Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

MORE DARK THAN SHARK - FEATURE

BETTE A. & BRIAN ENO: SLOW STORIES

Combining narrative, music, and painting, Slow Stories is a collaboration between Bette Adriaanse and Brian Eno, based on Bette's short story collection of the same name. For the accompanying vinyl record, Eno's ambient compositions accompany her voice as she tells two stories from the book - The Endless House and The Other Village - while together the artists painted individual canvases bundled with each book and record.

The stories take place in imaginary towns and villages - places from pasts that never happened and futures that will never occur, but somehow point back at our world. These other worlds exist without much background or context, with Brian's atmospheric music as the landscape that surrounds them.

Brian's only instruction to Bette as they started recording was: "Slow, slower, even slower, yes, more slow." Between sentences, there is sometimes half a minute of Brian's music - space for the listener to create a mental landscape around the story developments, and become the third artist in the work. As the artists themselves note: "When everything is fast, fragmented and designed to grasp your attention, attuning to one very slow story can be a radical act. This record is a guided daydream, a space for rest and imagination."

For both artists, slowness functions not only as a stylistic decision but as an act of resistance. Giving thirty minutes of your attention to something that is not urgent, not loud, and not passive, is rare. Putting on a record is a physical gesture to enter that mode, engage with art and, maybe, your inner world.

The visual works accompanying Slow Stories extend this collaboration into a shared visual world. The paintings by Bette and Brian depict immersive, dreamlike terrains - birch forests with graffiti, lunar mountain ranges, floating eggs, geometric colour fields. Like the stories, the paintings leave room for the viewer to enter and make the work their own.

Slow Stories will be released exclusively by Unnamed Press as a strictly limited edition of 444 bundles, each containing a hardcover book, a vinyl record, and unique and numbered hand-painted panel, signed by both artists. The artist's proceeds of the sale of the bundle will go to their charities; The Heroines! Movement, a global storytelling movement around women role models, co-founded by Bette, and Earth Percent, a charity that channels funds from the music industry to organizations that do the most impactful work around the climate emergency, co-founded by Brian.

Brian Eno and Bette A. previously collaborated for their 2024 book What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory.

Each bundle includes:

• Slow Stories by Bette A. (jacketed hardcover, 176 pages)
• 2 Slow Stories vinyl record (12-inch white vinyl with gatefold jacket featuring original music from Brian Eno and narration by Bette A.)
• Original painting on canvas board by Bette A. and Brian Eno, numbered and signed by both artists (20cm × 20cm)

The project was announced for presale on Sunday, November 30, 2025, with bundles shipping ahead of the book's trade edition publication on March 3, 2026.

The bundle is not available digitally.

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