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
communal complete emerges hardly studio work
I hardly ever go into the studio with a work complete in my head. It emerges from communal activity.
actions attention changing confine create dedicated detail easily extremely fact intuitive leaving mind options respond rest software texture tools work
Software options proliferate extremely easily - too easily, in fact - because too many options create tools that can't ever be used intuitively. Intuitive actions confine the detail work to a dedicated part of the brain, leaving the rest of one's mind free to respond with attention and sensitivity to the changing texture of the moment.
active composed computers create design lots team women work
If you want to make computers that really work, create a design team composed only of healthy, active women with lots else to do in their lives, and give them carte blanche.
ambient came computers less music piece present result setting systems until using work
When I first started making ambient music, I was setting up systems using synthesizers that generated pulses more or less randomly. The end result is a kind of music that continuously changes. Of course, until computers came along, all I could actually present of that work was a piece of its output.
territory musician best-work
I'm fascinated by musicians who don't completely understand their territory; that's when you do your best work.
thinking names working-together
Sometimes something intrigues me about particular sounds, how they work together, and I think "Okay, I've found something here; I'm going to take it somewhere." And sometimes just to find a name for that sound, whatever it is, ends up becoming a title of the piece or becoming part of the title.
art hats works-of-art
W]hat makes a work of art ‘good’ for you is not something that is already ‘inside’ it, but something that happens inside you.
work avoidance
I often work by avoidance.
above biggest crime england fine great lots pop rise work
The biggest crime in England is to rise above your station. It's fine to be a pop star. 'Oh, it's great, lots of fun, aren't they sweet, these pop stars! But to think you have anything to say about how the world should work? What arrogance!'
trust
I trust my taste. I trust it completely and I always have done, and I've always thought it isn't that different from everybody else's.
fighting good gospel message quite
The big message of gospel is that you don't have to keep fighting the universe; you can stop, and the universe is quite good to you. There is a loss of ego.
bryan characters choose frank friction history invented knew life looking music people pick stick together wrote
People like Frank Zappa and Bryan Ferry knew we could pick and choose from the history of music, stick things together looking for friction and energy. They were more like playwrights; they invented characters and wrote a life around them.
awkward chord example impressed musically strange technical time
Zappa was very technical and impressed by things that were musically challenging - weird time signatures, strange keys, awkward chord sequences. Zappa was important to me as an example of everything I didn't want to do. I'm very grateful to him, actually.
buy future looking might music original pieces software
In the future, you won't buy artists' works; you'll buy software that makes original pieces of 'their' works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.