Music for Real Airports

Today’s jam — ok, not a jam exactly but more like marmalade spread on soft white bread — is Music for Real Airports by The Black Dog.

The title of the album is a play on Brian Eno’s Music for Airports:

Airports have some of the glossiest surfaces in modern culture, but the fear underneath remains. Hence this record is not a utilitarian accompaniment to airports, in the sense of reinforcing the false utopia and fake idealism of air travel. Unlike Eno’s Music for Airports, this is not a record to be used by airport authorities to lull their customers. The album is a bittersweet, enveloping and enormously engaging listen. It is ambient, but focused. This is not sonic mush, nor adolescent noise. Nor is it a dance album. Much of the raw material of the album was made in airports over the last three years. While on tour, the Black Dog made 200 hours of field recordings, much of which was processed and combined with new music in the airport itself, waiting for the next flight. This vast amount of content has been slowly distilled into a set of particularly evocative pieces of music.

(via the scissors video)

• Brian Eno
• music
• The Black Dog
• travel

The Putter Togetherer

A person who makes scissors by hand is called a putter, short for putter togetherer. The Putter is a four-minute silent film by Shaun Bloodworth that shows putter Cliff Denton making scissors.

You can order a pair of these handmade scissors at Ernest Wright & Sons; a pair of 6-inch desk scissors are £23, but they come with a lifetime guarantee and I bet you won’t find a better pair of scissors anywhere. The wonderful music in that video is by The Black Dog. (via colossal)

• Cliff Denton
• Shaun Bloodworth
• The Black Dog
• video