Brian Eno has unveiled a new Sonos Radio station called The Lighthouse. Available via Sonos Radio’s ad-free HD audio tier, the channel is broadcasting classic songs from the ambient legend’s career alongside previously unreleased music and more.
Featuring hundreds of unheard tracks — the earliest of which is from 1990, notes Eno — The Lighthouse will serve as a “living collection” where Eno will continue to release selections from both past and new musical projects directly to fans across the world.
“New pieces will be entering the mix and some of that will go back even further,” explained Eno in a press release. “You will be listening to a sequence of tracks which will be randomly generated, chosen by chance so there is the possibility of odd, I hope exciting collisions — things that are very slow next to things that are very fast next to things that have no tempo, no pulse at all.”
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Over the coming months, Eno will host a series of three programs airing on The Lighthouse, starting with Program 1, where he discusses the unreleased material and why he’s finally decided to share part of his archive with the world. Program 1 is available starting today on The Lighthouse on Sonos Radio HD and is free to all Sonos customers through the in-app Sonos Sound System archive. It’s also streaming below via Mixcloud.
Of course, Eno is a notorious music geek with an immaculate ear for production, transitions, and clarity. There’s bound to be a wide range of quality when it comes to these tracks, and he’s already stressing about how things will seamlessly transition from one song to the next. At the very least, he seems ready to crack some jokes about it at his own expense:
“One of the issues that I faced in doing this is whether to bother about differences of quality. Some of these things were made quite a long time ago and they even involve tape. They precede the digital era. Now of course, with tape, there’s always noise. People like noise, I’ve discovered. In fact, I sometimes add it to things because it’s sort of calming. That’s what it is, the re-introduction of imperfection. Anyway, I’m just saying this to give myself a good alibi for the fact that quite a few of these tracks will have let’s say variable sound quality.”
Last November, Eno released Film Music 1976-2020, his stacked compilation album that includes his first-ever music video for “Decline and Fall”. He also contributed to Marianne Faithfull’s new spoken word album and performed at the Live for Gaza livestream back in April.
