page_title: Music for Stowaways
section_title: Concept and influences
hierarchical_section_title: Music for Stowaways / Production / Concept and influences
caption_attribution_description: Walkman TPS-L2 (1979)
context_page_description: Music for Stowaways is the debut album by English electronic act British Electric Foundation, formed by musicians Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh. The album released in the United Kingdom as a limited edition cassette in March 1981 by Virgin Records, who also released an LP version of the album titled Music for Listening To later in the year with a different track list and cover art, aiming its release for export markets. The Stowaways version was originally released concurrently with Ware and Marsh's first single with Heaven 17, " Fascist Groove Thang", itself a developed version of the Music for Stowaways track "Groove Thang".
  As B.E.F.'s first 'minor project', Music for Stowaways was inspired by the Sony Walkman. Fascinated with how the portable cassette player made users feel like what they described as film characters, they conceived Music for Stowaways as a "soundtrack for your life" designed specifically for play on the Sony Stowaway, and incorporated portable recording equipment into the album's production to maximise the effect. The album is instrumental and electronic, incorporating styles of synth-pop, ambient, funk, avant-garde and minimalist music.
context_section_description: Music for Stowaways was inspired by the band's love for the then-new Sony Walkman, at the time called the Sony Stowaway in the United Kingdom, and was intended to be played on the device. The group's concept behind the album, described by Ware as the album's "theory," was based on part of their fascination with the Stowaway, as they found that the device allowed owners to "design a soundtrack for your everyday life for the first time and have it playing while you walked around or whatever." Ware later explained: "[That] became the theory behind [Music for Stowaways]. It was about how you could play your music and change your mood wherever you were. Basically, the Walkman liberated music. And there we were at the sharp end with this cassette-only release."
  Speaking in 2005, Marsh more broadly described "moving around London on the tube, going to meetings, working all over the place, and listening to music on these Stowaways" as inspiring the album. He described the album's concept as "the soundtrack for your life" and said that listening to music on Stowaways "made you feel like you were in a film all the time. Everyone takes that for granted now, but you can't imagine the big impact it had – almost on the level of something like virtual reality." The album was also inspired in part by Brian Eno's Music for Films (1978). Ware explained that he always enjoyed the idea of "music written for a purpose – for a film soundtrack, a theatre piece... I’ve always thought narrative was important."
caption: The album was inspired by and written to be played on the Sony Walkman.
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