BRIAN ENO DISCOGRAPHY

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OFFICIAL RELEASES
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Source UK
7" single: Sour 069. 7243 552184 7 6. PM215
CD single: SOURCD069

Notes: 15 previously unreleased tracks from the Eno studio, curated by Brian's technical assistant Marlon Weyeneth. Somewhat of a Drop Vol 2 -- all the tracks appear to be from the last decade. "Castro Haze" and "Manila Envelope" appear in mildly different mixes from their Headcandy incarnations and "Late Evening in Jersey" (which appeared on the soundtrack of Heat) is a longer version of The Drop's "Hazard".

Here's what Opal's Press Release said:

CURIOSITIES VOLUME 1 by BRIAN ENO
RELEASE DATE: Friday 5th September

This latest release from the Enoshop is the first in a series of collections of little known Eno work from recent years which has been collected together and compiled by his diligent and long suffering studio assistant, Marlon Weyeneth.

BRIAN ENO COMMENTS ON CURIOSITIES:

The pieces on this record are singularities, things that didn't fit together with enough other things to ever make a whole album.

Thus 'Circus Mathematics' was imagined as part of a group of pieces called 'Mathematical Piano Music', but only three others ever materialized, and 'Ambient Savage' is the only surviving example of the little-known but much-mourned 'Afro-Ambient' genre.

'Castro Haze' was the first, and, as it transpired, the last representative of the cycle which was to have been known as 'Unsuccessful Boxers' - the Castro in question was a welterweight who ultimately failed in his bid to seize fame.
The 'Thrash Funk' category of which 'War Fetish' is a proud member, has been more prolific but still not quite abundant enough to justify a whole CD. 'Work/Wank' belongs to a long tradition of songs with very few lyrics (such as 'Hot Pastrami', 'Mashed Potatoes' and 'Wipeout'), and, together with 'Draw One Animal' formed the beginning of my projected CD: 11 things to do on a dull afternoon. Unfortunately this project failed because I could only think of three.

Brian Eno is currently at work in his studio on his forthcoming song album, tentatively called Brian Eno: The Love Collection.

Curiosities Volume 1 will be exclusively available from the Enoshop website http://www.enoshop.co.uk/. The Enoshop website has been set up to provide an outlet for the side projects which keep distracting Brian from work on his song album.

Notes: Hi; as a long time fan of the site, I thought you'd like to know that Eno & his daughters appear on John Cale's (excellent) new album, Hobosapiens. The liner notes read: "[Thanks] to Brian Eno for the groove and his daughters Irial and Darla for the giggles on 'Bicycle'." The musician credits clarify said groove as the drum track, though the bass sounds pretty Eno-esque as well. -- Jason Minnix

Note: The first set of "Original Masters" CDs, given the collective title "Early Works". Virgin's site The Raft reported at the time that the music "will not be 'remastered' but instead will be re-transferred by Simon Heyworth from the original analogue masters". There's a mention of the mastering equipment here. Simon did an excellent job with the sound quality, but there were problems with the CD mastering.

The press release said:

He co-wrote with David Bowie on Low, Heroes and Lodger, was a founder member of Roxy Music, as well as the producer of U2's The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, Zooropa, All That You Can't Leave Behind, Talking Head's Fear of Music and Remain in Light, Devo's Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! and many more.

But that's just part of the story.

Now Brian Eno's groundbreaking albums have been digitally remastered and reissued in special edition digipak packages as part of a series called "Original Masters." Very often when albums are remastered, the tapes are re-equalized, remixed, in other words altered from the way they were originally delivered by the artist. Not so with the albums in the "Original Masters" series.

Using an ATR analog mastering deck with Aria Reference Series class A discrete electronics, Simon Heyworth was able to coax a higher level of fidelity out of these recordings than ever before heard, while keeping the original mastering intact.

"What I quickly learnt was that many of the EQ'd Production Masters at the time were absolutely 'spot on'," says Heyworth, "and why shouldn't they be when you think about it, this was the end of a long artistic endeavour and are we saying that they didn't get it right at that point? This is nonsense of course because if it was a landmark recording and sold lots of albums it must have been right! The Artist and Producer all decided at the time that this was 'it'. Should we be tampering with that piece of art - after all we don't go around saying let's Re-master a great painting."

The result is a clarity and depth of sound to these albums not heard since their initial playback in the recording studio. And more important, no attempts have been made to re-equalize, remix or in any way tamper with the original EQ'ed analogue production masters. These "Original Masters" sound just as Brian Eno originally intended them to be heard.

CD mastering flaw:
On the first pressing of Another Green World, the problem was described by EnoWeb visitor Feline1 thus: 'If you haven't heard one of these discs yourself, lemme try and explain what happens - it's quite odd - "Everything Merges With The Night" fades in for some several seconds, it's not like it just abruptly begins with a chunk missing from the start... but the first vocal line is "I've been waiting all evening" - it's like they've seamlessly removed the correct first line "Rosalie" and digitally spliced the join back together." Virgin issued an official statement: "Subsequent to approval of a correct version of Another Green World on reference CD, there was a DDP image file corruption which has affected the track 'Everything Merges With The Night'. Please take your CD back to where you bought it, and the retailer will exchange it for you. Although working as fast as possible to remanufacture, the new discs won't be ready until the end of next week." Incorrect pressings were supposed to have been withdrawn from sale by Virgin EMI but we received several reports of instances where this had not occurred. Astralwerks offered a higher level of support to its customers.

