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.

It is the only 70's eno record I do not care for. I just felt the production was not quite up to snuff, he polished it too much. Everything Eno did no that record he did better on previous albums. I found it funny that I did not care for the record, and unbeknownst to me Eno actually echoed my complaints when he discussed that record in interviews in the late 70's.

It isn't a horrible record, it is just that he has a lot of material from that period of time and your money is better spent elsewhere in the back catalogue. And while I am thinking about it, you should probably pick up Cluster and Eno because that it good stuff.

Also, has anyone ever heard that the live The 801 bootleg from 76?

"I'm terribly attracted to women with ocular damage."

Classic.

that's an official live album, is it not? i bought it a few months ago, it's great! the sound of the live recording is amazing. some terrific renditions of songs from another green world and taking tiger mountain (by strategy).

Fripp / Eno : The Equatorial Stars

I've downloaded Taking Tiger Mountain, Warm Jets, and Another Green World. The first two are still keeping me at a distance. Another Green World came through without a track order, so I listened to it at first in alphabetical order, without knowing that it wasn't the correct version. I LOVED it; a wonderful album. Then I discovered that it was mixed up and resorted the songs; I HATED it! blech. Starting with Sky Saw, St Elmos Fire at the start... it didn't work for me.

I'm really happy with my version, though. Try it; I'd love to know what people who know the real version think of the reorder:

Another Green World
Becalmed
Everything Merges With the Night
Golden Hours
I'll Come Running
In Dark Trees
Little Fishes
Over Fire Island
Sky Saw
Sombre Reptiles
Spirits Drifting
St. Elmo's Fire
The Big Ship
Zawinul/Lava

man like simon reynolds linked to this. it's v funny. i don't think the people in it are rockists.

Also Reynolds in utterly misunderstanding a simple concept shockah. What exactly do you suppose a Lester Bangs puff piece is the hallmark of?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rqbzgSp0pow

classic

http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/2003/0120/cover/view_eno.html

love that TIME article by Eno, read it when it came out & it still holds up well :)

I just told someone recently a good bio on Eno would be really interesting. Well, here it is!

On Some Faraway Beach: The Life And Times of Brian Eno - David Sheppard

Always Returning is so fucking beautiful.
Almost as godlike as Half Man Half Biscuit's 'Eno Collaboration'

I got the book in the mail last night. It's UK only, but got it from a seller via Amazon for domestic rates! It's a beautiful hardcover, over 450 pages. Here's a passage from the first chapter:

"...I was encouraged by Colin Newman, lead singer of the veteran post-punk band Wire and an acquaintance and long-term adherent of Eno's, whose pithy views on all things Brian resonated like a Greek chorus as I wrote the book. Possibly fearing I was another fixated, sanctimonious Enophile, Newman gave me some salutary words of advice: 'I think we need to reclaim Eno from the Eno nerds. There's a lot of nasty train-spotting involved with the Eno fanbase. Brian needs to have his place, sure, but he's not a saint, nor is he a professor. He's a bunch of things, one of which -- and I say this in the most friendly and supportive way -- is an incredibly adept bullshitter. He's a brilliant opportunist.'"

Well put. And along with Lee Perry, he's been involved with nearly 25% of my all-time favorite albums from the 70s.

I'm less than 1/4 through and enjoying it thoroughly.

This review is a decent encapsulation.

http://www.fastnbulbous.com/eno_on.jpg

“the bottom is the large brain”

Fuckin' A.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/magazine/04funny_humor.html?_r=1

Has anyone seen or heard an Eno solo live show recently? Seems like he's been doing more speaking engagements than anything else. He's playing next month in LA.

FFS it seems like it's a lecture after all. $100 to hear the man speak.

cut the guy a break, it's not like he's been doing any high-profile, high-paying producing gigs of late ... ;)

they did Apollo live over For All Mankind in the Science Museum IMAX theatre recently and the first i heard about it was the review...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jul/22/brian-eno-apollo-review

Has anyone seen or heard an Eno solo live show recently?

Not solo-solo, but he did a three-set directed improv show with The Necks, Karl Hyde, Jon Hopkins, Leo Abrahams and Tomato at the Sydney Opera House a few months ago. (Plus about three lectures, the 77 Million Paintings installation, and turning the sails into lava lamps for two weeks.)

eno thing on bbc 4 tonight.

So i only realised tonight why 4:40 onwards of this sounds so familiar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUIZvAe3RBg

its because:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E76Oatpjn4

only made the connection because Jackson just went the whole hog and used Big Ship in the lovely bones.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/magazine/04funny_humor.html?_r=1

― Your original display name will be displayed in brackets (Display Name), Sunday, 8 February 2009 22:49 (11 months ago) Bookmark

fun anecdote. Just listening to "Thursday Afternoon" now - stunning! I really should pick up and READ that Eno book.

Eno book is definitely worth a read, though obviously it gets a little less interesting once the 70s are over.

The biography? It's quite good.

yeah, I got "On Some Faraway Beach" in the summer just gone, when going through Ambiengt I to IV and Apollo. Didnt get past a couple of chapters 'cos I'd try and read whilst listening to his music.

More often than not, I'd end up just sitting there, staring out of the window at traffic and listening...

He'd appreciate it!

ha!! actually, I'd also surf ILX often too... ILX - the ambient web....

decided today The Plateaux Of Mirror is the best hangover listen ever. just the right balance of tragic, comfort and quiet.

tragic hangover

I need to get the Budd collaborations. I'm very fond of Apollo soundtrack as a late night reading album.

harold budd's reverbed piano on "the plateaux of mirror" gives this cottony, fluffy feel absinth is supposed to induce

That NYT column's a hoot. Why the hell would they let you access "Thursday Afternoon" on a jukebox, unless they charged you $10 to play it?

did anyone else like that thing he did with paul simon? granted it's not the best album either of them has ever made or anything, but i thought it was quite decent, not to mention sorta unexpected and not really sounding like anything either of them has ever done before (it's kinda mildly glitchy with lots of chopped up guitars and stuff)

also music for airports is great, you just have to put it on in the background in another room while it's raining, like it's meant to be listened to

i thought that the paul simon album *sounded* great, but that the songs weren't really up to paul's standards for the most part. it's a cool idea to pair the two of them -- i almost wouldn't mind if they gave it another go!
it'll be interesting when/if eno's recordings with herbie hancock emerge!

i agree it was kinda hit and miss, often swinging from one to the other in the middle of a song even, but the parts where it hit coupled with the great production pushed me into the "ok i definitely like this" camp. if you're a fan of either of them it's well worth a listen just to see what they sound like together

Neroli is really great!! (listening now for first time)

The traditional American view is that anything issued from the body is dirty. It's incredibly puritanical and it resents bodily fluids, so if one is trying to debase a woman, you cover them with that and hence you get the fabulous term 'Golden Showers' – the term for pissing on someone, which some well- known rock musicians are said to be very involved in..."
Here come the warm jets?

"That's certainly a reference."

http://thequietus.com/articles/04339-brian-eno-interview-chrissie-hynde-nme-here-come-the-warm-jets

"The traditional American view"

?!

Brian Eno is a weirdo?

Just saw that Eno and dudes recently performed "Apollo" in its entirety, and that Eno sang a few of his "hits" as well.

what wait where?!?!

11 months ^^^^^ thataway

i posted the review of jul 22 show. perhaps they've done more.

Brian Eno - C or D?

Think he did this at the Brighton Festival a couple of weeks ago too, but I was too disorganized to attend.

Yeah, Eno with Icebreaker (?) and BJ Cole performing "Apollo." http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/34570/brian-eno-returns-to-the-moon-in-brighton/. And then:

Expecting only a brief salutation from Eno after the show, the audience was jittery and wound up when he instead took a seat behind the keyboard, saying, “We’re going to play another song.” (Eno hasn’t performed any of his solo works since 1974.) He played four songs from his back catalogue including “Another Day” from his most recent LP and two of his solo songs, “Julie With” and “By This River” from Before and After Science.

Anyone know anything about this bootleg:
http://ghostcapital.blogspot.com/2010/07/brian-eno-bbc-sessions.html

Allegedly it contains his BBC sessions, but as far as I know he only did the one with The Winkies for Peelie in 1974. "Third Uncle" and "Fat Lady" are live with 801, and the other two tracks don't sound all that different than the studio versions.

yeah there's nothing new on that LP--i have it, mostly because it looks nicer than the mp3s i had before. it's just the BBC winkies session circa 1974 plus some stuff from the 801 LP. the 'i'll come running' on there is 'totalled' from the BBC session

that bbc session is fabulous. kind of too bad there isn't more winkies material floating around. they did play live a bit, didn't they?

hahaha holy shit I am listening to the only live WInkies recordings (Derby 1974, VERY rough sound) right this second.

hmmm, hook a bro up? on the velvet underground bootleg scale of awful sound quality, what are we talking about here.

uh probably on par with some of the roughest VU boots. but it has two Eno songs NEVER RELEASED ANYWHERE!!! which is why I was giving it a listen. also covers of "I'm A Boy", "What Goes On", and some other rock tune I haven't gotten to yet.

I'll send u a link in a sec, can you decode flac? anyone else can wait for the Domm n Gloom post or webmail me.

re: BBC sessions, these have been booted a ton in different configurations with and without various B-sides. I love love love that version of "Fat Lady", and the version of "I'll Come Running" has different lyrics and a nice fat sound.

neato, yeah, send me a link!

this isn't winkies-related but it's one of my favorite eno tunes, circa '83 or so--i want to revive the lineup that made this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf5mPFNwxFA

wow I had totally forgotten about those 3 tracks on the last side of that box, thanks for the reminder.

