Touch
of Velvet -- Brian contributes to a UK television documentary on
John Cale, broadcast on Friday 18th December, BBC 2, at 23:30 (just
after Stella Street).
Mega
-- The Virgin Megaweb
in France now has extensive coverage of Brian's visit to Paris in
November, including a transcript of the question-and-answer session and
36 oblique strategies. En Français, of course. There are also
RealAudio extracts from 5 of the 6 pieces on the special CD. (Thanks to
Ariel Kyrou for this information).
Answering questions from shoppers,
Brian revealed that he had been keeping a long and extremely personal
diary this year until someone stole it from him in August -- not that he
would ever have published it in any case.
Marc-ed
man -- Booth-Clibborn
Editions now includes the We Love You book on its site.
Eno fans will be excited to hear that the track contributed by Brian is
an extended version of "Coasters" from The Drop, with
added words and noises by Marc Quinn. It goes by the name of "Sensual
Zero Gravity". A conversation between Brian and Marc appears in the
Marc Quinn coffee-table book Incarnate: Marc Quinn, too. Your
local bank may be able to help you with finance for purchasing such
tomes.
We
can buy 'Heroes' -- Paul Kinder's
Bowiewonderworld
site (recently praised by top rock star David Bowie in his Secret Diary)
has a feature on The Heroes Project, which aims to "influence
Social Attitude". All the proceeds raised from the sale of a
special cover version of 'Heroes' will contribute to the staging
of events to encourage the social integration of disabled people into
mainstream society. More information at the site.
Picture
this -- The EnoWeb has some new pictures in its gallery, courtesy of
Bommel and Olaf Saddeler. See Brian at the KAH
in 1998 or Berlin in
1996.
Null
and Void -- Brian will again be a judge at Andrew Logan's
Alternative Miss World contest, which takes place in London's 291
Gallery (Hackney) on Saturday 12th December. The theme for the costumes
this year is "The Void". For the first time there's an
Alternative Miss
World web site, which documents the weeks leading up to the event
(worth it to hear Andrew Logan's drawling answerphone message, the
EnoWeb reckons). Site visitors can even take part in the contest by
sending their pictures by email! Tickets for the award ceremony cost £25
and £50 and are available from World, 27 Litchfield Street, London
WC2 tel: 0171 379 5588 or by post from The Glasshouse, Melior Place,
London SE1 3QP (cheques payable to the Alternative Miss World).
Slipped
disque -- The French edition of Brian's 1995 diary (see story below)
includes a 30-minute, 6-track CD of previously unreleased pieces which
Brian worked on during 1995. There are no plans to make this CD
available separately from the French edition of the book. So far, the
EnoWeb has tracked down one web source for the book,
FNAC (thanks to Richard Joly
for the suggestion), but the description doesn't mention the CD.
Jean-Jacques Massé has e-mailed us to say that they do. Try
Altavista
Translations if you get stuck. You could also pop over to your
local book store and ask if they can order ISBN 2-84261-092-X for you.
Paris
match -- The French edition of Brian's 1995 diary (Une Année
aux Appendices Gonflés) was published by
Serpent à
Plumes in the first week of November, and he popped across the
Channel to Paris for the launch. On Thursday 5 November he appeared on
the Canal+ television programme Nulle Part Ailleurs (around
19:00 - 19:30). Later that same evening (21:00) he was 'in conversation'
at the Virgin Megastore on the Champs Elysees; this was followed by a
Question and Answer session.
Dunno
much about Art -- We Love You, a new combination of compact
disc and book, has been published by
Booth-Clibborn
Editions. It doesn't appear to be on their web-site yet.
Apparently it includes collaborations from artists and musicians
including one Brian Eno. The Guardian reckons it's "an incoherent
volume, which nonetheless forces reader and listener to think about
what's going on in contemporary British art." More information at
The
Guardian. Thanks to Richard Joly for this story.
Gold
fingered -- Todd Haynes' film Velvet Goldmine, which
features old 70's standards by Brian Eno and Roxy Music, amongst others,
is due to be released in the UK on 23rd October. The soundtrack album is
already out and features the LP version of "Needles in the Camel's
Eye" plus a cover of "Baby's On Fire". Music from the
original motion picture Velvet Goldmine is on the London Records USA
label, 556-035-2.
