Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.
BRIAN ENOAmerican television really is pathetic.
More Brian Eno Quotes
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The problem with computers is that there is not enough Africa in them.
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I often work by avoidance.
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If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn’t bother to find new ones.
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I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.
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Culture is everything you don’t have to do.
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The texture suggests some kind of mood, and the mood suggests some kind of lyric. That’s like working in reverse, often quite the other way around, from sound to song. Although often they stop before they get to the song stage.
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I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there.
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People in the arts often want to aim for the biggest, most obvious target, and hit it smack in the bull’s eye.
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For me it’s always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it’s always sound first and then the line afterwards.
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Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.
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Think inside the work – outside the work
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So, I try to make signs, graphically and visually, to say to people “Okay, this is this department of my work and this is this other department of my work.” And of course I’m very pleased if people like all of them, but I don’t want them to feel deceived at any point.
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In England and Europe, we have this huge music called ambient – ambient techno, ambient house, ambient hip-hop, ambient this, ambient that.
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The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.
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People who are very confident in themselves aren’t hurt by criticism. They make use of it.
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When you look back on a historical period of music, it seems so obvious to you what the characteristics of it are, but they’re not obvious at the time. So, when I look back at my own work.
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Rationality is what we do to organize the world, to make it possible to predict. Art is the rehearsal for the inapplicability and failure of that process.
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I think that there’s something that I still like about the fact of a package, like the latest report from somebody. “Okay, this is what they’re up to now; this is what they’re doing; who’s working with them?
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Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!
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The artists of the past who impressed me were the ones who really focused their work.
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It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.
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A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.
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I despise computers in many ways. I think they’re hopelessly underevolved and overrated.
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The seven white notes on the piano – each section of the piece (there are 12 sections) is five of those seven white notes.
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The tools are evolving, and people’s interests are evolving as well. So, suddenly people like to hear bands, people like Devendra Banhart or the xx, bands that make a kind of virtue of sloppiness.
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Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‘Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this’ – have become commonplace in films and music too.
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