Airports For Music is not just a nominal inversion of Brian Eno's album Music For Airports (1978). Where Eno musically translated the disaffected atmosphere of airports and conceived music suited to the sound systems of waiting rooms, Markus Mehr is interested in our unquestioned relationship with travel, the constant increase in air traffic, and its massive consequences in terms of noise and air pollution. Nothing here should sound "clear" or "joyful." Faced with the major climate challenges of this decade—and with aviation being a key contributor to pollution—Mehr's project does not seek to "appease" (Eno), but rather to provoke opposing emotions: rebellion and discomfort. And when Eno refers in this context to "...music to accept the possibility of death," Mehr is not talking about the possibility of a crash, but about the increasing uninhabitability of the planet, the loss of biodiversity, the disappearance of species, seas, rivers, and forests.

Mehr collects sound recordings from different airports. He captures takeoffs and landings, the hustle and bustle of waiting rooms, check-in halls, boarding gates, and shopping areas, capturing the nervousness of voices and languages that intersect. Cacophonies of hedonism, travelers oscillating between the euphoria of departure and the hangover of arrival. Airports For Music seeks to bring to our consciousness, through listening, the "obvious" absurdity of our actions. As in all of his work, Mehr explores the sound behind the sound. Field recordings are the raw material for an electronic work of transformation and alienation. Sounds are dissected on a microscopic scale, granulated, stretched, compressed, refined, and then recomposed. New soundscapes and sculptures emerge from sound fragments.