Pet
subject -- Parlophone is gearing up its
Pet Shop Boys
web-site, which apparently will feature an interview with Brian.
This currently begins with the frankly unbelievable line "Brian Eno
doesn't know what to say." (Thanks to David McCallum for this
one)
In
The Air -- On Saturday 3rd October Bang On A Can performed Music
For Airports at London's Royal
Festival Hall, as the final event in the LaBradford Festival of
Drifting. Brian Eno was spotted smiling and sitting in a box. No, not a
cardboard box, one of those theatre / concert-hall things that separate
the celebs from the plebs.
KAH
what a scorcher -- The KAH in Bonn now has its recordings of the
Sushi! Roti! Reibekuchen! concert and Michael Engelbrecht's
interview available for viewing at any time on
this page.Versions
for 28.8 modems and ISDN were due to appear sometime in October.
Strangely enough the EnoWeb's Newsbot was able to view the concert this
time around using a 28.8 modem -- possibly due to the installation of
Microsoft®'s
Dial-Up Networking Upgrade V1.3. As the concert broadcast is a
recording of the event, not just the music, the EnoWeb has prepared this
handy guide to the highlights (all timings are approximate): 1 second
in, lots of people chatting and eating; 2.5 minutes in, there's a brief
extract from the Bonn installation; lots more people chatting, eating
and cooking; 32 minutes in, a repeat of the installation extract; 41
minutes in, Brian is sighted; 48 minutes in, the instruments are
checked; 54 minutes in, the music starts with an ambient drone; 1 hour 2
minutes in, it gets a bit livelier; shortly after 2 hours, musicians
pack up for a break but the music continues; 2 hours 20 minutes in,
there are interviews with Brian and Holger Czukay (the latter affording
a terrific opportunity for you to brush up your German); 2 hours 35
minutes in, the broadcast ends.
Any
airport in a storm -- Have you noticed how airports seem to be
springing up all over the place? A few months back it was Bang On A Can,
and now MAKYO has released a cover version of 2/1. The track
appears on a double compilation CD called Minimalism: More Or Less
on the Law & Auder label (LA5CD). MAKYO's 2/1 has an edgy
end-of-day atmosphere, quite different from Eno's original. One for the
red-eye flights, perhaps.
Gio, who records with Keiko under the
name MAKYO, told the EnoWeb:
"To create the track, we
analysed (roughly) the length and number of loops Eno was running on
the track. Keiko provided the vocals for the loops, and we did a
fairly faithful recreation of the original, but with a few twists.
MAKYO tends toward Eastern influences, so we added a bit of tamboura
at one point, and we also took one or two liberties with the vocal
loops.
In true Eno tradition, we let the
system of loops run and recorded an hour or so of the results, and 9
minutes of it can be heard on the compilation. It was our first
experiment in strictly generative music, and a valuable one. We have
no illusions of being able to do a version 'better' than the original,
which is a masterpiece, but we hope to have injected a bit of our own
personality into this hommage."
The two CDs contain 153 minutes of
music, not minimalism in its conventional sense, but -- to quote from
the publicity material -- "showcasing the new breed of stripped
down, low frequency, experimental Techno and Electronica, absorbing deep
organic and broody entrancing beats and soundscapes with sonic brute
simplicity". Other musicians on the compilation include Luke
Vibert, Jimpster and :Zoviet*France:. Law & Auder Records has a
homepage
here,
and its discs are distributed by 3MV/Sony in the UK, Unitone in the USA
and NTT/Indigo in GAS, which is an abbreviation I haven't come across
before.
Obscure
Eno-related link -- James "Jameos" Topham, one-time Office
Manager at Opal and reader/re-reader of Brian's Diary, is now a member
of the group Whistler, who have set their sights on the top slot in the
Hit Parade. If you pop over to the Wiiija
label site, you can hear a RealAudio track of one of their songs. Listen
out for him playing the mandolin.
Music
For Eye-witness -- The EnoWeb has received the following report from
Ulrich "Bommel" Bomnüter, who was lucky enough to get an
invitation to Sushi! Roti! Reibekuchen!:
"It was amazingly good!
