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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.

Brian Eno

Given the chance, i’ll die like a baby, on some faraway beach, when the season’s over.
BRIAN ENO

Baby Beach Chance
Once I started working with generative music in the 1970s, I was flirting with ideas of making a kind of endless music – not like a record that you’d put on, which would play for a while and finish.
BRIAN ENO

Flirting Ideas Play
I think the other thing that’s important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time.
BRIAN ENO

Differences Musician Playing Thinking Watching
If something is good, you must torture it mercilessly until it is either dead or great.
BRIAN ENO

Great Mercilessly Torture
Some people are very good at being ‘stars’ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.
BRIAN ENO

People Stars Suits
I hate the rock music tradition. I can’t bear it!
BRIAN ENO

Bears Hate Rocks
I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.
BRIAN ENO

Best Musician Territory Work
People do dismiss ambient music, don’t they? They call it ‘easy listening,’ as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.
BRIAN ENO

Easy Listening People
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 ENO

Certain Messages Rich
I want to rethink surrender as an active verb.
BRIAN ENO

Surrender Verbs Want
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.
BRIAN ENO

Although Around Suggests Tecture Way
The biology of purpose keeps my nose above the surface.
BRIAN ENO

Biology Noses Purpose
Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.
BRIAN ENO

Action Demand Reality
I don’t live in the past at all; I’m always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.
BRIAN ENO

Life Mind Past Singular
The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.
BRIAN ENO

Firsts Intrusion Occasional
Culture is everything you don’t have to do.
BRIAN ENO

Culture Everything Happen
Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do & do the last thing on the list.
BRIAN ENO

Last might Statistics
For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.
BRIAN ENO

Combination Form Kind Magic
Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You’re glad someone’s done it but you don’t necessarily want to listen to it.
BRIAN ENO

Avant Done Garde Research
My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.
BRIAN ENO

Peculiar Process Writing
At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.
BRIAN ENO

Ambition Art Painting
I wanted to use the studio like a microscope for sound, which is what good engineers do.
BRIAN ENO

Microscopes Sound Use
I’ve always thought that art is a lie, an interesting lie. And I’ll sort of listen to the “lie” and try to imagine the world which makes that lie true…what that world must be like, and what would have to happen for us to get from this world to that one.
BRIAN ENO

Art Imagine Interesting Lying
I’m struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity.
BRIAN ENO

Computer Driven Technology
One often makes music to supplement one’s world.
BRIAN ENO

Creativity Supplement World
I think the idea that people walk around to music is very interesting. They are actually creating the soundtrack to their lives as they walk around to it.
BRIAN ENO

Creating Ideas Thinking
Think inside the work – outside the work
BRIAN ENO

Inside Thinking Work

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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