Brian Eno - C or D?

I think it's mostly just weird talking with the occasional bed of droney ambient stuff. Been a while.

Tape Op just published a good interview with Brian Eno done back in 2011. I thought it was worth a listen.

https://www.podcastchart.com/podcasts/tape-op-podcast/episodes/episode-1-brian-eno/pop

I've been listening to Reflection nearly every night for the past month

In an interview Eno mentions that the app takes into account time of day, time of year, and temperature as variables in the composition, which I don't think has been mentioned anywhere else - so you might want to throw it on in the morning

I had no idea that Brian Eno produced the first Devo album until today! I learn something new ALL the time.

mark mothersbaugh has mentioned in interviews the existence of a jam session tape with devo, eno, bowie, and holger czukay. that would be interesting.

they've said in interviews that he didn't do that much on the LP. That he had ideas but they had been playing for 6 years already and had a very good idea about what the album should sound like.

Eno himself has said he barely did anything. I think it (along with the aborted Television sessions and No New York) was Eno trying to figure out how to be a producer, rather than just the smart guy with a suitcase synth adding gurgles and stuff, and also how to ingratiate himself into punk/new wave; weirdly, the more intransigent Fripp had an easier time with the same transition. It's not until Talking Heads that Eno really steps into his own as a producer, as such, and even that is more or less still collaborative; the fallout between him and Byrne after Remain in Light was sparked by the feeling that he had become a full-fledged fifth member. When U2 came to him for Unforgettable Fire, Eno first demurred and referred them to Lanois (himself a relative unknown) as the primary producer, but of course Eno stuck around to help.

Eno said he had Jerry Casale more or less standing looking over his shoulder at the mixing desk, saying "What are you doing that for?" I'm sure I read JC admit that Eno had a lot of great ideas that they were too uptight to let him carry out.

For sure, if you look at the Marquee Moon thread, you have Richard Lloyd claiming Eno wanted to do shit like glue the amps to the ceiling. Even the first Eno/Talking Heads records is not terribly radical. Things get weird with Fear of Music and Remain In Light, no doubt when Eno got more confident and started to impose his ideas.

well, the album was their first album, and they knew perfectly well what they wanted it to sound like. i will give eno credit as a producer because it does sound like that - it's a much better produced album than, say, "talking heads 77". if eno had come on on "duty now for the future" or, even more interestingly, "freedom of choice", well, the results would probably have been very different.

i don't think i've ever actually listened to the differences between those early self-produced devo singles and the same songs on the first album. did devo ask for eno? obviously signing with a big label the label is going to want a real producer. which i guess is funny because eno wasn't a "real" producer.

i don't know how i never knew that. i never listened to devo much.

bowie was an early booster and played a big role in getting them record company interest, i seem to recall. eno got involved through bowie.

Didn't Bowie have something to do with the album, too?

In 1977, David Bowie and Iggy Pop received a tape of Devo demonstration songs from the wife of Michael Aylward, guitarist in another Akron, Ohio band, Tin Huey.[6] Both Pop and Bowie, as well as Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, expressed interest in producing Devo's first release.[7] At Devo's New York debut show in 1977, Bowie proclaimed that "this is the band of the future, I'm going to produce them in Tokyo this winter."[7] Eventually, Eno was chosen to produce the album at Conny Plank's studio located near Cologne, Germany.[7] Bowie was busy with filming Just a Gigolo but helped Eno produce the record during weekends.[7][8]

probably didn't even need eno if conny plank was there. devo and conny could handle it. did devo ever say anything about working with conny?

devo could've done it themselves. There's a whole big back-story that I don't remember where there were some labels fighting over them. Richard Branson really wanted to sign them but his plan was to have them back Johnny Rotten.

Scott...if you really haven't listed to much devo, that's kind of crazy.

The Devo record was probably not unlike The Stooges a decade earlier with John Cale, "get that English weirdo to produce those guys I don't get it at all but some people seem to like what they are doing and we might be able to sell a few to the college crowd."

"Scott...if you really haven't listed to much devo, that's kind of crazy."

I know. It is. I don't know what to say. All their albums pass through my hands sooner or later year in and year out. I don't think i've ever listened to an entire album. I have weird things like that. I don't know if i've ever listened to an entire Ramones album except for the first one.

I've heard all these people a lot though...osmosis.

Cale is not English

Cale added that one note piano to I Wanna Be Your Dog, which is a bigger contribution to the Stooges than anything Eno added to the Devo album.

Eno added howler monkeys!

Ha, didn't make the song!

We're both wrong - it wasn't actual monkeys but a Javanese "monkey chant" & it is on the record, pretty much the only idea of his they allowed him to use

ramayana monkey chant is on the first devo album? i never pegged that

went looking for more info on that monkey chant and stumbled upon this great invisible jukebox feature with mike mothersbaugh. there's some more details on what was used from eno's input and lots of other great info on other stuff:
http://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/interviews/mark-mothersbaugh-unedited-transcript

Cale is not English

― wins

these guys are from england and who gives a shit

Really great interview: http://pitchfork.com/features/interview/10023-a-conversation-with-brian-eno-about-ambient-music/

Reintroduced to this great deep cut:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl1p-xj3nwc

haha what

Steve Jones on guitar

amazing, great find

hadn't seen Sherberne's interview... that is kind of the talk I'd been waiting for on the album. not that it even came close to exhausting the topic.

Interesting the album version is an edit of two different captures. I was wondering if he'd just run it a bunch of times to get something with such a poised opening and closing, or if he hacked it. It's grown on me a lot as I occasionally played it over the last two months. Have to spring for the app.