They were joined by Holger Czukay (former member of Can), who added
his tapes of short-wave radio recordings to the music. Slop Shop
consisted of 3 guys (synthesizer, bass, drums). Eno played his good
old DX-7, but also spent a long time at a computer, where he
constructed brilliant drums tracks from scratch, and at the mixing
device where he manipulated what he had just created with filters,
loop devices and suchlike. While the invitation for the party said
something like "incidental" music, they actually played all
night long, nearly 3 hours. They did a sort of jam session, with
sections where they built up soundscapes, and other more rhythmic
sections. Eno seemed to be the driving force: more than once it was
him who entered the stage first after a break and started beckoning
the others to join in.
The installation: The music comes
from 2 CDs plus a computer (running Koan).
There were instrumental tracks (seemingly he made extensive use of the
DX-7 machine) as well as little stories/poems spoken by Eno. The CD
tracks were combined at random, while Koan supplied sort of string
soundscapes. There was just one small room totally darkened with a few
light objects slowly changing and music (specially recorded for this
event) playing. The light objects consisted mainly of a screen where
slides hand-painted by Eno were projected over another, slowly fading
in and out. Although there was only a limited number different slides
(about 30), there was a great number of different combinations, so
even after an hour or so you weren't able to recognize a recurring
pattern. Even more so, since they were chosen at random. All in all a
very meditative thing where I could easily spend an hour or more..."
Water
music -- The Merce Cunningham Dance Company will be performing Pond
Way, for which Brian Eno wrote the music, at London's
Barbican Centre in
October 1998. Performances will take place from Tuesday 6th until
Saturday 10th, but I'm not clear on whether Pond Way will be
part of the programme every evening.
Sound
and vision -- The Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle in Bonn is hopeful
that it may be able to rebroadcast the recent concert and lecture, in
mid-to-late September, provided permission can be gained from the
artists involved. If this happens, they are looking at reducing the
bandwidth required, so that people with 28.8 modems (such as the
EnoWeb's newsbot) can hear/see something other than the "unable to
connect" message. In the meantime, the site has some pictures of
the opening here
and some more pictures of the installation
here.
James
jams -- James are back in the studio with Brian, working on their
next album. It's planned to be a real long player, with 18 songs.
All-seeing
Eye -- From 28th August to 8th November 1998, the Kunst- und
Ausstellungshalle in Bonn will host an installation by Brian Eno,
entitled Future Light-Lounge Proposal and subtitled Music
for Eyes - Musik zum Sehen.
The opening party (attendance by
invitation only) on Thursday 27th August goes by the name of Sushi!
Roti! Reibekuchen! - A High-Altitude Food Performance (with incidental
music by Slop Shop and Brian Eno). (The dictionary of the EnoWeb's
German Correspondent translates "Reibekuchen" as "potato
fritter"). Brian recently enthused about Slop Shop on the BBC Radio
3 programme Mixing It. Although the event isn't open to the
public, the rare public performance by Brian is being broadcast live on
the Net, in RealVideo, starting at 20:00 (Central European Time) -- see
URL below.
The evening of Saturday 29th August
will see a Public Talk entitled Brian Eno: Conversation with
umbrella, tape recorder, record player, overhead projector and Michael
Engelbrecht. Starting at 20:00 (Central European Time), this is also
being broadcast in RealVideo.
The
Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle page about the events is here. A
German-language version of the page is
here.
The page with
the live action is here (or
here auf
Deutsch) -- the site recommends you log in around 19:00 CET, and says
there will be no limit on the number of people accessing the events. The
Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle's homepage is
here. If you need a
player for RealVideo content, visit the RealNetworks
site.
Brian explains:
"I want to make places that feel
like music. I want to make things which are like music for the eyes. I
want to extend music out into space, into the 3 dimensions of space,
and into colour.
I want to make the kind of art that would
be found in the kind of world I would like to live in.
Can
you create a world by suggesting the objects and experiences that
would belong in it? Is this the way we move into our futures, casting
little hooks forward and then pulling ourselves along by them?"
