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 ENOOnce 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 ENOThe idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.
BRIAN ENOThe biology of purpose keeps my nose above the surface.
BRIAN ENOIf 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 ENOSo, 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.
BRIAN ENOCulture is everything you don’t have to do.
BRIAN ENOI 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 ENOWhen 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 ENOI don’t like celebrity programmes – but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.
BRIAN ENOOne of the great breakthroughs of evolution theory is that you start with simple things and they will grow into complexity.
BRIAN ENOI’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 ENOPut out as much as you can. It doesn’t do anything sitting on a shelf.
BRIAN ENOWhen I’ve finally got the title, I think, “Okay, yes, now I know where we are. Now I know what it is. Fine, that must be finished or nearly finished.
BRIAN ENOPeople who are very confident in themselves aren’t hurt by criticism. They make use of it.
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 ENOEverything good proceeds from enthusiasm.
BRIAN ENO