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I 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 Eno

If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas.
BRIAN ENO

Grow Up Ideas Strong
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 ENO

Atmosphere Matters References What Writing
I don’t like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones.
BRIAN ENO

Headphones Listening To Music
In fact, quite a lot of what I do has to do with sound texture, and, you can’t notate that. You can’t notate the sound of “St. Elmo’s Fire.” There’s no way of writing that down. That’s because musical notation arose at a time when sound textures were limited.
BRIAN ENO

Mean Musical Sound Writing
I occasionally meet people and they say, ‘Oh, I was born to Discreet Music’… They always have very weird eyes, those people.
BRIAN ENO

Born Eye Occasionally People
I love the sort of ambivalence of this, the ambiguity of something – being, for instance, in a quite busy Mexican restaurant with one of these very gentle tracks playing I remember as being particularly nice.
BRIAN ENO

Mexican Nice Track
If you think of the way a composer or say a pop arranger works – he has an idea and he writes it down, so there’s one transmission loss. Then he gives the score to a group of musicians who interpret that, so there’s another transmission loss.
BRIAN ENO

Down Loss Thinking Transmission Writing
It’s easy to forget that your best work is done when your attention is fully engaged.
BRIAN ENO

Attention Done Forget
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
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.
BRIAN ENO

Afterward Firsts Lines Sound
If something is good, you must torture it mercilessly until it is either dead or great.
BRIAN ENO

Great Mercilessly Torture
Cultural objects have no notable identity outside of that which we confer upon them. Their value is entirely a product of the interaction that we have with them.
BRIAN ENO

Identity InterAction Notable
I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.
BRIAN ENO

Guitar Pounds Years
Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences.
BRIAN ENO

Art Philosophical Photography
Be the first to not do what nobody has ever thought of not doing before.
BRIAN ENO

Doing Firsts Nobody
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

I 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.

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I 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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