Those 3 tracks are on the Instrumental box, which I just picked up. His ambient work had never clicked for me - until now! And I lurve this box so much! But I'm a bit of a genre tourist - this along with some Sylvian and Bill Nelson ambient albums are pretty much all I need.

can we do a trade? hit me up on webmail, I haven't heard those in like 20 years.

geeta, that sounds very much like an instrumental, stripped-down version of "no one receiving", the opener of "before and after science". it's good but there is something missing there. it's a little on the shallow side, like ambient btw, which happened in between.

anyone heard the new album? I find it a real bore.

aw, I kind of like it! "Dust Shuffle" and that Bone song are neat and kinda loud. It works really well on shuffle play with other stuff. but as a whole it does leave something to be desired - songs sound unfinished or fragmentary which is maybe the idea.

I like "Glitch" and "Sounds Alien" best.

geeta, that sounds very much like an instrumental, stripped-down version of "no one receiving", the opener of "before and after science". it's good but there is something missing there.

ha, i know 'no one receiving' very well. there are similarities but this jam goes to a different place

but i am doing an experiment for you right now, alex: i have 'no one receiving' playing on one of my turntables, pitched up quite a bit to match the speed of 'strong flashes of light'. ('no one receiving' is a fair bit slower.) i have it playing simultaneously with 'strong flashes of light'. 'strong flashes of light' is actually denser, with a lot more going on -- 'no one receiving' is the track that sounds stripped down, even with the vocals. the rhythms are pretty different, as well.

^^^i think eno himself would approve of this experiment.

'strong flashes of light' is actually denser, with a lot more going on -- 'no one receiving' is the track that sounds stripped down, even with the vocals.
i know what you mean, "strong flashes of light" might well be more dense and is definitely faster. it is an exercise in computer music, it misses the human touch. it has no tune and no soul. just a mechanic rhythm which is repeated ad nauseam. it's kind of aseptic. like a lot of the stuff eno has done from ambient on.

concerning the new one, i preferred the one before. it had some interesting tracks. the new release seems to lack inspiration. the speaking voices don't really help.

it is an exercise in computer music, it misses the human touch.

eh? there's no computer music in that track at all--it's all guitar/bass/drums, of the non-synthesized variety

really? i would have sweared... then it is maybe my shitty computer loudspeakers. but still the track is a. extremely repetitive b. has no tune c. is a pale copy of "no one receiving" d. as it was recorded after it has "no one receiving" written all over it but it is just not as good, i think

i think eno's accident had positive and negative side-effects. inventing ambient was positive. at least in the beginning though it got boring and repetitive soon. but somehow he lost his craziness, his creativity which was at full force in the first four solo albums (not counting discreet music). afterwards he never came back to that ingenious pop songwriting. he produced bands i cared for before they were produced (early live and rough talking heads, the first u2) but who became really shit later when they had producers like eno. that he produced coldplay i cannot forgive him. how deep can you sink? does he do this because for the money or does he really like the music of coldplay? somehow i'd prefer it was the former but i am not sure. his own releases were occasionally okayish (eg the collab with john cale) but most of it was forgettable. can it be that it took him so much energy to learn and master new music technology that he wasted his time fiddling around and that he did not have the time and calm to make real music instead of just programming sounds? from 1973-1975 he was god but after that he became a philosopher.

so you don't like Remain In Light or Music For Airports? I cannot understand that.

I will agree that his work becomes problematic and self-referential somewhere around that flood of subscriber-only ambient releases like Bell Studies, Kite Stories, and White Cube. And that the last two solo records have been interesting failures for the most part. But until the early 90's this dude was still firing on all cylinders imo.

Also, I mentioned this somewhere else on ILM, but some of his best stuff from the past 15 years is unreleased - the Lanzarote & Mt, Fuji shows with Peter Schwalm, the Nile videogame soundtrack, and the Sushi-Roti-Reibekuchen set with Schwalm and Holger Czukey (tyler I mistakenly told you it was Leibezeit, I was wrong).

lolll, you set off a bout of furious googling with that mistake. still, would love to hear the czukay show! what year is it from?

1998, I'll send it along!

those are on the instrumentals box set also.

(those three tracks)

the last record i love without reservation is "my life in the bush of ghosts". "on land" is my favourite ambient album by him but after that there is only occasionally a track here and there, no album anymore which i can fully embrace. i am not too familiar with "remain in light", it's definitely an important record but i think what has always put me off was the extreme funkiness. a style i used to be very cold about when it was blossoming around 1980. these days i almost like it as much as soul, how personal preferences change over the years. it does not surprise that his best stuff is unreleased, it confirms again that musicians don't have a clue which is their best music.

Ludicrous to consider Eno anything but classic. However, one of the ABSOLUTE best Eno tracks comes from June 1, 1974 where Ayers' incomparable bassline could've made "...Warm Jets" a far greater effort (and i already love it).

so i posted that winkies show that sleeve so nicely provided me with: http://ow.ly/5zWju
he wasn't kidding about the sound quality, but the show is fab nonetheless.

thanks tylerw!

For the longest time I was an Eno obsessive, a completist, but his last few releases have left me so non-plussed I've sort of given up. If anything I like generative works like Bell Studies better than these more considered recent records. I still love his thinking, lectures, etc.

I just posted the flac version of that show if anyone really really needs it...

shardsofbeauty.blogspot.com

oh cool, i edited my post to let the people know! and thanks again. despite the lo-fi, it's still incredible stuff.

yeah, it's such an historic document that the quality is irrelevant (although as you noted we can still dream of something better).

sympathize with alex, as i love eno's early work unreservedly. on the basis of his time in roxy music and the run from warm jets through my life in the bush of ghosts, i consider him one of my favorite 20th century musicians and composers. i include in that "run" his first few ambient solo albums and his collaborations with robert fripp and cluster (et al), as well as his brilliant production work, especially for the talking heads.

i sadly agree, though, that after those first 10 years (71/72 - 81/82, or thereabouts), his career has become a series of small but increasing disappointments. he's never returned to the astonishing pop experiments with which he began his career, which is fine, his choice, but he also seems to have lost his knack for finding interesting, challenging artists working at or toward their peak powers to produce and with whom to collaborate. i respect U2, and his work with that band was obviously important to all concerned, but those albums were never important to me, personally. recent productions for the likes of laurie anderson, david bowie, sinead o'connor, david byrne and grace jones might look good on paper, but rarely resulted in inspired music.

imho Laurie Anderson's "Bright Red" is far from uninspiring, but it was also almost 20 years ago. also, what is up with people ignoring Wrong Way Up in this chronology? that record is great.

(not a dis on you mr. c, just defending some of the 90's work)

yeah wrong way up is pretty classic. haven't really kept up with a lot of the more recent stuff though.

The new record is mostly a bore.

It's possible I don't care much for his ambient, "experimental" works anymore; it's also possible he can't record compelling ones.

I did like Everything That Happens Will Happen Today though.

WWU is marvelous!

It's not a coincidence that so much of his recent output is collaborative/improv based. He's coasting.

also, what is up with people ignoring Wrong Way Up in this chronology? that record is great.

― sleeve, Friday, July 8, 2011 1:52 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh shit yeah. one of the best things he's ever done. overlooked it due to persistent brane holes. shoots to shit the argument that he's never returned to avant-pop, but it's also the last outpost (that i know of). cale was on something of a collaborative roll at the time, what with songs for drella.

just noticed that all traces of "the accident" and its influence on the orgins of ambient have been scrubbed from eno's wikipedia page. relevance...

i still like nerve net.

It's not a coincidence that so much of his recent output is collaborative/improv based. He's coasting.

but his music was always collaborative, from the start! look back at those early records: there are long lists of people who played on them, improvised on them, worked on them: he wasn't a lone genius working by himself

it's his collaborators' fault! leo abrahams, you are no, ummm, phil collins!

Weren't there some great mutant pop tracks unique to the Vocal box, recorded in the early 90s?

(And, for me, "Bright Red" was considered a failure for Laurie A - it had neither the pop sense nor the sheer oddness of her previous work)

He's always been collaborative, in the sense that he allowed his contributors great freedom, but he remained the director, as such. Those are Brian Eno solo albums, not Eno/Manzenera/Speeding/Jones/Collins albums or whatever. But begining with that Peter Schwalm album he's been stuck in this rut of credited collaborations (the pretty good recent Byrne aside) that have offered this muddled mix of MIDI jazz and ambient music sort of akin to the less interesting bits of Nerve Net. I've always thought Eno's greatest gift was as a vocalist/vocal arranger, and now that he barely sings his unique take on melody has fallen by the wayside. Another Day on Earth was at least a reminder of what he was capable of. These last two on Warp, on the other hand, I can't imagine are conspicuously different than the stuff he must have sitting around in the vaults (see also: those two volumes of "Curiosities" that Eno couldn't even bother to curate and cull himself).

I feel so differently about the guy. If anything, he's a better example of a recording-artist-aging-gracefully than any other I can think of.
I rate Bowie's "Outside"-- Eno's sole production credit with the man-- above all Bowie's other records. Probably my favourite Eno production next to 78-80 Talking Heads.
Probably alone here, but I love most of James' "Wah Wah".
And "Another Day On Earth" and "Drawn From Life" get as much play round here as any of his 70s records.

