I call legendary ambient artist Brian Eno, “The Alien”, and in this week’s podcast I share why I came up with this peculiar term for him. I am careful to not send him too much praise though, because to be a Brian Eno fan would defeat the purpose of his contribution to the music world.
You should listen to his music and observe its impact, or read his theories and let them light a bulb inside your mind, but you should not put this guy on a pedestal. Listen in to learn more about why I think that way.
Here’s a great artist I’ve discovered lately. Fingerstyle guitarist Yasmin Williams. Enjoy her piece recorded for the New York Guitar Festival.
I’m off now but have a great week ahead. Look to the bagel for support!
Elliott “Everything” Fienberg
This cannot go without the Windows 95 story, from the Wikipedia article for Brian Eno:
The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, "Here's a specific problem – solve it."
The thing from the agency said, "We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said "and it must be 3+1⁄4 seconds long."[† 1]
I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel.
In fact, I made eighty-four pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.[68]
And, of course this same sound slowed down so much, sounds almost like something he would have produced:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BnoX3E2WFcc