3 December 2020 Brian Eno Something I’ve realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we’re smart about it.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno I’ve noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it’s far enough in the future.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno 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.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You’re glad someone’s done it but you don’t necessarily want to listen to it.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno There are certain sounds that I’ve found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno In England and Europe, we have this huge music called ambient – ambient techno, ambient house, ambient hip-hop, ambient this, ambient that.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno I’m very good with technology, I always have been, and with machines in general. They seem not threatening like other people find them, but a source of fun and amusement.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno I’m always interested in what you can do with technology that people haven’t thought of doing yet.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you’re listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno I’ve had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I’ve often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno I don’t like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno Sometimes you recognize that there is a category of human experience that has not been identified but everyone knows about it. That is when I find a term to describe it.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno People do dismiss ambient music, don’t they? They call it ‘easy listening,’ as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno I don’t live in the past at all I’m always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 Brian Eno Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‘Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this’ – have become commonplace in films and music too.