I rate Bowie's "Outside"-- Eno's sole production credit with the man-- above all Bowie's other records.

That's feeling pretty differently, alright. I do love "Wah Wah," though. I've noted before that I think the combo of "Achtung Baby/Zooropa" and "Laid/Wah Wah" marked his last real impact as a producer. He's aging gracefully because he hasn't made a musical ass out of himself, but I don't think he's challenging himself or his fans, either. His line is that he spends so much time with the likes of U2 and Coldplay that all his good ideas make it into those albums, but having heard those recent albums, I hope that's not true.

Do those records have ideas?

they seem to have the idea that they're records.

I mean, it took the genius of the Pet Shop Boys to hear the ideas in "Viva la Vida."

I found it curious that "No Line on the Horizon" was the first U2 album to give Eno/Lanois writing credit, and it's also probably the only U2 album I'd rate a total stiff.

they got writing credits cuz they insisted! I think they walked out of the project until they got their own way. They could have rightfully deserved them from The Unforgettable Fire onwards, especially since we know now how much musically they contributed.

The only "Viva La Vida" you need:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y8JyDbwmRg

prefer the coldplay, tbh

Does anybody know of an Eno track called "Cutting"...it has a line in it something like "The priest he ploughs the furry fields from Cambrigeshire to Ely" I swear no word of a lie...its from the "My Squelchy Life" period... I remember hearing and thinking it was amazing...really really funky...

Anyone know the details about "My Squelchy Life"? There's a number of rips out there in the void but some sound like they're the wrong pitch. Anyone have a source CD or a reliable listing for the track times?

I know a lot of copies out there were ripped from cassette advances, so that would account for different pitches and/or track lengths.

Anyone know the details about "My Squelchy Life"? There's a number of rips out there in the void but some sound like they're the wrong pitch. Anyone have a source CD or a reliable listing for the track times?

The six "My Squelchy Life" tracks were released on the last CD of the Eno Vocal box set: http://www.discogs.com/Brian-Eno-II-Vocal/release/691819 . It seems like he started the album still in full "Wrong Way Up" mode, but eventually found the non-songlike space jazz instrumental pieces more interesting and went that way for "Nerve Net", and those six songs wouldn't have fit as well on that record (which is a shame, they're great)

There are two or three "Squelchy" tracks that are not on "Nerve Net" or the boxed set.

One from the boxed set is on Another Day on Earth...

That song, "Under," was actually from the "Cool World" soundtrack!

http://unheard78.blogspot.com/2010/10/brian-eno-my-squelchy-life.html

There are two or three "Squelchy" tracks that are not on "Nerve Net" or the boxed set.

Thanks for the link! Kind of looking forward to this. when 'vocal II' came out I borrowed it from a friend -- the rare stuff on disc 3 was the sole reason to invest in the whole box, and I passed on it. but I downloaded the tracks a few years ago and in an iTunes context I have really grown to enjoy them.

I think "Under" is one of the most lovely songs he has written.

yeah me too

just discovered The Demon of the Mines j-bonus track for "Another Day On Earth" and it is perfectly lovely

Just in case someone has never heard it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aU6xiTLLWY&feature=related

Incidentally, like Lanois' "The Maker," a song built around Willie Green drums leftover from the Neville Brothers sessions.

thx for the squelchy life link, josh! never heard this stuff...

I haven't heard "Under" in years. Cheers.

yesss thank u, haven't heard all of the squelchy stuff either.

Just in case someone has never heard it:

Agreed, this is great.

ok, I can see why he nixed "Squelchy" and developed it into "Nerve Net", some of these songs are going out of their way to stay casual, not as much of the sonic detail you expect from this guy. and it doesn't feel like a unified album the way "Another Day On Earth" did, but I definitely like these songs better than most of "Nerve Net"

I mean as a song "The Harness" could have been on "Taking Tiger Mountain", especially the vocals, I will only say thank you whenever he does a song like this

Thanks ILM for the excellent and immediate response, woohoo!

just discovered The Demon of the Mines j-bonus track for "Another Day On Earth" and it is perfectly lovely

Totally agree. Other than YouTube, this song is unfindable online, legit or otherwise. I gather a mix of it was in the Adrian Brody/Keira Knightly flick, The Jacket.

ok, I can see why he nixed "Squelchy" and developed it into "Nerve Net", some of these songs are going out of their way to stay casual, not as much of the sonic detail you expect from this guy. and it doesn't feel like a unified album the way "Another Day On Earth" did, but I definitely like these songs better than most of "Nerve Net"

Agreed. Squelchy Life/Nerve Net represent sort of an interesting era for him sonically (if less so artistically). The sound palette he used around that time was almost exclusively DX-7 (all those fuzzy, almost analog sounds, actually) (gulp) ROMpler (the dinky saxophone noodling on "Pierre in Mist" on NN) and live drumming.

I mean as a song "The Harness" could have been on "Taking Tiger Mountain", especially the vocals, I will only say thank you whenever he does a song like this

I'm a fan of Another Day on Earth's failed dreams. But "The Harness" is the most energized thing he's done in 20 years (ok, it was done 20 years ago, but still). Can't believe I didn't notice it when I heard Squelchy Life a few years ago. It's a great song.

all this talk of the Nerve net era makes me want to give a shout out to the song "The Roil, The Choke", which was on the maxi single of "Fractal Zoom" and is a beautiful tune with vocals.

I owned the "Ali Click" single almost twenty years ago. Is Nerve Net worth owning?

Maybe, if u can find it for under $5 which you probably can. I prefer the Squelchy Life tracks for the most part. There are some cool remixes on that Ali Click single.

I think this new album is a little too new age for my liking, the spoken word bits are a huge turn-off.... But no shots if its your thing!!! http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

Is Nerve Net worth owning?

Nerve Net is...ok. Some days I think I like it -- other days, I think it's where things started to go horribly, horribly wrong for Eno.

Agreed about "The Roil, The Choke" (which is on the record proper, not just the maxi single) -- that's a really nice song.

I still think one of his big problems is wrestling with modern technology.

taking modern culture (by strategy) -- by mark s of ILX fame:

http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/wire92.html

gotta stay away from this thread or i'll miss my flight -- i'm in line at the gate, we are boarding this plane to california

got an email today from someone who was actually at that derby/eno/winkies gig we posted. he says someone he went with has a better recording of it! but also that he's lost touch with him...but who knows, maybe it'll pop up one of these days.

"we" not the royal "we", sleeve and me.

wow, good to know!

new collab on Warp is at my radio station but I only played one track so far.

still haven't listened to this new one. I disagree that nerve net is where it all went wrong, it is a very fine album. certainly better than almost everything that came after. I like shutov assembly as well, one of his best ambient records.

i sadly agree, though, that after those first 10 years (71/72 - 81/82, or thereabouts), his career has become a series of small but increasing disappointments. he's never returned to the astonishing pop experiments with which he began his career, which is fine, his choice, but he also seems to have lost his knack for finding interesting, challenging artists working at or toward their peak powers to produce and with whom to collaborate. i respect U2, and his work with that band was obviously important to all concerned, but those albums were never important to me, personally. recent productions for the likes of laurie anderson, david bowie, sinead o'connor, david byrne and grace jones might look good on paper, but rarely resulted in inspired music.

― also we’re divorced now and i hate this movie. (contenderizer), Friday, July 8, 2011 3:38 PM (1 month ago)

okay fair enough, but if you remove any identifying details, this could describe like 95% of all artists ever, right?

for ex --

i sadly agree, though, that after those first ___ years (___ - ___, or thereabouts), his career has become a series of small but increasing disappointments. he's never returned to the astonishing ________ experiments with which he began his career, which is fine, his choice, but he also seems to have lost his knack for _________________ and with whom to collaborate. i respect _____________, and his work with that band was obviously important to all concerned, but those albums were never important to me, personally. recent ____________ might look good on paper, but rarely resulted in inspired music.

― also we’re divorced now and i hate this movie. (contenderizer), Friday, July 8, 2011 3:38 PM (1 month ago)

ALL MUSIC EVER ^^^

genuis fades with time.... r.i.p.

Yeah, you sort of blend every criticism of Eno into one deliberate binary choice, when all of it actually took place over a much longer time horizon. There's the "Eno doesn't make pop records anymore" argument which started around 1978 (and, frankly, ignored his contributions to the pop records he produced). There's the argument that his output lost steam (true -- but more obvious following Thursday Afternoon; he was still cooking from 1981-1985 or so). And it's only really been the last 15-20 years that his choice of collaborators became predictable (around 1993-94 with the James and Bowie).

None of which is to suggest your conclusion is wrong -- just that it happened more organically and less by "choice" than you argue. It's called getting older. Also, from the Cale collab, to the odd bewitching cut (from "The Harness" from My Squelchy Life to "More Dust" from the Schwalm record) to (IMO) quite a bit of Another Day on Earth, there's plenty of evidence that the guy hasn't completely lost it and may still have a trick or two up his sleeve yet.

The Cale/Eno album is my last outright fave but the Squelchy Life tracks from the vocal box are killer too. What would be on a best-of since Eno/Cale, I.e. the last 20 years?

I do agree that in general, most artists really only have one good decade in them, and many only half a decade. Eno's a little different because I think everyone wants to know what would have happened had he continued to make albums like Before and After Science for the next ten years instead of getting bored with the art form.

