I got interested in the idea of music that could make itself, in a sense, in the mid 1960s really, when I first heard composers like Terry Riley, and when I first started playing with tape recorders.
BRIAN ENOI got interested in the idea of music that could make itself, in a sense, in the mid 1960s really, when I first heard composers like Terry Riley, and when I first started playing with tape recorders.
BRIAN ENOIt’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.
BRIAN ENOLyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.
BRIAN ENOThe great benefit of computer sequencers is that they remove the issue of skill, and replace it with the issue of judgement
BRIAN ENOI think very often producers are really trying to repeat things. When they hear something in the new songs that they recognize as being a bit like something that was a success on a previous record, they’re inclined to encourage that.
BRIAN ENOI hate the thought that someone had picked up one of my song records and was really excited about it, and walks [out of] a record shop with On Land and is disappointed because it isn’t what they wanted.
BRIAN ENOAmbient music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.
BRIAN ENOAmbient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.
BRIAN ENOThe vinyl commands a certain kind of reverence because it’s a big object and quite fragile so you handle it rather carefully, and it’s expensive so you pay attention to how it’s looked after.
BRIAN ENOPeople always focus on people like me who use synthesizers, right, which are explicitly electronic and therefore obvious.
BRIAN ENOThe artists of the past who impressed me were the ones who really focused their work.
BRIAN ENOWhen I was working with Talking Heads what would happen typically is that they would go out and start playing a track, and I would always run the tape.
BRIAN ENOI had an interesting day. I was in the studio with a group of musicians, who shall remain nameless, and I said to them “Our exercise today is not to use ‘undo’ at all. So, there’s no second takes. Or, if you do a second take, you have to do the whole take.
BRIAN ENONot many people bought Velvet Underground LPs, but those who did, started a band.
BRIAN ENOWe have two different ways of working. One is completely unstructured where somebody just starts playing and somebody joins in and then the other person joins in, and something starts to happen. That’s occasionally what happens.
BRIAN ENOSome people are very good at being ‘stars’ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.
BRIAN ENO