Pyramid
Selling -- Brian Eno provides the music for a CD-ROM game called
Nile: an Ancient Egyptian Quest. The game was published in late
1997, and the music (© 1996) is a mixture of unreleased tracks,
music which previously appeared on the soundtrack of Neverwhere
and music from Generative Music 1. The game is published by
Simon & Schuster Interactive; they have a page on it
here with a link
to a sample. In the UK the game is distributed by
Zablac Entertainment.
Still
Roxying after all these years -- What happens if you type in
http://www.brianeno.co.uk
in your browser? The same thing that happens if you type in
http://www.roxymusic.co.uk:
you're transported to the gateway for the new Official Roxy Music Site.
There's just a chance to request information there at the moment. The
EnoWeb wonders why http://www.bryanferry.co.uk doesn't have the same
effect, what with Bryan being the mainstay of the band and all.
Soul
Music -- Brian Eno co-produces the track 'Lam Lam' on
Baaba Maal's
new album Nomad Soul, along with Jon Hassell and Howie B. You
can hear extracts from 3 tracks including 'Lam Lam'
here.
The album is on Palm
Pictures, a division of Island
Records, number PALMCD 2002. The UK version of the booklet
attributes the production credit for the track 'Iawa' to these three as
well, but apparently that isn't supported by the American booklet or the
web-site so it must be a fib. July's Eno trivia: Brian gets called "Brain"
in the small print on the CD.
The
1998 American Dance Festival featured the east coast premiere
performance of Pond Way -- a collaboration between Merce
Cunningham, Roy Lichtenstein and Brian Eno -- from July 16-18.
Apparently Merce Cunningham and Brian Eno worked on their contributions
in isolation, and the first time the dancers of the Merce Cunningham
Dance Company heard the music was at the world premiere. The festival
was held in North Carolina, and there's more information at
www.americandancefestival.org.
Brian
finished a disappointing joint 72nd in
Q Magazine's
round-up of the world's 100 richest rock stars, with just £7
million to his name. The EnoWeb says: Diversification, that's the name
of the game these days, Brian my old son. If you really want to mix it
with the big boys, you want to be branching out a bit. Take a leaf outta
your old mate David Bowie's book -- he's setting up his own Internet
service, BowieNet.
A
recent trawl of the Web turned up a saintly picture of Brian by Steve
Double here
and a demonic picture by Anton Corbijn
here.
Brian
was interviewed on the Radio 3 programme Mixing It in the
UK, on May 18th. The programme has a regular feature where musicians are
asked to choose three favourite pieces. Brian preferred not to choose
three favourites, instead selecting three tracks based on two criteria
-- they should be contemporary and from different cultures. He's also
keen on music that occupies a new musical space. The tracks he chose
were as follows (spelling may be not be exact):
- Fast Age from the album Makrodelia
by Slop Shop (aka Peter Schwaum): PCR006 -- Germany
- Terrorist from the album Lo-Bit
Life by Geodesic: Poets Club Records -- Japan
- May This Be Love (by Jimi
Hendrix), from the album Wrecking Ball by Emmylou Harris: Grapevine
GRACD 102 -- USA
Interviewers Robert Sandall and Mark
Russell also asked what other music Brian was listening to; it appears
he's enjoying Underworld's Second Toughest In The Infants.
Interviewed
by Francine Stock on the Radio 4 programme Front Row shortly
before his birthday, Brian said "I'm starting to become interested
in words again. But I don't know what to do with them."
You
can get in on this interview thing yourself by picking up the June
issue of Mojo magazine. In it, there's an excellent feature in
which Andy Gill interviews Brian, who comments fulsomely on most of his
albums. Simply read Brian's responses out loud, and it'll be as if
you're really there.
May
15th marked Brian's 50th birthday. On that date, the EnoWeb
requested that site visitors took time out to imagine "Happy
Birthday To You" being played in the style of "Discreet Music".
But we don't think anyone did.
