airport people

leon johnson.
indianapolis, in based.
ambient, neoclassical, quasi-jazz.
multi-instrumentalist and composer.

On From Nine Mornings, his debut full-length as Airport People, Johnson conjures a sense of ease and order, a kind of effortless harmonic precision that sounds, perhaps, like a reaction to the disjointedness of being dragged along from place to place.

Like Eno’s Music for Aiports or Satie’s musique d'ameublement, From Nine Mornings seems to invite projection and interpretation. It is music which can be used this way or that; generous music. There is a spaciousness that recalls Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert but also a deeply memorable, hummable character, like William Tyler or Paul Bley’s “Ida Lupino.” From Nine Mornings is sparse but supportive; melodies don’t drift, they ride, if ever so gently.

Each of the tracks on From Nine Mornings proceeds from a melody that, in fact, emerged each on a respective morning in 2020. Johnson had recently lost his job, recently moved, and was once again seeking to exploit the more freeing aspects of the liminal. What is there to hear when we’re in between where we were and where we’re going and we don’t have much to say?