He's going to be on the Colbert Report tomorrow night.

Getting ready to listen to the Sound Opinions ep with him on it, I'm wondering just how audible DeRo's orgasms will be.

there was a pretty good interview w/ eno in the last issue of tape op. the guy is a quote machine!

Never realized until this moment that the backing vocals on some Talking Heads records (particularly "Once In A Lifetime") are mostly Eno. Only took me 25 years to figure that one out.

yeah he's pretty prominent as a vocalist on remain in light

I still love Strange Overtones.

That Tape Op intvw IS good! One of my fave Eno intvws period because they get to talking about the process of making music and little is said of cybernetics, systems, etc.

I'm wondering just how audible DeRo's orgasms will be.

Trevor Horn's sampling them for a future recording.

yeah for a "not very good" vocalist I do dig Eno's vocalizing quite a bit

in particular the line "the biology of purpose keeps my nose above the surface buhhhhhhh" always makes me smile

or I AM THE SEA OF PERMUTATION

didn't he admit that his lyrics are mostly nonsense and that his words are chosen based almost solely on how they sound?

"Now we're on the telephone, making final arrangements, ding ding!"

I have huge gaps in my musical knowledge, and eno is one of them, like I haven't really closely listened to anything he's produced or any of his solo albums, but for the past month I've been digging in and the dude is a beast

I've never listened to the beach boy's''' smile either, until last wk, don't know what's blown my mind more

sounds like you're having a good week

lol, i'd say so!

He's good on the Sound Opinions ep, and I want to say Greg takes the lead on a lot of the interview.

BTW, I've loved this guy for decades, but something special clicked when I heard some in depth radio bit on the best songs ever or some such list, and it focused on "Once in a Lifetime." Specifically, what state it was in when Byrne brought it to the studio, and then what Eno added to make it what it is (and earn him the co-write credit). The entire call and response chorus was his idea! Byrne wanted to keep it static, like the verses for the duration of the entire song.

I still love Strange Overtones.

― Turangalila, Wednesday, November 9, 2011 10:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Best song of his this century

Oliver Stone agrees.

it's definitely one of the strangest, craziest songs ever to become a rock radio staple.

Also, David Byrne's voice sounds so lovely in it. You'd think his voice wouldn't become so nicely high-pitched with age.

oh oops, i meant "once in a lifetime" is "one of the strangest, craziest songs ever to become a rock radio staple."
not strange overtones. which is great, but not a rock radio staple by any stretch.

no matter how much I listen to Remain in Light this is always what i'll associate the song with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jbya4kxC6E

Just a reminder, re: Strange Overtones, that Byrne sings pretty much the entirety of Take Me to the River at the top of his register, too.

Also, because it often falls between the cracks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5RYptkzbjY

Getting ready to listen to the Sound Opinions ep with him on it, I'm wondering just how audible DeRo's orgasms will be.

Sad this is out of print

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0xZUjAGX9I

Listening now, the problem I have with a lot of those installation pieces he released as a listening experience was that he uses recordings from so many earlier records. For instance, think this is the third time I've heard "Ikebukuro" from The Shutov Assembly.

Really liking his new ambient record 'Lux' -- I'm surprised by how much I like it.

Everyone seems to be talking about it as a return to form. Not having heard it, Geeta, why do you think?

That sounds very promising. I've been stuck in bed recovering from surgery and enjoying playing around with the new 'Scape" iPad app - seems like a lot of possibility there.

I'd never heard Phil Manzanera's "Diamond Head" until tonight and, HEY, Eno's singing on "Big Day" and "Miss Shapiro"! And, my, they're excellent tracks from his prime vocal period. Are there any other guest vocal appearances worth mentioning?

it's not really a guest appearance since they were a band, but I love that 801 live album and the vocals on rongwrong

"The Belldog?" His other stuff with Cluster?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEaOUoKI-T8

"Belldog"/Cluster OTM, also see "Broken Head" and "Tzima N'Arki" from the same record

there's always the 801 Live album as well, and Robert Wyatt's "Heaps Of Sheeps"

gah sorry Sufjan... at any rate, Eno is NOT on the 801 studio album iirc.

"Ms. Shapiro" is so awesome.

You mean Wyatt's "Shleep"? I don't see a listing for Brian's vocals on it.

According to wikipedia, Brian Eno has a vocals credit on "A Change Is Gonna Come" on The Neville Brothers' "Yellow Moon"

must just be the atmospheric oooohs and aaaaahs

Eno's credited with 'vocal chorus' on Heaps Of Shleeps. Listening to it, it could only be him - incredibly distinctive, utterly un-Americanised, undisguisedly well-to-do English singing voice. He's turned up in some capacity on both subsequent Wyatt albums, but the only other time he sings, I think, is on Forest, from Cuckooland.

I love those modern Wyatt albums. I have a feeling Manzanera does quite a lot to make them possible, with studio time and things. If I had a studio, I'd let Robert Wyatt use it whenever he wanted too.

A couple other vocal tours de force to pluck out of mostly intrumental albums:

'Luneberg Heath'
'The Roil, the Choke'

Eno sings significant backup on almost everything he's ever produced, and certainly many guest appearances. But not many lead vox on albums by others.

My fave, oft-posted random Eno appearance in here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr5EHyGBsgg

There's an alternate Eno mix with, um, more Eno. But this could fit right on "Another Green World."

This is pretty cool, though I don't know if any of the vox are Eno's:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzEpiVbkC38

A favorite of these Eno vocal backups is Sikter's "Time and Space" which sounds like some godawful Primus song until the skipping, jittering Enossified chorus. How he ended up on this is beyond me:

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

Wow, I've never heard or heard of that. That's terrible.

Eno was involved a lot with the War Child charity, and with U2 did a lot of work in the Balkans, so maybe it was that.

Eno also produced this/these guys:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6OhF8hoQNk

I was one of the many who had and sold the Zvuki Mu CD.

Pastiche and tribute rolled into a single package:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQusC8QhEvc

Whenever I see Judy Nylon referenced I always think of this total Eno obscurity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeCqgsKs8EY

Beardo!

http://assets-s3.rollingstone.com/assets/images/story/brian-eno-inside-the-noisy-lab-of-one-of-rocks-greatest-producers-20140515/1000x306/20140507-brianeno-x600-1399482867.jpg

wooo http://www.gumtree.com/p/for-sale/heartbreakingly-beautiful-framed-brian-eno-cat-food-adverta3-poster/1062684055

http://adland.tv/adnews/anatomy-ad-hoax-brian-eno-purina-cat-ad-joke-mate/1372136172

What is that thing he is playing? On Later it looked like has had a kaos pad for his left hand and that weird thing you can see in the photo up there for his right, looks like a trackball only he wasn't touching it

Looks like an Alesis Air FX to me.

90s reissues ahoy, plenty of bonus material too:

http://brian-eno.net/reissues/

awesome, great to see the My Squelchy Life material finally available

oh great more reissues I desperately want!

http://cdn4.gurl.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/broke-8.gif

PR note says "You can pre-order each release now and get instant downloads."

Eh, not sure I need three discs of unreleased generative works and installation soundtracks from perhaps his dullest ambient era. Nice to get an official "My Squelchy Life," though.

I will say it again: "The Harness" is the best song he's written 25 years.

I would agree with that!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21yu3RG80lU

http://www.theawl.com/2014/12/brian-eno-clark-mix

I sprung for the new edition of 'Shutov Assembly'. Nice packaging, booklet with interview & extra installation images. The 35 minute bonus material is a little on the slight side and in a somewhat different style than the parent disc (has a few rhythmic pieces closer to 'The Drop' or 'Curiosities') but I still found things to enjoy about it. My hopes were high, because there's that excellent Shutov-era promo/library music album called 'Textures' which has a lot of overlap with 'Shutov' tracks, but also has five or six tracks that don't appear anywhere else that I very much enjoy - http://www.discogs.com/Brian-Eno-Textures/release/1053039

almost sprang for 'Nerve Net' 2cd to get Squelchy but that would mean having to own a copy of 'Nerve Net'

I am genuinely surprised that you dislike that record so much, I played "Fractal Zoom" on the radio a few weeks ago and it sounded great

I'm listening to it again now on spotify. it really let me down when it came out. today, there are moments but I can't handle 'ali click' any better now than I could then. the 80's were a dark time for high end electronic music gear, but by the late 80's things were getting interesting again this was a record which just seemed to make every digital mistake you possibly could at the precise moment other people were starting to get back on track

those are admittedly just my ears

nah that's a fair point, I know you are sensitive to that stuff

nb: I love "Ali Click", especially the remixes

The things you say
You're unbelievable

http://blog.longnow.org/02014/02/28/enobooks/

there are about 5 books on that list I really want to read

and none I've actually read :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRiBrWY3NB4

my favorite song about the anxiety of influence

What's your second favorite?

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

this is more about the void that opened with dylan's "retreat" into eccentricity but there is some envy here, i feel

there are definitely others i am not thinking of. it would be an interesting playlist.

i always loved the story of david bowie playing Andy Warhol for A. Warhol at the Factory.

