Listening to various music from Eno installations particularly Kite Stories and The Shutov Assembly (The Shutov Assembly contains excerpts from various installations 1985-1990) two qualities strike me at the moment:
There’s an abundant variety of sonic sources embeded in each track. Compared to Ambient Music 1 Discrete Music Neroli and Thursday Afternoon the sonic landscapes created seems richer. Most of the tracks are probably created using the same kind of layering technique used for Music for Airports 2/1 but now using a number of CD players in shuffle mode instead of tape loops. For the records I guess this kind of random mode is simulated in a multitrack sequencer.
Also the sonic events seems to be further elaborated as compared to 2/1. Each sonic event in 2/1 is made up from a single sustained note (processed voice). In the later works the sonic events generally seems to be more complexs creating small gestures phrases or fragments or chordal or melodic substance but generally not becoming as long as the melodic sequences used for 1/1 or Discrete Music.
