Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK
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INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Mojo JUNE 2007 - by Max Richter

BRIAN ENO: DISCREET MUSIC

Baroque chamber music reimagined for electronic doo-hickery.

"I found it in Andy's Records in Bedford in the mid-'80s. I'd have been, fourteen, fifteen. The cover was really intriguing, especially all that theorising on the back. I was listening to Kraftwerk at the time and building old synths with soldering irons and I liked the idea of this machine-made music but I wasn't ready for how extreme it was. It was like nothing I'd ever heard before. You keep thinking, OK, something's going to happen now, and it doesn't. Nothing happens, and it goes on not happening, one enormous intro that never kicks in. I probably played it far too loud at first. It can be quite epic when it's loud. It has real grandeur. It goes back to Erik Satie's idea of furniture music but it also starts to creep into your consciousness because it's so beautiful, with that lovely slightly-out-of-tune analogue tape thing going on. It's a formative record for a lot of people. Eno laid down these markers and everyone was drawn along in his wake. It put the performer in the same boat as the audience. The performer is pushing go and then they're listening with you, waiting to hear what happens, the start of all that democratic hands-off automated music of the '80s and '90s. I think Eno is influential because he makes 'ideasy' music - but the results are beautiful."

Without this, no... Berlin Bowie, Talking Heads, modern electronic music.


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