Brian Eno - C or D?

i remember the ambient stuff being way better than i expected, too, though i haven't heard it in a while.

Didn't care for 'heroes' from the one listen I gave it a couple of years ago.

And I'm a sucker for the Wall of Eno vocals he adds to everything he works on. For a somewhat limited singer, he harmonizes with himself really well, from his one man band "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" to more recent stuff like "Someday" (that beautiful James song from the very underrated "Laid").

Anyone ever hear the NPR piece on "Once in a Lifetime," which details just what Eno brought to the track? He basically added the call and response chorus, worthy of the co-write credit. Eno also gets co-writer credit on "Heroes."

1. Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (the only solo Eno album I am enthusiastic about in its entirety), as well as individual tracks on some of his other albums (especially Before and After Science).

2. His touch as producer on what are often the best albums of the bands he's worked with: Remain in Light, Bowie, Devo (I forgot this--using allmusic as a cheat-sheet now), etc.

3. Collaborations with: Fripp (although I would say say that Fripp carries most of the weight there--but still, I think Eno's presence counts), Jon Hassel, etc.

Etc. because I have to go.

3.

Of course, the man and the vast majority of his music, and his influence, is classic. Couldn't live without "Taking tiger mountain" or "Music for airports" amongst others. Those two boxed sets are two of the best investments I've ever made.

Plus the Obscure Music series, which has some good titles.

Its just so coool. Weird pop and ambienty bits floated against each other in the nicest way, and my four year old loves to sing "I'll come running" which has got to get him some points somewhere.

then, suddenly, like a switch being thrown...

when 'wrong way up' came out an interview disc was distributed to radio, where he's sounding and dull, then at the end he begins talking about the recent birth of his daughter and how unimportant the theoretical side of music had become to him, and how now he just wanted to relax and play tunes. which makes me happy for eno the man, but keeping up with the last decade of releases has been a punishing experience.

'spinning away' from 'wrong way up', still excellent though

"Uh-oh!"

"Ding ding!"

*I can't remember if I bought a copy or received it as a gift, but probably the latter. I used to get my older brother to buy me "weird"** records for my birthday and Christmas.

**I think he thought it was weird anyway (judging by his response to what I listened to on the radio), but I think he was a little amused to watch me growing up and getting into punk and new wave, and new bands he hadn't heard of, or other stuff that seemed esoteric to him. I think he may have bought me this album, the first Psychedelic Furs album, and Fripp's Let the Power Fall, and some a John Coltrane collection, all at my request. Now I'm getting all sentimental about my older brother. I miss being close to my family, and it's all Brian Eno's fault--well, not exactly.

Possibly the fact that I often couldn't make out the lyrics or didn't know what he was talking about contributed to my liking the songs. "With Burgundy, Tizer and Rye/Twelve sheets of foolscap: don't ask me why." I'm still largely in the dark about these lines, for example. I think I only found out what foolscap is in the last few years and I've already forgotten the details.

I kind of like the lyrics to "True Wheel." I am looking at a lyrics page now, and I find myself saying, oh, is that how it goes? I really am not even hearing what he's saying a lot of the time.

music for airports = nice but forgettable, put aside after a couple of listens.

apollo = stunningly beautiful, one of my most played albums in recent times.

with this in mind, what next?

try no pussyfooting, with fripp.

http://www.furious.com/perfect/bangseno.html

a musical genius, the godfather of Ambient, the mastermind of warm synthesis, although the cause of a lot of shit (ie damp snares in 80s music from Low) still one of the true heads!

A let me emphasize his Ambient series - i don't understand why anyone hasn't yet. On Land, man! and lets not mention the second side of Day of Radiance with Laraaji (the first side i admit being...well). Most of my feelings on Before and After Science, Another Green World have meen mentioned.

And on a last note, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is fucking ingenius record :)

seriously, listen to the title track from Taking Tiger Mountain or the first track on Warm Jets and get back to me, you will be a convert y0.

My neighbors must wonder what's up when they walk by my apartment door and hear me playing music with English lyrics.

also bs Johnson the unfortunates way back in 1969

A classic! The earliest example of a loose-leaf novel in a box I’ve come across is “Composition Number 1” by Marc Saporta, from ‘63.

I was obsessed with choose-your-own-adventure books as a kid and loved the idea of Clue having 3 separate endings that switched up depending on the theater you saw it in, it's a really cool idea, not sure how what it adds to a documentary about Brian Eno though

also wanna mention I really love that episode of Malcolm in the Middle where the kids go bowling but it's two separate plots going on at the same time, one where the Mom takes them and one where it's the Dad. more things should be written like that

Malcolm in the Multiverse

Someone took notes from the songwriting workshop:

https://ivan.sotajazz.com/notes/Songwriting+with+Brian+Eno+-+Lecture+1

Yes, great stuff.