Beware that the app is so playback only. Read one interview that made clear that this isn't like the others in that it lacks a "conductor" mode.

feel like this has been discussed before

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/how_brian_eno_managed_to_piss_in_marcel_duchamp

And I thought, how ridiculous that this particular … pisspot gets carried around the world at—it costs about thirty or forty thousand dollars to insure it every time it travels. I thought, How absolutely stupid, the whole message of this work is, “You can take any object and put it in a gallery.” It doesn’t have to be that one, that’s losing the point completely. And this seemed to me an example of the art world once again covering itself by drawing a fence around that thing, saying, “This isn’t just any ordinary piss pot, this is THE one, the special one, the one that is worth all this money.”

So I thought, somebody should piss in that thing, to sort of bring it back to where it belonged. So I decided it had to be me.

Yeah, from his diary. Year with Swollen Appendices.

Eno likely wasn't aware of this, and it may be, like the pissing tale, also of slightly doubtful veracity, or at least lacking proof, but it would be even more apt if Duchamp had indeed half-inched the idea wholesale from Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Which reminds me that someone half-inched my copy of AYWSA.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/was-marcel-duchamps-fountain-actually-created-by-a-long-forgotten-pioneering-feminist-10491953.html

Was there any Eno in Trainspotting 2?

So this dropped this week:

https://soundcloud.com/adultswimsingles/brian-eno-with-kevin-shields

Pitchfork has some commentary:

Brian Eno Kevin Shields
“Only Once Away My Son”
When word surfaced of a collaboration between Brian Eno and Kevin Shields, a few questions sprang to mind. First: What took them so long? The ambient-music guru and the My Bloody Valentine mastermind have immersed themselves in neighboring oceans of sound for decades; Eno even worked with MBV’s fellow shoegaze godheads Slowdive on Souvlaki, their iconic 1993 album. And if anyone could cure Shields of his interminable perfectionism, it’s the inventor of the quintessential tool for breaking musicians’ creative block, the “Oblique Strategies” card set. Next question: What type of collaboration would this be?

Eno’s most famous partnerships (David Bowie’s Low, U2’s Unforgettable Fire) filtered his collaborators’ songwriting visions through his erudite lens, but “Only Once Away My Son” is more a meeting of the minds, like his work with David Byrne or Robert Fripp. For nine-odd mind-bending minutes, what you’d guess are Shields’ sub-aquatic drones meld with what are presumably Eno’s gamelan-like chimes, contorting themselves into breathtaking shapes. With its decaying hums, low-end rumblings, and coruscating clatter, the instrumental track may not be groundbreaking for them, but it’s familiar in the best way. The biggest question: Is this good? Unequivocally, yes.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/brian-eno-kevin-shields-only-once-away-my-son/

being discussed (and raved about) on the "return of MBV" thread

dunno if this has been discussed on another eno thread but this collab with Tom Rogerson is sounding good too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SroYdHuv9z8&feature=youtu.be

Two 3 min. tracks on Spotify thus far. Are they part of a larger collaboration?

The Rogerson? yeah ...

Dead Oceans is happy to welcome the pianist Tom Rogerson to the roster. His elegant and evocative debut, Finding Shore, a 13-track collaboration that began after Rogerson met Brian Eno outside the restroom after a gig, arrives December 8th.

Finding Shore is the sound of Rogerson distilling the essence of what he does after a protracted musical journey from childhood until now. He took the traditional route of music lessons and learning notation before starting composing "properly.” As a 17-year-old he had the odd contrast of being taught by the composer Harrison Birtwistle but also working as lounge pianist in a dilapidated hotel in Peterborough.
He spent some time in New York playing jazz, recording with Reid Anderson of The Bad Plus, and had a successful career with post-rock group Three Trapped Tigers, yet however enjoyable that experience was, he admits it was "definitely a diversionary tactic." Everything seemed to be an escape from the classical world or, as Rogerson himself puts it, "falling out of my ivory tower very slowly.”

Upon meeting Eno, the pair didn't speak about music at all, but bonded over their roots in the Suffolk town of Woodbridge, located on the strange flat landscape of Eastern England, all heathland, military testing sites, estuary mud and the site of the ancient Sutton Hoo ship burial.

Eno's influence on Finding Shore began by enabling Rogerson to overcome his fear of committing any one piece to its own album. As a way to open Rogerson up, Eno suggested they try experimenting with the Piano Bar, an obscure piece of Moog gear that works by using infrared beams focussed on each piano key; these are then broken as the keys are played, transforming the piano's note into a midi signal that can then be used to trigger or generate new, digital sound. As Rogerson improvised at the piano, Eno improvised with the midi signal to create a unique piece of music.

The chance meeting with Eno and subsequent conversation about the Suffolk landscape did find its way into Finding Shore. "I do totally hear it, I'll listen and think 'oh that sounds like the bells at Woodbridge, that's the birds, the wind rustling in the reeds.'” I think it permeates my music, and Brian's ambient records. That 'is it organic or is it electronic thing' is so interesting.”

Hm! When was the moog piano bar developed? I met a new age musician recently who was describing strange things he used to do with a piece of moog gear attached to his piano (in the 70s) and I think that must have been what he was referring to.

Dead Oceans is happy to welcome the pianist Tom Rogerson to the roster. His elegant and evocative debut, Finding Shore, a 13-track collaboration that began after Rogerson met Brian Eno outside the restroom after a gig, arrives December 8th.

haha the bear one is great

lol rong thread sry

Too bad; I was really looking forward to hearing about Eno’s collab with a bear.

still gets me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWvSG5J74yw

Lost 24 minute Warm Jets documentary up on YT now:

https://youtu.be/7-vJ1sNDjX4

Full collaboration with Tom Rogerson on Spotify as well.

!!!!

This is incredible

A different version of "Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch" can be heard at 1:50

omg

this is so great
thank you for posting