Bowie later played the song to Andy Warhol, who reportedly disliked it as he thought the lyrics made fun of his physical appearance. When the song had finished playing, Warhol and Bowie reportedly just stared at each other for a while until Warhol said "I like your shoes" and the pair then had a conversation about shoes.

lol ward

what about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw4w-kdu_34

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nJu5OaN40o

I'll never be a Bowie, I'll never be an Eno, I'll only ever be a Gary Numan

yess

what a burn!

he wishes he were Gary Numan!

i listen to way more gary numan than bowie

i never listen to bill callahan

i listen to more bill callahan than bowie and gary numan put together, frankly.

Crut otm

from an interview with leo abrahams in tape op:

"I read that Brian Eno found you playing
in a guitar shop, heard the sounds
you were making, and was intrigued."

"Yeah, it was really pretty crazy. I was in this secondhand
music shop around the corner from his studio. I was
trying out a guitar, and I was testing the intonation.
That was it. He walked in and came over. He was
incredibly polite and nice. He introduced himself, and
I said, “Yeah, I know who you are.” He said,
“Sometimes I need a guitar player. Would you like to
come to the studio?” I said, “Yeah, I’d love to.” I
didn’t hear from him for six months, and then he
called and asked if I could come over. When I arrived,
everything was already set up with the guitar plugged
into an effects thing. I’d read about his techniques of
moving musicians out of their typical comfort zones.
I picked up the guitar, and it was completely out of
tune. Not just out of tune, but the strings were
actually hanging off it. I said, “Okay, let’s start the
track.” I improvised a load of percussive, bendy, and
talking drum sounds. I got to the end of the song. The
next song comes on, and I said, “Oh, excuse me, but
would it be okay if I played my own guitar? I’d like to
play something melodic.” He said, “Yeah. I wasn’t
expecting you to play that guitar. I was using it to
test the line. But I think what you got out of it was
really good.”

oh that eno!

freeze frame, roll credits

haha

It's an understandable mistake. I'm sure we all have similar Eno stories.

"Actually, 'Play The Piano As If You Had Trout For Hands' is the name of my dog."

"That's no sandwich...that's my rhythm section!"

I Spent 3 Weeks Working With Brian Eno On A New Album, But It Turned Out I Was Just Feeding His Cat

ha!

haha

hahaha

Dennis Davis:
We would get in the studio, it was really wide open. That's why I like doing recordings with (Bowie) because it was, like, real easy, you know. Until Brian Eno came along. That Brian Eno, he was a character!

Brian Eno:
The problem actually I had at that time was that I didn't really understand how good musicians worked. I'm not a musician myself in that sense.

Carlos Alomar:
Brian Eno had a blackboard, you know, like elementary school, you know. I'm like, "You've got a blackboard. So?" So we started coming up with these ideas for different chords. E, C, G, B, and so he'd go, ok, so, "I'm going to point to that chord and you play that chord "and then I'll point to another." So I'm playing and it goes D.

Brian Eno:
When you're working with really great players, like Carlos and Dennis, you have to accept that they have a way of processing information that is beyond intellectual.

Carlos Alomar:
"Dude, man. Hey, Brian, look. What are you... This is... This isn't working for me, man."

Brian Eno:
But with their incredibly natural musicianship, the two together produce something that, again, one wouldn't have had with either on their own.

Carlos Alomar:
I mean, some of it worked, some of it didn't, but quite honestly it did take me out of my comfort zone and it did make me leave my frustration at what I was doing and totally look at it from another different point of view and, although I didn't like the point of view, when I came back, I was fresh.

from ~28:11 onwards https://vimeo.com/151364531

At the very least, since signing to Warp Eno has proved very cooperative with the promotion cycle, leading to lots of good recent interviews. I liked this one:
http://thequietus.com/articles/20034-brian-eno-favourite-records-interview

The new album is nice. Sounds a bit like one of those slowed down Bieber tracks.

Hey, OP's in there!

Yeah, that was cool.

New album, btw, is increasingly crazy and weird and original. Not what I expected.

only heard the title track so far but I think it's a resounding return to form, super excited

Not to play it up too much, but it's not so much a return to form as an entirely new form. What it does with vocals, or what vocals can be, is really fascinating.

OK poor word choice, sub in "his best in a long time"

that's a really good quietus piece - it's so much more than just a list of albums.

Hey, OP's in there!

Orlando Ploom.

Ottilie Patterson

http://kerosenecucumbers.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/opie_pickle.jpg

He says he digs your album then before you know it he's running up to put his grubby synth arpeggios and vocals all over the next one. Guy is a menace.

Would love some of the live stuff with the Winkies with decent sound.
The Derby set is interesting but a bit distant. I think the circulating version is a couple of generations from source so I guess there's unlikely to be any improvement unless an original is found.
Was it part of a longer tour? Wonder if there is any chance of anything else turning up.

Iirc they only played a couple of gigs, same with 801.

What I did not know is that apparently the Winkies released a studio album post-Eno!

Would love some of the live stuff with the Winkies with decent sound.
a while back a guy got in touch saying his friend had a much better-sounding tape of the Derby show, but that he had never digitized it or something. was a few years ago though.

that's a really good quietus piece - it's so much more than just a list of albums.

― Karl Malone, Friday, April 15, 2016 9:15 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I agree, v interesting

xp dying over here, FIND HIM TYLER ;)

I've got an 801 live album that's pretty good

Yeah, that was cool.

New album, btw, is increasingly crazy and weird and original. Not what I expected.

New album is his best in years and years I think.

Oh, I agree. It's the first thing he's done in decades that approaches a new form, at least at times. It's like he finally applied all his generative ambient programs to singing. Even the way it's sequenced is strange and wonderful. I hope there is more where this came from.

where are you hearing it? I saw the preview of the one song but don't see the album up on spotify or apple music.

only "the ship" is available on spotify but it's awesome

Xpost it leaked a couple of weeks ago

yeah it's a wonderful record. I like both the eno/hyde albums as well. feels a bit like a rebirth for him

Reading the interviews with him acknowledging that his voice has changed as he's gotten older, combined with this being a rare foray into vocals at all (in any form), plus Bowie dying (a few years down from Lou Reed) and the album ending with a version of "I'm Set Free" (that he recorded 12 years ago), gives the whole album a ghostly vibe, especially the haunting track with the generative voice (speaking with a Flemish accent, which is the accent of his mother) delivering the random word scramble lyrics like a robot reading poetry.

Ignore the Kanye bait and focus on the other stuff in Whiney's interview: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/brian-eno-on-kanye-west-david-bowie-and-his-immersive-lp-the-ship-20160414

got to give the people what they want

there's a good idea for a piece in the history of incrementally revised / remixed software-esque editions of the 'same' album, there is absolutely no need for anyone with a mind to credit Kanye with that kind of innovation in an Eno interview. John Coltrane's 'Ascension', Grateful Dead 'Anthem of the Sun', 'Music For Films', Ground Zero's 'Revolutionary Pekinese Opera v1.28'

looking forward to the new album

yes, why didn't i mention ground zero's revolutionary pekinese opera v1.28 instead of the most famous contemporary pop musician on the planet in a rolling stone article, what a fucking bonehead move that was!

ha! that is of course not what I was suggesting of course

I totally get why Kanye's name is creeping into interviews with avant musicians, especially in this case where it's one who's been doing this for decades

good interview btw

thanks, MP! :D

Yeah, it's a good one. Eno is easy to talk to. Very engaged.

only "the ship" is available on spotify but it's awesome

It's lovely, one of Lou's best songs.

Eno has amassed an awful lot of cultural credibility and "I'm Set Free" is a nice song, and the line "I'm set free to find a new illusion" is vaguely profound, but this is about as exciting as Jad Fair doing a Shaggs cover or whatever. So Eno won't sing for like a billion years, and then he decides that VU karaoke is the best way to channel his talents?

I thought he recorded it 12 years ago?

Sorry, one billion - 12 years.

That's better.

So Eno won't sing for like a billion years, and then he decides that VU karaoke is the best way to channel his talents?
i know what you're saying, but still -- this cover is really nice.

i thought there were vocals all over the album. he can't throw in a cover of a song from his favorite album?

I've been listening to covers of "I'm Set Free" and am pretty sure that none of them are bad. Like, if you can't successfully cover I'm Set Free there should be an agency that takes away your hands and vocal chords, because you aren't qualified to perform music. Failure to adequately perform I'm Set Free is up there with inability to sing Happy Birthday.

So?

I've never heard a cover of "I'm Set Free" tbh.

only other one i can think of off hand is yo la tengo's ... which is also good! it's a great song, true.

I mean, I'm not saying I don't like the Eno version. Don't want to be Scrooge about a perfectly decent song...

There is singing all over the new album almost in the most literal sense, but rarely conventional singing a la "I'm Set Free," which was indeed recorded eons ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9IL_bOwjZU

I mean, anyone who wants to argue that Eno's version is better than the above is welcome to have a go.

what if i told you that i know of a song (not I'm Set Free) that is even better than that children's chorus video? that would obliterate the quality of their singing right? THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE GOOD SONG

we're moving toward a world where there is only one good song. the good song prompts millions of cover versions, all of which vie to be the only good song. but every once in a while a new, different good song appears and disrupts the entire asymptotic system. the maps are redrawn and the old good song is thrown back into the gigantic heap of mediocrity that provides balance and order

It used to be Hallelujah.

if lou has a "hallelujah" it's "perfect day."

anyhoo, checking out the ship finally, and yessss this is great.

the one good song is still L'Homme Arme, fuck all these tryhard comelatelys.

