David Bedford - Great Equatorial (1994)

A quid at a boot fair, I knew of Bedford from his work with Kevin Ayers, Mike Oldfield and his avant-garde classical works on the early Virgin label, so it was a pound I was happy to risk.

Commissioned for an exhibition at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, this was very much intended as an unobtrusive background piece, composed and created on computer and keyboards. And on that level it works well as a relaxing listen. I can imagine these pieces creating an atmosphere in a museum exhibition and it works well at home as background relaxation. And that’s all that was intended, so it would be churlish to complain that there’s nothing which makes an immediate impression or that I’ll be whistling on the street tomorrow.

I saw the Utopia Strong live this year, making very similar sounds, and reflected that it wasn’t a great live experience. At least Bedford had the awareness to realise this.

I couldn't find the music anywhere on the internet, but here's a video about the observatory, with the Great Equatorial Telescope at 10:46

3* - not quite ambient, not wholly background. But nice.