Brian Eno is an English composer, producer and visual artist, born on 15 May 1948 in Woodbridge, Suffolk, and widely credited with defining ambient music. Alongside a career as a producer for David Bowie, U2 and many others, he developed the idea of music designed to sit at the edge of attention, to be listened to or ignored.
By his own account the idea came while he was bedridden after a car accident: a visiting friend left a record of eighteenth-century harp music playing so quietly that it merged with the rain outside. Discreet Music, released on his Obscure label in December 1975, put the idea into practice with two melodic phrases from an EMS synthesizer fed through a delay system of two tape recorders, so that the piece generates itself slowly. Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978) opened his Ambient series and gave the idea a name and a wide public, influencing generations of drone musicians.