The
Seventies Revival continues with the release of the film Velvet
Goldmine which features several Eno and Roxy Music songs on its
33-piece soundtrack. The majority of the Roxy tracks are played by a
group called The Venus In Furs, featuring Bernard Butler, Johnny
Greenwood, Paul Kimble, Andy MacKay and Thom Yorke, whilst most of
Brian's tracks are his original recordings from Here Come The Warm
Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain. More information including a
full track listing can be found at the murmurs.com
REM site. According to the Internet
Movie Database, preliminary release dates for the film are as
follows: Australia -- 28 May 1998; USA, UK and Germany -- September
1998. Thanks to Dan Smith and Robert Phan.
An
article by Tim de Lisle in the Independent on Sunday on 10th
May reveals that Brian has recently recorded two love songs; that
earlier this year he did some recording in Amsterdam, in a studio
described by photographer Anton Corbijn as "like the film
Delicatessen -- some derelict basement, in an abandoned part of the
harbour, in a soon- to- be- demolished house..."; and that he
recorded some tracks with Dave Stewart (this time in France) using a
travel alarm-clock as a metronome. Of course, Brian releases only a
small fraction of the music he creates, but the EnoWeb lives in hope...
Roedelius'new
album Aquarello includes a track entitled "More Of It",
which is a new arrangement of "The Shade" from After The
Heat by Roedelius, Moebius and Eno.
In
a move clearly planned to shake the rock world to its very foundations,
Brian Eno recently joined the cast of the Channel 4 comedy series Father
Ted for its eighth and final third-season episode, which also
featured the last performance of the talented and much-missed Dermot
Morgan (Father Ted Crilly himself), who died a few days after it was
recorded.
On-screen for a very few non-speaking
seconds, Brian played the mysteriously-titled Father Brian Eno. Father
Ted was introduced to Father Brian Eno, but was then called away to deal
with a priest who was threatening to throw himself off a ledge outside
the window. What next for Brian after this role? Without wanting to
break any confidences, the EnoWeb understands that he is under
consideration for several more acting parts: a dramatisation of John
Cage's 4' 33", the title role in The Marcel Marceau
Story, and all of the Keystone Cops in Heroes Of Silent Comedy.
Bang
on a Can performed their orchestrated version of Music for Airports at
Stansted Airport, Great Britain on 24th April. Brian was invited as
guest of honour (he gets to go to all the hip 'n' happening venues),
along with Robert Wyatt and Rhett Davies. According to a report by Nigel
Williamson in The Times
(28th April, Arts section), following the concert "a delighted Eno
declared that his original recording had merely been a demo waiting for
this first 'proper performance'." Bang On A Can also played "Everything
Merges With The Night" as an encore.
Brian
has mixed Sinead O'Connor's track "Emma's Song" --
composed for the new Avengers movie -- in Windmill Lane studios, Dublin.
Look out for the soundtrack album, due for release in the US on 7th July
according to Ice
Magazine. There's a strong possibility that Brian and Sinead may
work together again in the near future.
Brian
has contributed one of the elements for Koan^oasis 198, the
world's first on-line collaborative Generative Music composition. Koan^oasis
198 uses SSEYO's Koan software -- which produces music which is
non-identical every time it is played -- and includes contributions from
12 composers whose musical elements interact and harmonise with each
other in real time as they play. Picking up a fallen coconut from one of
the oasis' virtual palm trees and cracking it open on the edge of his
DX7, Brian stated: "Koan^oasis is a kind of global music
ecosystem. Each composer contributes a musical 'life-form' with its own
character and behaviour, and the music is the rich, ever-changing
ecology of interactions between the life-forms."
Visit the SSEYO web-site
to experience this milestone in Generative ambient music.
Other contributors to Koan^oasis
198 include Koanmeisters Tim Didymus (aka Koan Master), Kaon Koo and
Mark Harrop. To hear Brian's element "Pulse 1e" coexisting in
Koan^oasis 198, you'll need a PC (Pentium 120 or higher) with a
Sound Blaster AWE soundcard, 32-bit Internet Explorer 3 (or higher) or
Netscape 3 (or higher), the IKMC plug-in (a free download from SSEYO's
site). If you don't have an AWE card, a SoundBlaster 32 gives acceptable
results, and the EnoWeb's Yamaha SoftSynth at work did a pretty good job
too.
Cancellation:
Brian Eno didn't speak at UnConvention 98 in London, the annual
convention of The
Fortean Times. The smart money has it that the aliens who
kidnapped him and stole his hair -- as he claimed in a lecture to a
wrapt Imagination audience -- have arranged a clashing appointment to
kidnap him again, this time to give his hair back. The aliens believe
that he will make a new album of songs if he becomes his former hirsute
self.