Nah, it's Everywhere With Helicopter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igvtCo4KoIg

Actually, fuck Brian Eno. I'm off to buy the new Shine Children's Chorus album.

just finished this one and yeah, I've never quite heard anything like this. it's really good.

Eno has amassed an awful lot of cultural credibility and "I'm Set Free" is a nice song, and the line "I'm set free to find a new illusion" is vaguely profound, but this is about as exciting as Jad Fair doing a Shaggs cover or whatever. So Eno won't sing for like a billion years, and then he decides that VU karaoke is the best way to channel his talents?

eno stopped not singing in like 1990, this is his third vocal album in 3 years

https://www.discogs.com/artist/634-Brian-Eno?sort=year%2Cdesc&limit=25&filter_anv=0&subtype=Vocals&type=Credits

can't believe a guy who sings all the time recorded a cover

RIght, doesn't he sing in a church choir?

Context from the RS interview:

I went to see a performance by Hofesh Shechter, the Israeli choreographer. And it was an amazing, amazing piece of frantic choreographic activity. And then suddenly, at the end, it all stopped, and a Joni Mitchell song, "Both Sides Now," but the orchestral version, started up. And it was such an incredible mood shock, to go from that franticness of the dancing to this amazing-sounding huge orchestra and smoky, big warm sound. So I remembered that. I thought, “What a great idea, to just have a change of that kind into that sort of warmth.” And I think the reason I loved that song was because of the, well I think it's a beautiful song musically, but the key line is, "I'm set free to find a new illusion." And that's what I really like. The idea that you don't go from illusion to reality, but you go from one illusion to another one, or one story to another one. That seemed to me to be a nice way to seal that record.

bonus context:

“The first time I ever heard [The Velvet Underground] was on a John Peel radio show… it was when their first album came out and I thought “This I like! This I want to know about!”. I was having a huge crisis at the time. Am I going to be a painter or am I somehow going to get into music. And I couldn’t play anything so music was the less obvious choice. Then, when I heard The Velvet Underground I thought, “you can do both actually”. It was a big moment for me.

“That particular song always resonated with me but it took about 25 years before I thought about the lyrics. “I’m set free, to find a new illusion”. Wow. That’s saying we don’t go from an illusion to reality (the western idea of “Finding The Truth”) but rather we go from one workable solution to another more workable solution.

Subsequently I think we aren’t able and actually don’t particularly care about the truth, whatever that might be. What we care about is having intellectual tools and inventions that work. [Yuval Noah Harari in his book “Sapiens”] discusses that what makes large-scale human societies capable of cohering and co-operating is the stories they share together. Democracy is a story, religion is a story, money is a story. This chimed well with “I’m set free to find a new illusion”. It seems to me what we don’t need now is people that come out waving their hands and claiming they know the Right Way.”

it's kinda corny but 'the big ship' sounds really good as a coda to 'the ship'

the last five minutes of 'the ship' is amazing

laughter. wave.

but what kind of wave
* head explodes*

'The big ship' is a particular track that makes me heart swell fit to bursting it's so fuckin beautiful.

ya i'm p certain the big ship is my favorite song ever. i want it played at my funeral

i want it played at my funeral
Been telling my wife this for years.

As long as she hasn't been telling you she wants it played at your funeral, that's fine.

Just got the special "collectors edition" in the mail ... it's a nice package, with some Chilvers prints and what appear to be some notes for the recording and lyrics. The more I listen to the title track on headphones, the more I'm struck by the found sound aspect of this -- in paretic., how much he is using it in a very different way than he did on, say, On Land. There are things here that made me actually take off my headphones and pause to make sure I wasn't hearing some ad playing in the bgd on my browser. To my knowledge, he's never done that before. In places this reminds me of David Sylvian's work with Holger Czukay, but with a bit more of a nod to "song," whatever that means.

And holy shit, as if The Ship wasn't strange enough, Fickle Sun (i) sounds like absolutely nothing in his catalogue. Or anyone's, really.

YES, it's finally on spotify! can't wait to listen later tonight

Love the whole 'Fickle Sun' suite.

Fickle Sun (I) sounds like Dead Can Dance, actually.

good call

love this album

I ordered it this morning on iTunes, will listen soon!

eno has so many different kinds of albums that it's tough to pick one as a favorite, it's more like choosing which one is your favorite for a particular situation or mood. the ship is definitely going to be a go to for many situations for me. also i am really embarrassed that i thought the lyrics were looping "wave. laughter" at the end of the title track. it's clearly "wave. after." which makes a lot more sense.

bonus japanese edition track "away" is worth tracking down

omg karl how embarrassing :/

xp AARGH

i am so embarrassed that i will play the entire thing on a loop for the rest of the morning/afternoon to atone. i am sorry eno!

question on the 2LP version:

how are the tracks divided up across the sides? i assumed it would be the title track on side 1 and the other three songs on side 2, but if there are 4 LP sides to spread them across...? the two longer songs deserve to be heard without interruption, so i don't really get it.

I hate that so much, there's just no reason for it here (or on the Trad Gras Och Stenar vinyl). Just pay a little more and get a pro to master a 20-30 minute album side, jeez.

both long tracks are split, smdh:

https://www.discogs.com/Brian-Eno-The-Ship/release/8453684

o wait I guess there is a gap between Fickle Sun 1 and ii, but side D here is eight minutes long!

this makes no sense at all as a 2 LP

yeah, it's really too bad. i guess i'll wait and see if they ever reissue it as a single LP

Or you could just buy the CD, which sounds great (and is like twelve bucks as opposed to 28)

don't have a CD player

you kids today

Playing "Another Day on Earth" for the first time in a while, much better than I remembered it. I wish he sang more often.

I'm having an Eno moment too. Spent the last few days with Discreet Music and now I'm swimming through his whole discography. I know the rock albums really well and a few of the ambient albums, but there is a ton of stuff he's done that I've just never spent any time with.

Me too - I've been way into his two Cluster collaborations, his abandoned album with Harmonia and "Possible Musics" with Jon Hassell. Oh, and the Berlin trio with Bowie. It's all so ratified, it puts me in such a calm state of mind.

c/ratified/rarified/

I would have pressed this on 3 sides of vinyl with Fickle Sun II & III on the 3rd side.
Less than 22 minutes should be totally fine on a single side without compromising audio quality.

In other news - My favorite Eno record since Thursday Afternoon

I'm still in the 'unsure' camp on this. I've had it on three times and it's sort of passed me by. I know Eno's turned this into an aesthetic, but I find something always sticks, eventually, and I'm waiting for it to happen with this one.

I've been listening to loads recently as well. Mainly Thursday Afternoon, the Cluster records and Before and After Science. On Land is probably still my favourite.

On a tangent, I've been listening to a bunch of Wackies stuff and wondering where that production sound 'came from'. It's not a Scratch, Tubby or Coxsone vibe, and I pin Compass Point as a bit later. Part of me wonders if Eno had anything to do with it - particularly the Berlin and Talking Heads records. Dunno.

Huh, dunno anything about Wackies. US reggae imprint? Where to begin?

I'm very far from an expert but the Samplers (3 volumes, I think) are patchy, but when they're gold, they're gold. Bullwackie's All Stars are great, anything with Horace Andy (the re-released Dance Hall Style is killer, as is the Love Hangover single) and my personal favourite is probably the Junior Delahaye Reggae/Reggae Showcase album. He was an engineer for the label and played drums on a whole bunch of releases (they had the inevitable house band). The production is deep and flat, I suppose, eschewing the traditional reggae warmth for something more tectonic and synthetic. It's no accident that the Basic Channel dudes started to re-release a bunch of Wackies stuff. Rhythm and Sound are something of a tribute act, really (albeit an oblique one).

Worth noting that while The Ship is getting a lot of attention for the "vocal forms" angle, Eno has been at this for a bit now. He's been using vocoder at least as far back as Nerve Net – Another Day on Earthfeatured a handful of tracks using one as well. And the two records with Rick Holland's poetry on Warp—Drums Between the Bells and the Panic of Looking EP (both of which are on Tidal but not Spotify)—have a bunch of interesting treatments of his voice and others.

Worth noting that while the Holland records were pretty roundly dismissed when they came out (including by me as I have a limited capacity for poetry readings), I'm actually finding both to be pretty interesting works and engaging listens – in large part because of the vocal treatments, which range from straight readings intoned by prim English ladies to harmonized vocoder tracks that feel of a piece with some of Laurie Anderson's work, to tracks read, sung and duetted with Eno's own voice which I always enjoy hearing. The music is quite varied as well, from LUX-ish ambient, to Curiosities-oriented dork electronica, to some refreshingly lyrical stuff. A couple of my favorites from those records:

https://youtu.be/fE28jM5Ywls

https://youtu.be/yx288P_Yd7Y

On when I get in last night:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b079z9vx/hardtalk-brian-eno-artist-and-musician

G'damn truncated YT links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE28jM5Ywls&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx288P_Yd7Y&feature=youtu.be

Wackies is/was straight up Bronx by way of Kingston, Jamaica. I doubt they were checking on Eno or TH for direct inspiration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mkhhAQ0z5g

I don't understand the fuss about this album at all. His treated vocoder voice is just terrible, it sounds so asexual, so totally devoid of human feeling. I get the impression some kind of God hovering above is singing here, that is so awful. And melody wise this is very weak again. It totally passes me by. The last album I truly enjoyed by him was On Land, it has been a while...