There may be two ways of approaching lyric-heavy songwriting music as a listener. The "Eno approach" where, like he says, you go "fuck you and your sincerity!" and are instead looking to draw the universal out of somebody else's text. Gira's like this too: "And why exactly should I care about your break-up?" And then there's folks like me who *like* to get deeply involved with the writer's reality (that is, the particular form of fiction they put their reality forward as). So, like, when Hosono or Neil or Yoko or Dave Sylvian are writing a song that leans personal, I get really interested in where exactly they might have been -- emotionally, experientially -- at that moment of writing. I think I still end up drawing the "universal" out of a song this way, since I'm drawing on my own very different circumstances -- but similar emotional realities, likely enough -- to aid me in the process... just thinking aloud really. I love Eno's lyrics and it's funny to see him rat on the sincerity that I so treasure (but only in good writers... if you're sincere AND tell things flat/artlessly, then yeah, the sincerity won't get you anywhere)

A classic! The earliest example of a loose-leaf novel in a box I’ve come across is “Composition Number 1” by Marc Saporta, from ‘63.

Preferred B.S. Johnson.

Me too

I think he's not against sincerity so much as forced profundity.

Agreed he’s a big doowop fan and has often spoke of his live for Donna Summer’s ‘State of Independence”.

Never seen this documentary before -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAS1UCbIZHA

Forgot that he has a new duo/collaboration album coming out (out?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwB6_IZSdxw

This is lovely.

Appreciated this
https://www.instagram.com/p/DJ6ySBKNpEU/?img_index=1

I love the Zionists in there that are like "big fan, shocked that you don't support Israel!" as if he hasn't been pro-Palestine for decades now

Brits, his concert at the Acropolis, with his brother Roger, is on Sky Arts at 9.45 tonight.

finally! hoping someone captures that and makes it available... elsewhere online

I don't know if this was posted somewhere, but I love his interview with Zane Lowe. If you hate Zane, give this a chance, til the very end. It's all very endearing honestly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR4JAonAR4g

Forgot that he has a new duo/collaboration album coming out (out?):

📹

This is lovely.

As with most Eno, I spend the first few moments listening to it wondering if it’s actually kind of boring. But this one def. has something special going on once it gets going, and even if it feels familiar in some ways, I’m not sure he’s ever really done a record like this.

Classic, for most of the reasons already stated. If you're interested, there is an excellent, but long, article by Lester Bangs on Eno. You can read it here:

http://www.furious.com/perfect/bangseno.html

― erv (Abe Froman), Wednesday, July 21, 2004 4:04 PM (twenty-one years ago)

I recently realized that Eno’s Sonos Radio station, The Lighthouse, is no longer subscription-only so long as you have a Sonos speaker. So I’ve been firing it up while I putter around the house. Seeing that it’s tethered to a speaker, it is almost intentionally Music for Housekeeping– just this endlessly shuffling playlist of 400 Eno work tapes.

That said, I find it pretty interesting – certainly more engaging than the Curiosities comps from the aughts. Some of that is because a lot of the material is from the last few (very prolific) years. But perhaps also because this has a sizable chunk of tracks from the 90s and some vocal experiments as well, including at least a few tracks that sound like early versions of MSL tunes.

There’s also something mildly thrilling about having this be a radio station vs. an archive on my hard drive a la AFX’s SoundCloud dump. In an era of on-demand everything, it’s kind of refreshing to be force-fed things now and again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWBVHFv-UqM

watching the benefit concert for Palestine he put together. something amazing about hearing that many people shout Free Palestine. can't imagine this happening in the US.

His work tapes software is pretty cool. I interrogated GPT for a minute just now to see if it could make me the same thing and it seemed to be pretty confident (but ain't that the way with robots!)

More context for that? Searching isn't turning up much. Is "work tapes" related to Bloom, Scape, etc?

I kind of was confused too. He means the software he mentioned in a recent interview or two that he had Peter Chilvers (of Bloom fame) code for him that takes different tracks on his hard drive and generatively combines parts of them into new pieces – i.e., the drums and tempo from one track, the pad from another, etc. It’s a cool idea.

That does sound cool. I just finished listening to Michael Brooks' "Hybrid", for the first time in a few years and I think I am going to be obsessed with this one for a while.

