Latest Release
- MAY 24, 2024
- 5 Songs
- Another Green World · 1975
- Ambient 1: Music for Airports · 1978
- Everything That Happens Will Happen Today · 2008
- Mixing Colours · 2020
- Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks · 1983
- The Pearl · 1984
- Ambient 1: Music for Airports · 1978
- Secret Life · 2023
- Ambient 1: Music for Airports · 1978
- Secret Life · 2023
Essential Albums
- In the same way that Brian Eno employed pedal steel guitarist Daniel Lanois as the soloist for his 1983 ambient album Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, he turned to pianist Harold Budd to star in 1984’s The Pearl. Though Budd had an otherworldly ability to let his notes exist in thin air without any presupposition of movement, some of the best songs here, like “Late October,” use his notes to give Eno’s abstract backdrops some gentle forward movement. The effect is like watching a steady stream of droplets hit the surface of a pool of water—though that isn’t to say that it's colorless or boring. There are moments of brightness and moments of pure overwhelming darkness. There are passages of optimism and passages of utter despair. Then again, such interpretations may solely be the projections of individual listeners. The goal of Eno’s ambient music was always to solicit the participation of listeners without them knowing it. In that sense, Budd and Eno only provide the weather; the road on which you experience it is entirely of your own making.
- Recorded in 1983 to accompany a documentary about the moon landing, Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks is the most accessible of all of Brian Eno’s ambient works. (Originally titled Apollo, it was later recut and rereleased as For All Mankind.) Though the music at times seems effortless and even plainspoken, it's the result of a tight-knit exchange among three individuals: Eno, his brother Roger, and Canadian producer and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Lanois (whose Toronto studio served as the location for these recordings). The music is at once darker and groovier than Eno’s previous ambient works. It's also incredibly modernistic. To this day, “An Ending (Ascent)” frequently appears on the soundtracks of major movies, while tracks like “Under Stars,” “Drift,” and “Signals” presaged the sound of electronic music in '90s (minus the breakbeats). While artists like Aphex Twin owe a lot to this album, its best songs are unlike anything else in the electronic canon. The final five songs are essential. Led by Lanois’ pedal steel playing, they sound like sublime country-and-western instrumentals floating in zero gravity.
- Though Brian Eno’s Ambient series grew out of a simple purpose—to improve upon the canned music that Eno had endured while traveling through airports—its innovative approach would go on to affect film scoring, electronic music, and pop music in general. For all their evocative power, these four long tracks are remarkably simple in construction. Each is centered on samples of wordless singing and acoustic piano, with rumbling assistance from a synthesizer. Eno wasn't the first to work with tape loops and abstract compositions; avant-garde composers had been doing it for decades. But his Ambient works felt remarkably different. This doesn’t sound like music conceived by fringe musicians; it sounds like a transmission from an unknown future. In many ways, it was—the techniques Eno introduced on this album would be so thoroughly adopted by deejays and film composers that by the '90s, these peculiar sounds were relatively familiar to even casual music listeners. But despite its expansive influence, Ambient 1 retains its unique ability to seduce and frighten new listeners.
- Within the crosscurrents of some of the most innovative moments of his career—including collaborations with David Bowie and his own work in the burgeoning field of ambient music—Brian Eno found time to record Before and After Science, which encapsulated the best of his '70s work while anticipating many trends of the '80s. Synth-pop, electro-funk, New Romanticism—all the keyboard-infused ideas of the impending decade were heralded in “Backwater,” “Spider and I,” and “Kurt’s Rejoinder.” The album's second half delves into more ambient-influenced material, though “Julie With…” and “By This River” are much sweeter and more accessible than anything from the official Ambient volumes. Ever attuned to the latest sounds, Eno uses “King’s Lead Hat” to bridge the punk phenomenon to the earlier dazzling glam of Roxy Music. The result is outer space dance music for earthbound freaks.
- Brian Eno’s first two solo albums, 1974’s Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy, weren’t too far from what he had been playing in Roxy Music just a couple years prior: catchy, glam-infused art rock from which unexpected details (a nonsense phrase, an eerie swatch of backmasking) sprouted as colourfully as the feathers in Eno’s boa. But by the next year’s Another Green World, the properties of his universe had gotten stranger. Straight lines turned soft and bendy; a coppery tarnish crept across his music’s once-bright hues. The shift is right there in the opening “Sky Saw”, whose murky swirl suggests a kind of aquatic dub funk, and “Over Fire Island”, in which Percy Jones’ fretless bass bubbles like magma beneath Eno’s dolefully drizzling synth lead. Eno had toyed with improvisation and stream-of-consciousness lyrics previously, but Another Green World marked a step further into the unknown: It was written and recorded on the spot, and he used his Oblique Strategies cards—an aleatory, free-form brainstorming aid—to point him toward new sounds, methods and tone colours. His invention of ambient music was still a few years away, but you can hear him edging toward it in the contemplative rhythms of “In Dark Trees”—which anticipates the globe-trotting explorations of 1981’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, with David Byrne—and “Sombre Reptiles”, featuring a slinky sound Eno termed “snake guitar”. But for all his experimenting, he didn’t ignore his pop instincts: “St. Elmo’s Fire” is as immediate and indelible a tune as he’s ever written, right down to its vividly surrealistic lyrics.
- Brian Eno’s love for manipulating sound and creating "accidents" between musicians worked marvelously to his advantage on his solo debut. He gathered 16 seemingly incompatible artists (from bands like Roxy Music, Hawkwind, and King Crimson) and directed them with dancing moves and nonsensical lyrics to subliminally guide their playing. Songs like “Baby’s on Fire” and “Needles in the Camel’s Eye”—where brilliant ‘60s pop harmonies, surf guitars, and futuristic sounds blend—are glam-pop gold, sounding hugely catchy despite their improvisational, free-associative beginnings.
- 2023
Artist Playlists
- The glam-star-turned-studio-innovator transformed modern music.
- A career guided by the expressive potential of electronic sound.
- Hear how the musical maverick helped other icons change the game.
- Lean back and relax with some of their mellowest cuts.
- The architect of ambient leaves his mark all over modern music.
- An innovative art-popper who plays well with others.
- 2023
Compilations
Appears On
- New Composers
- Passengers
More To Hear
- A look at his work and philosophy as a producer.
- Conversation with the pioneering musician.
- Annie puts together a stress-relieving playlist.
- On memories, creative tricks, and working with David Byrne.
- Jehnny sits down with the iconic artist and producer.
More To See
About Brian Eno
Brian Eno has enjoyed more musical identities than a cat has lives, but what ties them all together is an inexhaustible spirit of curiosity. Born in Suffolk, England, in 1948, he joined glam rockers Roxy Music in 1971 before striking out on his own with 1974’s Here Come the Warm Jets, the first album in his voluminous solo discography. A born shape-shifter and inveterate collaborator, he has made art rock, electronic music, and even pop, thanks to his production work for acts like U2 and Coldplay, though he is perhaps best known as the artist who codified ambient music, beginning with 1978’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports and continuing across decades of atmospheric, and often generative, albums and installations. Yet while he may return to certain themes or ideas, Eno is loath to dwell on the past. “People are always congratulating me for the album I made 20 years ago,” he told Apple Music. “That sense of always looking backward, it just holds me back.”
- HOMETOWN
- Melton, Suffolk, England
- BORN
- May 15, 1948
- GENRE
- Electronic