Music
by Brian formed part of an installation of work by Czech artist Jiri
Prihoda in Nova Sin, a gallery in Prague (Tel: +4202 292 046). The
installation ran until 19th April.
Man
bites Eno! Talking of the Czech Republic, we are indebted to EnoWeb
visitor Mark Garland, who forwarded us a curious news story by Kerry
Lynn Fraley and Lisa Graybeal. It seems that Harry William "Billy"
Shuff Jr, of Thurmont, Md., after taking three people hostage in Shuff's
Meat Market and swinging a pool stick, ended up in a melee with police
in which he "bit a chunk bigger than a quarter from Eno's ear"
after Eno "went for his chest". Eno ("a German Shepherd
from Czechoslovakia"), "was later treated by a veterinarian,
who did reconstructive surgery". Sgt. C.I. Tobery Jr. is quoted as
saying that "he and his fellow deputies appreciated the unusual
sacrifice Eno made for them".
Under
the name UILAB, the groups Stereolab and UI have collaborated on four
covers of the Eno song "St Elmo's Fire": "Radio",
"Red Corona", "Spatio-Dynamic" and "Snow".
The CD, titledFires, is on the Duophonic Super 45s label, number
DS45-CD19, and includes two other tracks, "Less Time" and "Impulse
Rah!"
Michael
"Ike" Hall tells us: "NPR just did a story on
February 19, 1998 on Bang on a Can's upcoming performances of Music
for Airports. Bang on a Can is a performance group dealing mostly
with new music. The members of Bang on a Can discussed the process by
which they deconstructed Music for Airports in order to score
it. They found some surprises in the piece even after months of work."
The group is performing the piece in a number of venues in the States --
the world premiere concert will take place at Alice Tully Hall in New
York on March 7, with a 13-city tour to follow in early April. (see
below). All the concerts will feature the entire Music for Airports;
the rest of the program will include pieces by other composers such as
Glenn Branca, Tan Dun, and Arnold Dreyblatt. There is an album on the
Point Music label
for those of us who can't get to the concerts.
Evan Ziporyn of Bang On A Can explains:
"We contacted Eno by e-mail and, after getting his explicit
approval, we went ahead with the project, carefully transcribing the
entire album onto standard musical notation and experimenting with
various ways of approaching and orchestrating it. We decided early on to
do it with acoustic instruments and without the use of tape-loops, since
we are not trying to improve on the original (which is a masterpiece),
but simply to find a way to bring it to life with real people playing in
real time. Each movement was arranged by a different person, the task
being to make a version that was both faithful and at the same time
reinvented. I guess the end result can speak for itself - but we're
really happy both with the way it came out and with the experience of
doing it, and we hope that people will at least give it a fair hearing.
Eno himself heard the disc and sent us a big thumbs up, which needless
to say made our day..." Bang On A Can has a web-site with more
details of the release -
here.
The locations are as follows:
March
7 Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, NY
March 28
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond VA
April 1 Walker
Art Center Minneapolis MN
April 2 Park West, Chicago, IL
April 3 Duke University, Raleigh-Durham, NC
April
4 Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
April 16
Louisville Center for the Arts, Louisville, KY
April 17
Annenberg Center, Philadelphia, PA
April 20 Vienna, Austria
April 21 Bratislava, Slovakia
April 23 Berlin,
Germany
April 24 Stansted Airport, Great Britain
April
25 Pesaro, Italy
April 27 Milan, Italy
April
28 Turin, Italy
Brian
contributed to the Time and Bits conference from February 8th-10th
1998 at the Getty Center. The conference discussed the future of digital
archives and data preservation. See the
Time and
Bits web-site for further information including a photograph of
the speakers which appears to show Brian wearing the cool shades he
modelled for Nerve Net. The conference was organised in
conjunction with The Long
Now Foundation, of which Brian and some of the other conference
delegates are board members.
On
21st December 1997 the dreams of the charity
War Child were
fulfilled with the opening of the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar,
attended by War Child patrons including Brian Eno, Tom Stoppard and
Luciano Pavarotti (who travelled despite suffering from the 'flu.)