(w/ Eno and Lanois)

oh yeah that's an amazing album, doesn't get enough attention

Thought the revive would be about this epic Eno article by Ian Penman in the London Review of Books:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n17/ian-penman/infinite-wibble

Did not know AYWSA was back in print

Is it another new addition? The relatively recent last one was somewhat expanded from the first printing, iirc.

(edition)

It looks like they are referencing the 2023 reissue. Not sure why tho I haven’t read the piece yet.

The Penman article is a bit *flat* maybe? It tries to do too much and, consequently, doesn't really say much that's new. I think Penman *does* get at what is the essential emptiness of a lot of Eno's work post 1980 (ish), though. Sure, he made an aesthetic out of that emptiness, but a lot of the generative work is just guff.

Penman calls *Before and After Science* insipid, though. Not having that.

I just finished reading Howard Wuelfling's Descenes/Discords zine anthology and boy he REALLY doesn't like post-Tiger Mountain Eno very much, lots of harsh reviews

Couldn't understand the 'insipid' for 'Before and After science' either. That run of solo albums is pretty flawless to me.

I thought there could be something here in terms of comparing generative music to generative AI and maybe look at the politics from that angle, but maybe that's too obvious. Like it was right there, but I haven't engaged enough with anything of Eno's work after 1982 so..

you should really check out Wrong Way Up with John Cale, that's my fave of post-1982 stuff by far

and yeah, I love BAAS as well, I could understand Wuelfling rejecting Music For Films but not that one. he's snarky about Music For Airports too!

I can sort of see why Penman might feel that way, given his adoration of Roxy Music.

I'm probably being way too general, but *Wrong Way Up* and *Another Day on Earth* (both brilliant) do feel like outliers, post-*Thursday Afternoon*. I'm not going to make the case for any of his production work, post-Talking Heads, being transformative enough to warrant consideration, tbh. Happy for someone to point out why I'm talking bollocks.

I think Unforgettable Fire should get a pass in terms of his post-TH work, but there's not much else that moves me

James are great, obvs, but not necessarily fussed about the sound. I was convinced he'd produced early Slowdive but instead he was merely on *Souvlaki*.

The Ship is genuinely excellent and very different from anything else he’s done.

I do have that one as a physical release. the 12" with Kevin Shields is very good as well.

oh and I love Music For Installations, which imo covers a lot of his best post-80's work

other unreleased gems:

Music For Glitterbug

"'Spinner' wastn't really a collaboration. I had done the soundtrack to the Derek Jarman
film, Glitterbug, but didn't think it stood up on its own as an album, without the film.
Somebody suggested I let Jah Woblle have a go at it, I presented him with my original stereo
mix, which he worked on top of.
Some of the tracks he left alone, others he added to - rhythms, bass parts, and some
orchestrations. So some pieces started out as landscapes, but ended up completely rhythmic."

Eno & Schwalm Lanzarote 2001

this concert was broadcast on German radio, Peter Schwalm's Interview segments were taken out. This is not the whole concert, however most of it. The sound is superb!!!

Music for 'Nile'

This is the soundtrack composed as background music for a computer game.

Nile is a computer game for Windows (deleted); Brian composed the music for it in 1996.

Eno/Schwalm/Czukey - Sushi! Roti! Reibekuchen!

an audience recording of the ENO/Schwalm/Czukey concert 'Sushi! Roti! Reibekuchen!' (which took place at the same venue on 27th August 1998 and was Eno's first live concert after 15 years)

The concert w Schwalm and Czukay was released this past year. But that’s an interesting list … I’ve heard some but all of the installations set. I’m not sure I’d ever heard of that video game (with … Kelly McGillis apparently?!?).

Much earlier but I was poking around online a ways back after revisiting the Shepherd book and found some music he wrote for some pretty racy/borderline exploitation art films in the 70s most of which didn’t make it on to Music for Films.

Here’s a tape loop piece that’s apparently from 1970:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDj8Tc6259o

Here’s one supposedly from a Greek horror film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WKarWs_Frw

Thanks for that round-up Sleeve. Listening to the Music for Installations stuff now and it's lovely.

the two eno hyde albums are great

you should really check out Wrong Way Up with John Cale, that's my fave of post-1982 stuff by far

― sleeve, Friday, 26 September 2025 bookmarkflaglink

Listening now and feeling this.

the first eno hyde album is basically a sequel to wrong way up and the second is probably closest to my life in the bush of ghosts

Saying things publicly does at least force one to smell one's own bullshit.

That second Eno/Hyde record *is* good. Also like *The Equatorial Stars* (the second Fripp/Eno album from 2004) and *Drawn From Life*, his 2001 album with Peter Schwalm.

ooh I never heard of those other 70's pieces, very cool