Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

New York Times JULY 19, 2024 - by Lindsay Zoladz

10 OUTSTANDING BRIAN ENO PRODUCTIONS

Inspired by an ever-changing new documentary about the musician and producer, listen to songs he helped construct by David Bowie, Talking Heads, U2 and more.

Dear listeners,

This week, I saw Gary Hustwit's lively documentary Eno, about the musician, artist and producer Brian Eno. I'd recommend it to you - but it's highly unlikely that you will see the same version of the film that I did.

Formally inspired by Eno's longtime fascination with generative art, Eno is essentially created anew each time it's screened. A computer program called Brain One (a playful anagram of "Brian Eno") selects from thirty hours of interviews with Eno that Hustwit conducted and five hundred hours of archival footage, fitting it into a structure that lasts about ninety minutes. According to the Brain One programmer Brendan Dawes, fifty-two quintillion possible versions of the movie exist. I did not even know, before seeing this film, that "fifty-two quintillion" was a real number.

Some of my favorite parts of the version of Eno that I saw concerned his work as a producer. He's certainly been a prolific one, working with traditional rock bands (Coldplay, U2), avant-garde composers (Harold Budd) and a whole lot of legends in between (David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads). Eno is neither a classically trained musician nor a conventional technician, and his role in the studio can be hard to define - maddeningly so, to certain record-label executives over the years. Admitted Bowie, in a clip from the film I saw, "I don't really know what he does." He meant that as a compliment.

The most interesting parts of Eno, for me, shed a little more light on that elusive "what." As a producer, he is equal parts agitator and sage. When he and Bowie were hitting a wall during the making of Bowie's 1977 landmark "Heroes", they each pulled cards from Eno's deck of Oblique Strategies cards, which provide creative jumping-off points; the result was the hypnotic ambient composition Moss Garden. When Bono was struggling to complete a soon-to-be classic U2 track, Eno showed patience. When Talking Heads were looking for a new musical direction before making Remain In Light, Eno played them one of his all-time favorite musicians, Fela Kuti. The rest - in so many clips of Eno in the studio - is history.

Inspired by Eno, today's playlist is a collection of songs produced by the man himself. Eno the Producer is merely one side of this multifaceted artist, but I appreciated that the sense of multiplicity baked into the structure of Eno speaks to how difficult it is to define him with a single identity. There are probably nearly fifty-two quintillion possible Brian Eno playlists I could have made - Jon Pareles made another in 2020, selecting fifteen of Eno's best ambient compositions - but here is the one I chose. It flows well from start to finish, but if you're feeling inspired by Hustwit's generative approach, you're certainly welcome to put it on shuffle.

Line my eyes and call me pretty,

Lindsay

• • •

1. David Bowie: Art Decade - Let's set the mood with some classic Eno-assisted ambience. Eno played a crucial part in the creation of David Bowie's Berlin trilogy in the late 1970s, beginning with the artfully evocative 1977 release Low. Eno's influence is particularly strong on the album's second side, which helped Bowie usher in a new era of experimentalism with abstractions like the haunting Warszawa and this otherworldly instrumental piece, which pairs synthesized tones with slashes of a groaning cello.

2. U2: Pride (In The Name of Love) - Some of the most striking archival footage in the version of Eno that I saw captured U2 in the studio at work on this familiar tune from The Unforgettable Fire, the first of many U2 albums co-produced by Eno and his frequent collaborator Daniel Lanois. In a scene where the track is finished save for Bono's vocals, it's remarkable to watch Eno talk him through his visible frustration with the song, coaxing the singer to belt out some nonsense words as place holders for the yet-to-be-written lyrics that so many people would soon know by heart.

3. Talking Heads: The Great Curve - The influence of Fela Kuti - one of Eno's musical heroes - is all over Remain In Light, the third, final and greatest album Eno made with Talking Heads. One memorable vignette in the version of Eno that I saw finds the artist in his current studio, listening to this song at a high volume and rapturously singing along to just one of the many vocal melodies woven through its polyrhythmic composition.

4. Devo: Jocko Homo - While producing Devo's freewheeling 1978 debut album, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, Eno and the American art-rock band reportedly did not get along very harmoniously. (Bowie, who had initially expressed interest in producing the album himself, also contributed to the album's production and mixing.) In spite of their creative differences, the album's unconventional, try-anything spirit still sounds convincingly Eno-ian.

5. James: Laid - Yep, Brian Eno produced this song! Though it was destined to become the Britpop band's biggest hit in the United States and the official theme song of the American Pie franchise, the members of James apparently thought it was a B-side at best until Eno convinced them that it was a single.

6. Coldplay: Lost! - "He comes up with very strange ideas and crazy noises," Coldplay's Chris Martin once said of Eno, who worked with the band on Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends and its follow-up Mylo Xyloto. "And they always eventually sound irreplaceable."

7. Harold Budd: Juno - Eno produced The Pavilion Of Dreams, the ethereal 1978 debut album by the minimalist composer Harold Budd, and the pair would go on to make two great collaborative albums in the '80s, Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror and The Pearl. Eno once described Budd, who died in 2020, as "a great abstract painter trapped in the body of a musician."

8. U2: Zoo Station - Eno has had a long and fruitful relationship with U2, for whom he has helped produce six albums. The peak of their collaboration, in my opinion, is the 1991 LP Achtung Baby, which added new textures and a spirit of sonic adventurousness to the band's soaring sound.

9. Peter Gabriel: Road To Joy (Bright-Side Mix) - Among Eno's most recent work as a co-producer is this exuberant track - full of glistening surfaces and interlocking rhythmic elements - from Peter Gabriel's long-gestating 2023 album I/O.

10. David Bowie: "Heroes" - Finally, some of Eno's finest moments came on "Heroes", the second of Bowie's two 1977 masterpieces. Tony Visconti produced it with Bowie; Eno co-wrote the timeless title track and was one of the principal architects of its stirring atmosphere, feeding Robert Fripp's guitar through an EMS Synthi and manipulating its undulations as he played that wailing riff.