Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

International Times AUGUST 3, 2024 - by CJ Mitchell

CREATIVE APPROACHES

Eno: Directed by Gary Hustwit, 2024

Brian Eno has often expressed a reluctance to look back at his old work, preferring to focus on what he's currently working on and thinking about. However, when the form of the conversation might open up new possibilities and insights, Eno seems to welcome the opportunity - Paul Morley's excellent The Thing Is... An Interview from 1992 saw Eno enthusiastically entering into a playful documentary process (find it on YouTube).

The new Eno documentary also takes a distinctive approach to form, with the bulk of the content selected and sequenced anew by algorithm for each screening. This nicely echoes Eno's own interest in generative processes, which he's explored repeatedly across multiple music, light and screen projects.

I saw the film at the Picturehouse Central in London on 19/7/24, with the film date stamped on screen. The content at the start and end of the documentary is fixed; what happens in-between changes at each screening. What I experienced was a fast-moving accumulation of ideas and incidents, at times mini-documentaries on an idea or theme, at other times disconnected juxtapositions which might or might not suggest connections.

The footage throughout the film is not date stamped, and it roams over decades - sometimes splicing together clips of Eno talking about the same concept from different time periods. As the documentary content is principally led by ideas, rather than pulling together a narrative arc of Eno's career or biography, this works well - though if you're less aware of Eno's work, you might struggle to keep up at some points.

New interview material with Eno is prominent, and he appears to be willingly and energetically open to the project. Being familiar with Eno's creative career, I was pleasantly taken aback by how much archival material came up which I hadn't seen before.

Here are my unedited notes from the screening I attended (as the film moves forward quickly, many of points noted below were dealt with succinctly):

Generative processes.
Early influences.
Environment and nature.
Intellect/mind vs rock music/body: how to combine them.
Portsmouth Sinfonia.
Notebooks.
Clothing, androgyne.
Career pressures.
Why do we like music? (Being synchronised; a sense of belonging.)
Oblique Strategies. (Initially developed after first Roxy Music album with Peter Schmidt; two cards selected by Eno and David Bowie, and kept secret from each other, resulted in Moss Garden.)
Eno changes the parameters; Bowie changes the character.
Laurie Anderson selects an Oblique Strategy: "Gardening not Architecture".
Brits 1994 ceremony: award for Best Producer.
Geography and music.
Fela Kuti's layers of brass, connecting to Talking Heads' "cascade of backing vocals" on Remain In Light; U2's Moment Of Surrender, developed from a loping beat; Lee Perry's mixing.
Eno reading statements in a variety of character styles.
Devo's first album. (The band were "spiky"; they had a large box of demos, and pulled one out saying "that's the drum sound we want".)
Cologne Airport, beautifully designed, but playing disco music; resulted in Music for Airports.
Living in NYC. (Listening to radio phone-in shows; My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts grew from an interest in not having a singer and "importing another world".)
Control vs Surrender. (Active strategies for Surrender.)
VCS3 acquired in the early '70s. (The one used to make Discreet Music cost £200; it was later bought at an auction by David Bowie for £16,000; Bowie listened to the album a lot when on cocaine; Discreet Music played at many births.)
Art and the world. (Politics, resources, the environment; we need a new politics.)
Breakfast. (Eno's first hour of the day used to be about receiving input: food for breakfast, emails, the news; now delaying breakfast etc until noon, and "stuff came up from the inside", memories/ideas.)
Upcoming live concerts: Eno is "shitting bricks".
Double pendulum. (Simple input; complex output.)
Omnichord. (Used on Apollo soundtrack.)
What does art do for us? (Feelings; synchronizing; hope for the future.)
Laurie Anderson selects an Oblique Strategy: "Is it Finished?"

There's potential for a full-length documentary on some of the individual points above, but that's for another day and another filmmaker - this documentary delights in its form having energy and momentum. In totality, it added up to an enjoyable and complex set of perspectives - or at least it did the day I saw it.

That said, while the film conveyed a large number of creative approaches and projects, it nonetheless didn't include many other key areas of Eno's work. Those may be found in other iterations of the film, and I've heard that others who have seen the film twice reported significantly different content each time. And as the documentary material being selected from is supposedly still being added to, there's an open-ended set of possibilities for the long-term life of the film. An online version, also led by algorithm variations, is apparently being planned, though not a physical version. I'm eagerly looking forward to my next viewing.