”Ambient music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”
~Brian Eno
And this is a notion that Clannad does not seem to understand at all.
Well, OK, maybe it understands the idea, since it certainly tries to do it a lot. But it sure as hell doesn’t know how to pull it off. Ambient music is, for this style, supposed to enhance the mood of a fitting scene with a soothing, serene backdrop of ambient noise. Clannad does not do this. The problem with Clannad’s use of “ambient” music is that it does not enhance the mood of a scene, it is the mood of a scene. In many scenes that would have been defined only by the nature of their content, KyoAni instead decide to push feelings on the viewer rather than letting the scene speak for itself. Truly ambient music would have allowed many of Clannad’s better scenes to work, helping along the feeling of each of its (supposedly) amazing moments. Instead, an overpowering hum that lies over almost every non-comedic scene lies there, serving as the series main distraction from how trite and one-dimensional it is. That and the pretty lights.
LOOK AT TEH GLOWING LIGHTS AREN'T THEY SO PRETTY
