Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, RDIis an English musician, composer, record producer, singer, writer, and visual artist. He is best known for his pioneering work in ambient and electronic music as well as his influential contributions to rock, worldbeat, chance, and generative music styles. A self-described "non-musician," Eno has advocated a methodology of "theory over practice" throughout his career, and has helped to introduce a variety of unique recording techniques and conceptual approaches into...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionMusic Producer
Date of Birth15 May 1948
The great benefit of computer sequencers is that they remove the issue of skill, and replace it with the issue of judgement
As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.
You feel as if you're not living a full life. Which, of course, is why it's my theory about why so many people who are heavily into computers are also into extreme sports and S&M. It's because their bodies are crying out for some kind of action.
I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy.
The reason conservatives cohere and radicals fight: everyone agrees about fears, no one about visions.
The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another.
When you look back on a historical period of music, it seems so obvious to you what the characteristics of it are, but they're not obvious at the time. So, when I look back at my own work, I could easily write a very convincing sort of account of it that made it look like I had planned it all out from day one and that this led logically to that and then I did this and then that followed quite naturally from that. But that's not how it felt.
I've had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I've often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.
I think we're about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world.
Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven't been made easier technically.
A big ego isn't necessarily a bad thing. A big ego means that you have some confidence in your abilities, really, and that you're prepared to take the risk of trying them out.
Everything is an experiment until it has a deadline. That gives it a destination, context, and a reason.
Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing - 'Oh, let's put that sentence there, let's get rid of this' - have become commonplace in films and music too.
Well, I am a dilettante. It's only in England that dilettantism is considered a bad thing. In other countries it's called interdisciplinary research.