According to a report by Susan Nickalls in The Independent (20th
December), the centre's main focus will be a music therapy programme for
children suffering from war trauma. It also aims to provide a base for
music tuition, art therapy, photography, DJing, drama and a host of
other artistic activities.
The centre also houses a recording
studio co-designed by Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios experts and
Brian Eno -- who plans to do some recording there in 1998.
The majority of the finance was raised
through Luciano Pavarotti's "Pavarotti and Friends" concerts,
with a significant role played by the "Help" album and the "Pagan
Fun Wear" and "Musical Milestones" auctions devised by
Brian, Anthea Eno and others. The opening of the centre is just the
start, and War Child still needs funds to ensure that the centre can run
and achieve its full potential for the children of Bosnia. Visit
the War Child site to
discover more about its work and find out how to make donations. And
don't forget to pick up the Advent
Millennium 2-year calendar.
From
November to mid-December 1997 the Russian Museum in St Petersburg hosted
Lightness, an installation by Brian. He described it as a
mixture of "cinema, fireworks display, environmental music and
installation." A limited edition of 200 CDs of the music was
released for sale at the installation. Happily for those of us who
didn't get to St Petersburg, Opal now has a few of the CDs available for
sale by mail! They can accept payment in both UK Pounds and US Dollars.
The price including postage and packing is just £15.00 (fifteen
Pounds Sterling) or $20.00 (twenty US Dollars). If you would
like to buy one, just send a cheque or check for the appropriate amount,
payable to Opal Ltd., to: Opal Ltd., 3 Pembridge Mews, London
W11 3EQ, Great Britain. If you mention the EnoWeb when ordering, that
might boost our ego a bit.
The EnoWeb's roving reporter Malcolm
Humes offers some views on the
Lightness CD. The St Petersburg Times featured
a
story on the installation and also
an
interview with Brian from a few months earlier in his 6-month
sabbatical, both written by Sergey Chernov.
There
was an installation of Brian's Generative Music at the Winter Garden of
The World Financial Center in New York from January 27 to February 7
1998. Brian presented five pieces, including two new ones created for
the Winter Garden. Visit http://www.worldfinancialcenter.com
for more information. The downloadable extract they planned to feature
sadly never surfaced.
Last
year Roy Orbison, this year Willie Nelson. The current U2 CD single,
'If God Will Send His Angels', includes a track remixed by Brian, 'Slow
Dancing', on which Brian provides backing vocals for Willie Nelson. The
CD also features 'Two Shots Of Happy, One Shot Of Sad', which formed
part of Bono's exhibit for the
Musical
Milestones auction for War
Child last year.
Computer
Life has a new interview with Brian
here.
The
Lightness CD means that 1997 was a bumper year for albums by
Brian Eno -- The Drop, the Extracts from Music for White
Cube catalogue CD, and a very small edition (25-ish) of unique CD-Rs
of Contra 1.2, a Koan
piece. The decision to limit the availability of three of these albums
is perhaps surprising, as world-wide there are in all likelihood more
than 25, 200 or 500 people who would like to get the chance to hear
them. Concern has also been voiced in some quarters about the way the
gallery's asking price for the White Cube CD has leapt up from
an initial £20 to £50 as the available numbers have decreased.
There is a difference of perception -- music buyers view it as an Eno
music CD and expect to buy a shop-level price, while the gallery brands
it a piece of limited edition contemporary art subject to the usual
rules governing limited prints (the fewer there are, the higher the
cost).
Brian is famous for investigating a
particular musical area for a time, then getting bored and going off to
investigate something else. His abandonment of the My Squelchy Life
project showed what can happen when he no longer feels in sympathy with
music he's created after just a few months. It's possible that he is
currently enjoying the ability to release music immediately, when he's
still in the same mind-set that he was when he made it, and without
having to back it up through the schedules, delays, publicity campaigns
and interviews that traditionally have to accompany an album if it is
being marketed on a large scale. Perhaps one day some kind of happy
medium will be reached whereby small-circulation albums will be made
available on a regular subscription basis... an Opal Information for the
Millennium, maybe... Oh, and talking of the Millennium, what about the
Advent Millennium calendar?
In
a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Brian was
quoted as saying "I've begun writing 'proper' songs and singing
again." Could he be coming full circle for his 25th year in solo
showbiz?
