotional territory than Pearl; sentimentality and tear-jerking is avoided on every track. Yanni this definitely is not. I feel the need to recommend this album to everyone regardless of prior tastes; Plateaux accomplishes what so much "New Age" proports to do but fails miserably at: reconnects you with the awesome and introspective parts of yourself.

It is incredible to me how such minimal music can be so beautiful. Primarily just sparse piano melodies, it is astounding in a subtle kind of way, music that blends into any mood, environment or atmosphere.

It's relaxing yet not boringly so, hypnotic yet not distractingly so, background music that you can not quite ignore. I've played this in my car and it will have been playing for quite some time when someone will notice how beautiful it is and comment on it. It is the fact it takes some time to notice it that is so striking.

I use this to study, write or when the radio and music with singing is just a bit much on the drive. It provides just enough of a lift to become absorbed into the task at hand.

quite simply some of the most beautiful, transcendentally sparse ambient piano music ever made. Almost seems like music from another world, or music for what this world could be or could've been. If you like this, make sure to listen to The Pearl - also by Budd and Eno.

This has been one of my favorite (ambient) cd's since I first heard it many years ago. The similarity of the opening and closing tracks and the quiet contemplative nature of the rest lend it a sense of wholeness somewhat lacking in Eno's other ambient releases save perhaps for Thursday Afternoon (great as well!). I believe as an occasional reviewer of music that I am perhaps a little too generous with praise and realize that referring to this work as "timeless" may seem like just another example. But as this is not a CD I "just got" and knowing that I am loathe to rate any music as "perfect" or "the best", suggesting that it is timeless is really the highest praise I can bestow; so much music becomes dated or dates itself it seems. Also, at the risk of lapsing into the melodramatic, there are moments on this disc that move the soul with their simple beauty, their eloquent maturity, like the best symphonies, the most cherished pop songs, the smoothest jazz track. If you think this might be your cup of tea, ignore the high price this CD usually commands and buy it. And let us hope it is out of print only temporarily.

The best of the four Ambient Music albums. This one starts off and ends with a warm evocative tune that invites relaxation and reflection. Great music for making love.

This is one of my all time favorite albums. Period. I bought this album on vinyl in 1980 when it was first released. I have, by conservative estimates, listened to it at least 1,000 times since. To put in perspective, I listen to ALL kinds of music, from progressive rock to jazz to classical to world to folk to blues...etc. This has consistently been one of my favorites because of its purity, simplicity and the subtle yet distinctly original electronic treatments that Brian Eno has laid over Harold Budd's piano compositions. This album is sweet, mysterious, thoughtful, and incredibly peaceful. I would have wanted to be born to this album, and would like to die to it. It goes right to the heart and soul of the listener and invites timeless feelings--a quiet sense of belonging, remembering and fragile wonder. An original aural oasis. Definitely in my top five "desert island" picks. If you like this one, also check out "The Pearl", by Eno, Budd and Daniel Lanois, released two years later, and following on the same theme, though a little bluer in tone and feeling...