Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

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The Guardian AUGUST 3, 2010 - by Sean Michaels

BRIAN ENO GETS THE WARP FACTOR

Pioneering producer and ambient artist to release new album on celebrated leftfield label.

Brian Eno will release his next album on UK indie label Warp Records. The man who gave Roxy Music their sizzle, Talking Heads their zing and Coldplay their hipster cachet, is reportedly recording a new album with long-time collaborators Leo Abrahams and Jon Hopkins.

Although the Warp release is confirmed on Eno's site, the only substantive reports on the album are on Leo Abrahams's blog. The guitarist and engineer, who co-produced Eno and David Byrne's Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, described the project in a post earlier this month. "There's an album out soon by Brian Eno, with myself and Jon Hopkins," he wrote. "It contains the fruits of several years of jams between the three of us. I've not heard anything quite like it - it sounds 'live' and 'alien' at the same time. Some things have been permitted to survive, which only Brian would have had the courage to let go, and it's so much the better for it."

Although this text has since been removed from Abrahams's site, there are other references in the past year of diary entries. "[I] did a couple of days co-writing with Brian Eno," he wrote last September. "The method of working was that each of us took it in turns to contribute one thing to the track, and every half-hour we started a new one. Sort of like musical speed-dating." In May, Abrahams described a different process: "Jon Hopkins and I had a day in the studio with Brian doing some more jams for an album that is going to be made from bits of our score for The Lovely Bones that never made it into the actual film." Hopkins has previously worked with Four Tet and King Creosote.

Eno's forthcoming album could perhaps feature material intended for The Lovely Bones. It could also be an adaptation of his recent performances under the name Pure Scenius. For these, Eno collaborated with Abrahams and Hopkins, as well as Underworld's Karl Hyde and The Necks, an Australian improv trio. Abrahams has already referred several times to a recording of these performances. "I have been trying to turn Brian's Pure Scenius project... into an album," he wrote last year. "Coming to terms with the sheer amount of material, and figuring out how best to present it, have been the main challenges but it seems that Brian, Karl Hyde and I are gradually circling in on the right approach." In May, Abrahams provided another update: "After much to-ing and fro-ing I hope that we've hit on the final running order [for Pure Scenius] - a representative document of the [Sydney] Opera House concerts that nevertheless works as an album in its own right."

No release dates have been announced.