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.
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:
The Enduring Legacy of The Alien
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