I don't think it's as simple as vocoder. It's a combo of sort of self generating treatments, robo text and cut ups. Plus his now lower register. Changes it from singing to something stranger, IMO, the same way his old technique of say putting a bass drum through a wah wah was fresh.

I've slowly been working my way chronologically through Eno's discography over the last few weeks and have been amazed at how consistently brilliant it has been. Just got to 1992's Nerve Net and now you can disregard my first sentence. Woof!

don't understand people's problem with that album. I thought it was thrilling at the time and I still like most of it. I guess I prefer the My Squelchy Life version more now but only because it's less familiar.

and don't forget the Shutov Assembly came out at almost the same time, and that's a beautiful album.

whoah @ Wackies doc! thx Captain!

I like nerve net a lot

whoah @ Wackies doc! thx Captain!

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, May 18, 2016 8:56 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah!

Squelchy >>> Nerve Net. That RSD thing last year was a revelation

I still think Another Day On Earth is a masterpiece. Why does no one else realize this??

15:30 into Fickle Sun (I) you can hear a text-to-speech program recite an email disclaimer...what the hell?

Now I'm really poring over this...

I can imagine how Nerve Net might have sounded exciting at the time but listening with 2016 ears, I don't think it has aged well at all. Reminds me a lot of Mani Plank Neumeier's Zero Set, which I like far more. And "Ali Click" is just embarrassing. I haven't heard the Squelchy Life version.

his floppy disc-issued generative music album from 1996 is pretty unheralded. written for window 95, it would render a different version (within the set parameters) of each song every time you played it. music is lovely, heavy SAW-era aphex vibes....and has a very particular outside of time feel to it. there's a CD bootleg of some of it but someone put a bunch of freshly rendered versions on YT last year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptB6bxCGTv4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEQ8aeyNpSQ

p.s. best wackies session is keith hudson "playing it cool"

xxxpost You're welcome!!

In return for borrowing the drums for "Ali Click," Eno did this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfa7Y0oEkl0

Good Nerve Net era interview here:

http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/audio93a.html

THE SHIP IS SOOOOOO GOOOOOD!!

I like Brian Eno's 'The Ship' a lot except when he reads that poem I always expect him to say 'then welcome, ooh voof welcome, in Blue Jam'

That's not Eno, iirc.

peter serafinowicz?

Yeah, reading generated lyrics.

it's peter serafinowicz?? no way. thought i recognised the voice.

should've done it as Brian Butterfield imo

I still think Another Day On Earth is a masterpiece. Why does no one else realize this??

Took me a while to get on board at the time but yeah I think it's one of his very best. Still not sold on The Ship

I highly recommend playing two of the Generative Music 1 videos linked upthread simultaneously

I love the first part of the ship but the poem is silly and the song is so obviously a velvets song (I've not heard the original) that it kind of rubs me the wrong way.

I don't consider myself a VU expert or anything but what other song of theirs sounds like "I'm Set Free"? Or more to the point, Eno's cover of it?

How have you not heard the original?!

I actually didn't know it well. But when I heard it, I didn't think Eno's version sounded particularly faithful.

I'm just not a big VU fan although listening to the Eno cover, you can hear that the original has all the hallmarks of a Velvets ballad in the Candy Says/Sunday Morning vein. I like those songs fine, but something about including it as a cover feels out of place on this album as it's so very clearly a VU song.

Also he recorded it like 11 years ago. Maybe he just had a space on the album he needed to fill? I like it btw, but then I love the song.

yeah it's nice on its own, and i like the idea that he rounds off this epic ambient record with a sweet song, it just doesn't feel quite part of the work, just kind of tacked on at the end rather than something which was covered or composed especially for the project.

hm, it feels like a natural conclusion to this record to me

I really like it because it's a counter to all that comes before it. You've got Eno's voice, lower and older and chopped/broken up, you've got someone else reading a more or less generative poem, and then you've got Eno singing, straight forward, his voice younger, in a 10 or so year old performance from the vaults of a song from one of his favorite, formative albums that set him down the road that got him to where he is now. Ties everything up nicely, and feels really sort of sad to me. I know Eno's healthy and happy etc., but it's sort of a weirdly swan song move. Perhaps he was moved to include it by Bowie's death? Dunno how much I want to read into it.

Think the release was actually pushed back when Bowie died but agree w all that.

http://theship.ai

“Humankind seems to teeter between hubris and paranoia: the hubris of our ever-growing power contrasts with the paranoia that we're permanently and increasingly under threat. At the zenith we realise we have to come down again...we know that we have more than we deserve or can defend, so we become nervous. Somebody, something is going to take it all from us: that is the dread of the wealthy. Paranoia leads to defensiveness, and we all end up in the trenches facing each other across the mud.” - Brian Eno (Feb 2016)

Taking this statement as a starting point and utilizing a bespoke artificial intelligence programme developed by the Dentsu Lab Tokyo, this new generative project explores various historical photographic images and real time news feeds to compose a collective photographic memory of humankind.

Developed especially for this piece, the artificial intelligence employs machine learning techniques to interpret its own ”memories” of the past, associating them with ongoing current events and presenting them in a unique generative film.

The Ship - A Generative Film is an exploration of the music and themes from the new Eno album ‘The Ship’ and forms a journey through modern history to explore the relationship between events present and past. The viewer is invited to view this film and begin an internal discussion about how historical meaning is produced. Does the machine intelligence produce a point of view independent of its makers or its viewers? Or are we - human and machine - ultimately co-creating new and unexpected meanings?

Ultimately the response to Brian Eno’s statement exists within the viewer.

I wish there was an instrumental version of The Ship. I can't tolerate the vocals on there.

yeah i liked them at first but they lose their novelty after a few plays.

recently discovered This

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccoDVG--F6s

Love it so much

yeah that's a great one

Agreed about the vox - would def purchase an instrumental version.

BE: Recently, I had to give a formal lecture on the evolution of my work, so I tried to push it back beyond Art School to what you might call the first imaginative enterprises I could remember. The first one on the list I call "making special places." That meant designing houses. Thinking of places I would like to live in. These places always have strange corners and labyrinths and secret rooms. They had streams running through them, or trees growing up through the middle of them, or they would be suspended across chasms, things like that. I was designing houses from the age of about seven. The second one was "rethinking systems". These were not the names I gave them at the time, you understand. I had a train set, and instead of making it into a loop and having the thing running around, I used to build these different structures. Like I'd pile a few books up here and there and the idea was to make the rails so the train would take the most gradual possible route to the ground. So it was another way of using a train set. And the third one I call "mud technology." This game involved me digging a hole and collecting a number of sticks that were not long enough to span it, and then weaving a roof which I would cover with mud. And I'd weave a second roof and cover that with mud as well. And then I would ask my Dad to jump up and down on it. And if it could support my father I considered it a success. Now these three games - I've been thinking about this - were my earliest games, and I haven't really played any other games since. That's all I've done since. It's sort of depressing to think that every idea you've ever had, you had by age four and a half. The "mud technology" one is really about enjoying limitations. "Making special places" is installations, environments or making places special, as with Music for Airports and the concept of ambient music. "Rethinking systems" is using video monitors for lights, or using tape recorders to make nonrepeating music, that sort of thing. When this realization dawned, I was sort of jubilant thinking "God, there's a thread connecting everything I've ever done, and on the other hand I thought "Christ! It's time I had a few new ideas!" (laughter).

I think Laurie Anderson's "Bright Red" is one of my favorite Eno productions that no one ever talks about. Comes smack in the middle of his '90s production peak, nestled amongst "Achtung Baby/Zooropa," "Laid/Wah Wah."

I'm a pretty big fan of that record. Some of her best songs are on that – "Poison," "Puppet Motel," "Freefall," "Night in Baghdad" are all great and Eno's production plays a pretty big role in it. As do Joey Baron's drums.

Yeah I love that record, the Free Fall song, the rain/flood song, the sparse sound, everything except the Lou duet

also has her lou reed duet "in our sleep" which is one of my all time favorite laurie anderson songs

haha OK I guess I need to give that another chance, it's probably been approx. 2 decades since I heard it

("Muddy River" is the rain/flood song I was trying to recall earlier, my favorite)

I either forgot or never realized that this was an Eno production

He was interviewed on Bbc News Channel's Hard Talk last night. I managed to channel surf right at the right time and caught it.
Can't remember why he was topical enough to be on there. But interview was interesting enough.

he has an album coming out. what did he talk about?

Ususal stuff to some degree, Bowie ,Roxy.
TH ei dea of getting away from the auteur which had the interviewer bringing him onto the subject of the people he'sd collaborated with who could possibly be thought of as genius. To which he replied by talking about Scenius which I think was about the artist responding to the environment he's surrounding himself with or at l;east the other ideas flowing through it.

I think I turned on and he was talking about a visual performance he'd set up for a festival in Australia where he'd set up a computer programme to combine images randomly and project them on what appeared to be the Sydney opera house. He talked about having seen and chosen the elements involved but having no control over the combination so not having the level of input expected. & therefore not being 100% responsible for the resulting moments of beauty.

Think I'm not remembering everything. But thought if i said it was on it might allow some people to check it out on iplayer.
Not sure if those interviews get repeated otherwise. Did notice that loads of that Channel gets repeated even months later when I was watching it heavily over the late summer.BUt not sure about Hardtalk.

Have a female friend who worked on that Australia thing. You know all those stories about Eno getting more play than Ferry back in the day, being a general horndog, etc? Hoo, boy. Allegedly this might still be the case.

