What matters in modern music is not the part you can write down, the words and the tune, but the rest – the texture, the atmosphere, the references and associations.
BRIAN ENOWhat matters in modern music is not the part you can write down, the words and the tune, but the rest – the texture, the atmosphere, the references and associations.
BRIAN ENOLaw is always better than war.
BRIAN ENOI’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 ENOThe prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one’s furniture.
BRIAN ENOI’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.
BRIAN ENOIt’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.
BRIAN ENOThe whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.
BRIAN ENOMost of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don’t fit in a very interesting way.
BRIAN ENOEverybody is entertained to death.
BRIAN ENOThe philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.
BRIAN ENOThe 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 ENONot many people bought Velvet Underground LPs, but those who did, started a band.
BRIAN ENOI see TV as a picture medium rather than a narrative medium.
BRIAN ENOSometimes they’re of my own creation, as well – and they’re just as annoying. It’s not only other people’s ear worms that bug me, it’s my own, as well.
BRIAN ENOLyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.
BRIAN ENOIt’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.
BRIAN ENO