brian eno
Hear Brian Eno’s Mesmerizing New Song ‘We Let It In’ Featuring His Daughter
Brian Eno has unveiled “We Let It In,” the second track from his forthcoming album FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE. Featuring vocals by his daughter Darla Eno, the song is accompanied by lyric video displaying Eno’s granddaughter Anya’s handwriting. [embedded content][embedded content] The ambient track is like a soothing meditation, with Eno’s deep croon set atop Darla’s spoken-word vocals. “It’s become a different personality I can sing from,” Eno says of singing in a lower register. “I don’t want to sing like a teenager. It can be melancholy — a bit regretful. As for writing songs again, it’s more landscapes, but this time with humans in them.” The “We Let It In” video was directed by Eno and London-based artist Orfeo Tagiuri. The climate-change-inspired FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE will be released ...
The 50 Best Albums of 1982
Looking back at 1982 in music, the headline is obvious: Thriller Sells A Bajillion Copies, Becomes World’s Biggest Album. But is it the year’s best album? Funny enough, Michael Jackson‘s sixth LP hardly even affected the charts that year — it snuck out in late November, just as Men at Work’s 1981 blockbuster, Business as Usual, began its commercial stranglehold in the U.S. Only one record on our list, Fleetwood Mac‘s chart-targeted Tusk follow-up, Mirage, hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200. (Doesn’t it seem weird, looking back, that Prince‘s 1999 peaked at No. 9?) Lots of fascinating shit was happening in 1982, and you didn’t always find it on the radio. On our list, we included everything from early hip-hop (Grandmaster Flash) to horror-punk (Misfits) to lo-fi synth-pop (Solid Space). Revisit...
Brian Eno Returns to Singing on New Album FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE
Brian Eno hasn’t sang much on his own albums for the better part of the last two decades, but that will change on FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE, a new project due Oct. 14 from Verve/UMC. The ambient music legend offers ghostly, processed vocals on the album’s first single, “There Were Bells,” which was written last year in tandem with his brother Roger for a performance at The Acropolis. [embedded content][embedded content] “Like everybody else — except, apparently, most of the governments of the world — I’ve been thinking about our narrowing, precarious future, and this music grew out of those thoughts,” Eno says. “Perhaps it’s more accurate to say I’ve been feeling about it … and the music grew out of the feelings. Those of us who share those feelings are aware that the world is changing at a sup...
Creative Studio Creates Galactic Visual Representation of Electronic Music History
A U.K. creative studio has designed a unique vision of the etymology of modern electronic music. The Manchester-based studio, Dorothy, published “The Electronic System and The Alternative System,” two art prints that reimagine landmarks of our universe as prominent figures in the history of electronic and alternative music respectively. The electronic music-focused print features influential artists such as Daft Punk and the founder of ambient music, Brian Eno. The structure of the art not only highlights the genre’s most impactful contributors, but also draws attention to the influences that likely inspired each artist. Naturally, legendary German electronic outfit Kraftwerk are positioned firmly at the center of the universe, the sun. After forming in 1969, K...
Brian Eno Develops Limited Batch of Mesmerizing, Color-Changing Turntables
Brian Eno is an ambient artist in every sense of the word, from his role in first coining the term “ambient music” to creating ethereal lighting installations, which yield an infinite combination of kaleidoscopic perspectives. His latest venture could be seen as a convergence of these realms of expertise. Collaborating with London’s Paul Stolper Gallery, Eno has developed a limited run of psychedelic, color-changing turntables. The turntable cycles through an array of gentle hues and has lighting mechanisms included in both the base and platter of the unit, leading to a free flow of unique LED color combinations. “The light from it was tangible as if caught in a cloud of vapor,” Eno explained upon first seeing the finished product. “We sat...
Harold Budd, Avante-Garde Composer, Dies at 84
Composer Harold Budd died on Tuesday at the age of 84, as confirmed by his musical collaborator, Cocteau Twins co-founder Robin Guthrie. The innovative composer, poet, and pianist famously developed the “soft pedal” style of playing piano and is most known for his work with artists like Guthrie and Brian Eno of Roxy Music. The native Angeleno was born on May 24, 1936 and spent the first half of his life in academia, receiving a graduate degree from the University of Southern California before joining the military as a drummer and then venturing into a career as a professor. By the mid-1970s, Budd had found a new calling as a musician and an unparalleled songwriter, combining jazz and new age music with his minimalist approach to compose memorable tracks both with artists as well as f...
The 25 Best Soundtrack Albums of the 1990s
In the 1980s, music and film collided for cross-promotional blockbusters both transcendent (Purple Rain) and transcendently cheesy (Footloose). In the ‘90s, soundtracks continued to sell in the millions, capturing cultural moments like the Seattle grunge of Singles or the Britpop and electronica of Trainspotting. Auteurs like Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson reached deep into their record collections to set the mood while movies like Above the Rim and Menace II Society pioneered the concept of soundtracks as hip-hop mixtapes. A great soundtrack can propel an unsuccessful single, like Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose,” to the top of the charts, or revive a decades-old hit, like Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It can also push a cult singer-songwriter like Elliott Smith or Aimee Mann to an Oscar perf...