Given what's on "Bright Red" and "Outside," I'd love to hear an entire Eno-produced album of Joey Baron just playing drums.

Need more deets, PP. After all, he is supposedly happily married.

Ooh yeah spill it

That was gross. I'm sorry. I'm curious now that a hint was dropped but that was a crass way to express it. Please use an oblique strategy to spill the details that are spillable.

do people think he kept all his sex in his hair or something?

My eno jam of late has been this 60+ track thing which purports to be the complete soundtrack to The Lovely Bones. Some of it is old Eno and some of it is Eno influenced but by the film's sound editors, but it's a great listen.

huh where can you get that? sounds intersting.

Please consult the distinguished website download-soundtracks.com -- there are links to both a short version and a complete version. The sharing service used (iirc) is Uploaded, so be ready to defeat gross, swift popups.

Digging in now, I'll have to investigate and see what's what. Some of this is new Eno, some of this is old Eno, some of this is Harold Budd with Eno, a couple orchestrated ones don't really sound like Eno ... it's pretty, regardless.

there's an Eno book called Oblique Music which per my limited Google Books access of it, talks about the project at some length

Huh, thanks for the heads up on that. Is that a collection of essays (by not-Eno)?

is there a thread where we're discussing Reflection? i'm on my second listen. it's definitely work music, i really like it. if you liked Lux you will probably like it a lot.

did anyone (on earth) throw down for the $40 iOS generative app? i'm interested in it less for the visuals (although i'm curious about that) and more for the prospect of having an infinite brian eno song in my inventory at all times.

i'm not paying $40 for a fucking app. $12, maybe.

Adrian Belew's 'flux' app is only $9.99

I liked his old generative app Bloom.

My favorite generative app is one called Gestrument, I've left it going for hours before

(I mean you can def get pretty composerly with setting its parameters, it's taken me an hour or more to get the parameters just so, but it's more generative than not)

I Love Apps

Have a female friend who worked on that Australia thing. You know all those stories about Eno getting more play than Ferry back in the day, being a general horndog, etc? Hoo, boy. Allegedly this might still be the case.

In that vein, his interview in like 1973 with a young music writer Chrissie Hynde is so out of control, can't remember where it ran

http://www.pretenders.org/eno.htm

Yeah, that's a classic. Tbf, 24 or so year old Eno seems like a different animal than current 68 year old Eno, but maybe not?

I Love Apps and Slanderous Gossip

No deets, no justice.

There's lots of weird stuff in his Swollen Appendices autobiography (if you can call it an autobiog) - lots of time spent photoshopping various women's arses.

""Can I show you my pubic area?" (! ! !) He exposes his stomach down to his, ah - about six inches below his Navel. "Absolutely bare! Now I've got this beautiful bare belly! I've got this new Japanese thing, you see and the Japanese don't have much hair on their bodies 'Japanese culture I tip as the next big thing." "

- Momus

Wow at that interview. It really was a different time.

New album sounds like The Ship with all the interesting parts taken out. A workable ambient album then, which isn't a bad thing.

Found myself spinning the new one often and on repeat so I did indeed go for the app. The price point is crazy at first glance but I was thinking about how they might have reached that figure:

• Apple takes 30% off the top
• Chilvers has probably never made decent money off any of the previous Eno apps
• Since it's a composition through Warp, they might want streaming licence money
• It's a prestige 'art object' with pricing that conveys that
• They will sell probably sell one of these for every 10,000 CDs/MP3 they sell even though technically it's infinitely longer than one of those
• It'll probably only be updated to keep it running on newer OSes, so there won't be any opportunity to derive any more revenue from this once it's bought

Whoops forgot another one:

• Warp probably insisted on a high price point so that CD/MP3 sales weren't cannibalized

Regarding Eno's diagrams on the back of Music for Airports, I wonder if he was familiar with the computer algorithm-generated drawings of artist Manfred Mohr? Particularly these two from 1970:

http://www.emohr.com/paris-1971/catalog/Lpage35.jpg
http://www.emohr.com/paris-1971/catalog/Lpage34.jpg

Huh. I've never heard of that guy, but he and Eno seem like they would be best buddies.

Wow, yeah, thanks for pointing Mohr out. I can't see that Eno ever mentioned him but those diagrams are really similar

Played "Here Come the Warm Jets" at a benefit show I was helping to DJ last night
sad lol

There was a Guardian interview with me earlier this week which had as its headline "We've been in decline for 40 years - Trump is a chance to rethink". I didn’t use those words in that way (as reading the article would make clear), and they've been taken (particularly by some American websites) to suggest that I support Trump. Anybody familiar with my views will know that this is not true.

So: may I make something absolutely clear: I think Donald Trump is a complete disaster. And Brexit is a disaster too. That said, what I think is an even greater disaster is that we in the US and the UK - and increasingly the rest of the world - live inside political systems that can produce absurd results like these.

We now see political careers built upon lies and deceit and encouraged by openly biased media organisations, more concerned about revenue and ratings than giving the public real information. It’s this whole system that has to change: not just who leads the government but something deeper and more fundamental in our political and social processes. Democracy assumes an informed public: it doesn't work if the media are corrupt. Changing the faces at the top doesn’t alter anything if the whole machinery beneath them stays the same - the rich become the super-rich, the middle class stagnates and the poor get poorer.

My hope - the only hope really - is that Trump in office will reveal himself for what he really is, and that the public will roundly and unequivocally reject him and everything he stands for - his terrible policies, his jingoism, his arrogance, his childishness, his lies, his prejudices and his small-mindedness. In rejecting Trump we’ll also start to take down the whole malignant media-political structure that so lovingly nurtured him.

As I've written before, I believe that Trump can turn out to be not the beginning of a long decline, but the end of one - the turning point. For 40 years we've been sliding into a deepening pit of inequality, fear-driven nationalism and conservatism, and mostly not noticing. Trump’s presidency could inadvertently change that - not because he's going to do anything right but because his election is energising people to come to grips with the fact that their political system is fundamentally broken and it's time to do something about it. The demonstrations that happened last weekend are a reflection of this new mood.

It would have been better if we hadn't got to this point, but that's where we are. My feeling is that a Clinton presidency (or even a 'remain' vote in Britain), though more comfortable in the short term, wouldn't have dealt with the fundamental problems that beset both our political systems. Trump has proven beyond doubt that the system is broken, so let's fix it.

– Brian

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

I've been listening to Reflection nearly every night for the past month; might have to splurge on the app eventually.

Heard this on the Sonic Realities podcast the other week. If you had told me who it was by, I would never have expected it to sound like this. Just totally joyful.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-INeMspNSQ0

You'd never heard that before? I envy your first exposure.

reflection app repriced to $30.99. I am tempted, even though I found the album version didn't quite connect with me & I'm not sure why; but the concept of an app version of an album is way overdue for him so I feel like I shouldn't neglect it

I didn't find much in 'Bloom' to hold me; while I liked the implementation of variable-length loops capturing the melodies you'd play with the touchscreen, the sounds weren't quite there. although if you hooked it up to a good sound system, there was some nice low end going on that you couldn't hear through an iphone speaker. The music for 'Scape' ended up being my favorite Eno album since 'Shutov Assembly', I've made myself more than a few playlists of scenes in that app, and I love the degree of low end when you play it back through a good sound system. I am fighting the temptation to get a good digital-out capture of 'Scape' so I can play back WAVs more easily on other devices / systems -- certainly there are a variety of captures already on youtube -- but there is something challenging about it being subtly different every time that makes me think that I shouldn't even let myself do that.

haven't listened to the other apps; Chilvers has been busy making a few others as well, all much more reasonably priced

I wish there were some better interviews with him on the subject of his apps, but as long as I'm hanging out and guessing on a message board because I am a huge fan of the subject

Things like 'Bloom' seemed to be all real time synthesis engines; very simple sounds, but with a lot of variability, with notes being triggered instantly in response to touching the touchscreen. But it also leads to a bit of a restricted range of fairly simple sounds. 'Scape' has a lot of guitars & bass lines & things that sound like his older DX7 patches -- so those are obviously not a real time synth engine, but pre-recorded ingredients, loops or files of varying lengths that you turn on and off by dragging those silly icons onto the screen. The background shimmering modal drone I suspect is a synth engine and not pre-recorded, but overall in 'Scape' there's less control over how you trigger these sounds. but the wider variety of them makes for a much more engaging listen and it just sounds a lot more instantly like one of his albums

Listening to the mp3 captures of his 'Generative Music' release -- very un-Eno-like sounds -- sounds like elementary MIDI -- so I'm guessing that was truly a 100% real-time synth engine with no built in DSP, he committed himself to the idea of the project and did without all of his hallmark studio treatments -- he has come a long way since that release

don't know if it'd be possible but i'd LOVE an app version of discreet music, even if the generative nature of it would be less pronounced than scape, bloom, or trope. even minimal variation (and without the fades) would be preferable to just putting the 1975 recording on repeat. i'd rather spend 30 bucks on that than this newer thing.

Often play this 57 minute Eno loop, which is really nice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alo3KFRfLvE

Xpost haha yes I thought it was something of an obscurity until I saw the YouTube had nearly half a million views!

This is an obscurity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJas7Q_yXXY

dharmabumguy11 year ago
I like this version better. his voice has that beachy vibe.

baaaaaaarrrrrffffff
that song is so good