Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Beat Instrumental JANUARY 1979 - by Peter Douglas

BRIAN ENO: MUSIC FOR FILMS

Car chases and gun fights? James Bond skiing down a glacier pursued by seventy armed guards with machine guns? The incredible journey, filmed by Disney, of two unlikely but loveable companions (a snake and an orangutan) across the wastes of northern Canada?

Er, no. Brian doesn't go to see films like that. Exactly what sort of films he does go to see, however, is something of a mystery. European rather than American, I should say. The scenes he conjures up in the mind's eye are wild, eerie landscapes, rolling fog, half-formed shapes looming out of the darkness and then disappearing; or perhaps the mating ritual of two bird-eating spiders observed by moonlight in some jungle clearing; or else the strange fantasies of an astronaut stranded, without food or oxygen, on a planet somewhere in the Andromeda Nebula (Yes yes, very picturesque - get on with the review... Ed).

Some of the music on this album has apparently been used on film soundtracks, but the majority is made up of "fragments of my recorded work over the last two or three years." Eno's work with David Bowie is recalled; much of it is similar to the kind of music used for The Man Who Fell To Earth, and to the synthesizer pieces on Low and "Heroes". The mood is gloomy, full of expectant hushes and small, uncertain noises. It's possible to see what he had in mind with some of the titles: Inland Sea, Events In Dense Fog, Patrolling Wire Borders, etc. Others are more enigmatic: M386, Two Rapid Formations, Alternative 3. Make of them what you will.

There are no less than eighteen tracks on the album, all making up in atmosphere what they lack in length. It isn't the sort of music to put on at a party, unless your intention is to make everyone feel uncomfortable. Eno is interested in Muzak - music which is not listened to, but which provides an unconscious background to whatever is going on. Hence, bright, cheerful Muzak in supermarkets is designed to defuse the housewife's anxiety about spending money; in factories it is designed to patter along briskly in order to make people work harder; over the PA system after football matches it is intended to soothe aggression.

In other words, music can be used to manipulate people without them realising it. So why do they play Tubular Bells in lifts? What are they trying to do to us? Exit screaming, escorted by men in white coats).