Quibbles about packaging:
The CDs are packaged in digipacks inside a protective plastic sleeve. There is very little tolerance in the sleeve which means re-inserting the digipack into the sleeve is often difficult.
The designer positioned the text on the spines in a non-standard orientation (most go from top to bottom with the baseline on the left. These go from bottom to top with baseline on the right).
The four Peter Schmidt print watercolour images, an important part of Before And After Science, were excluded from the packaging and the album's original subtitle Fourteen Pictures was cut down to Ten Pictures.

Notes: The third batch of re-issued "Original Masters" CDs, given the collective title "Soundtrack Works". More Music For Films combines most of the tracks from Music For Films Director's Edition and the tracks that appeared on Music For Films 2 in the Working Backwards boxed set.

CD mastering flaws:
On Music For Films, the first note at the start of the track "Quartz" is missing. This fault has never been rectified.
On the first pressing of More Music For Films, track 18 -- which should be "Climate Study" -- was in fact "Approaching Taidu"; track 20 is again "Approaching Taidu". Incorrect pressings were supposed to have been withdrawn from sale by Virgin EMI but we received several reports of instances where this had not occurred. Astralwerks offered a higher level of support to its customers. Even in 2009 the version sold on iTunes retains this error.
On the Director's Edition of Music For Films, "Fuseli" was an alternate title for the Music For Films track "A Measured Room"; on More Music For Films, the CD compiler has used "Patrolling Wire Borders" instead.

Note: This film has been responsible for the largest number of queries on a single topic in EnoWeb's history: people asking where they can obtain the "love theme" played throughout the film. Alas it has not been released. There is no soundtrack album available. Most of the music from the film is not available on CD and so titles are unknown. We think the music is licensed to Warner Independent and so it would be up to them if it was to be released. We asked Opal several times but they said they had no plans to release it. For the record, a little of the music has been released: the track at the start of the film (Gulf War section) is "Fleeting Smile" by Roger Eno (Brian's brother), available on the album Music For Films III (All Saints Records/Hannnibal/Ryko label). There are also excerpts from "Going Unconscious" from the album Another Day On Earth and an alternate mix of "The Demon Of The Mines" (from the Japanese edition of Another Day On Earth). One of the tracks over the closing credits is by The Jane Does.

Note: Limited edition (1,000) audio CD produced to accompany 77 Million - An Audio Visual Installation By Brian Eno at Laforet Museum in Harajuku. Not music from the software program but a Curiosities-style collection of disparate pieces. A fair amount of the material previously appeared on The Drop, the CMAPT/Smart New Composers album and the Nile game. Track listing is as follows:

1. Never Stomp -- previously unreleased (Drop-style)
2. System Piano -- Rayonism from The Drop (different mix)
3. Bonk 12 -- previously unreleased (Drop-style)
4. Luxor Night Car -- Plot 180 from Passengers (different mix)
5. Targa Summer -- La-la-la from Smart (with a small extract from one of the Headcandy pieces and a bit of speech at the end)
6. Cold -- Iced World from The Drop
7. Little Slicer -- Out/Out from The Drop (different mix)
8. Surf Birds -- Background music from Words Spoken by Count Meketre / Thutmoses' Discovery of the Sphinx from Nile
9. Targa -- Long SQ/Short SQ from Smart underlying previously unreleased tracks and a loop from the Creation story from Nile.

The inclusion of Smart pieces was a little surprising, as the story at the time of that album's release was that Brian had not been greatly involved in its creation -- yet here the tracks are clearly presented as Brian's work.

Notes: 2 concerts (unreleased) performed on 24th May, with Brian Eno, Joanna MacGregor, Bath Camerata, Peter King (Organ), Nigel Perrin (Director).

Bill of fare: William Byrd: Ne Irascaris / John Dowland: Forlorn Hope Fancy, Melancholy Galliard / Arvo Pärt: The Beatitudes / Brian Eno/Rick Holland: The Airman, World premiere / Golden Gate Quartet: Listen to the Lambs / John Dowland: Lachrymae, A Piece Without Title / Brian Eno: Music for Airports 1/2, First live performance / Somei Satoh: Incarnation II / Brian Eno: Music for Airports 2/2, First live performance / James MacMillan: O Bone Jesu / Brian Eno/Isaac Rosenberg: August 1914, World premiere / Thomas Tallis: Spem in alium

Rick Holland's MySpace page includes "Predestined Connection" with Brian on Kaoss pads, though not from these concerts.

Notes: Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings is a generative project - a "visual music" program using television and computer screens to create constantly evolving paintings.

Available in limited-edition deluxe numbered packaging, it features a generative software disc playable on Mac or PC together with an exclusive interview DVD and a 52-page hardbound book with an extensive essay by Eno covering his career as a visual artist, fully illustrated with previously unseen images. The 77 million paintings are generated from handmade slides, randomly combined by the computer using specially developed software. It also processes the music that accompanies the paintings in a similar way, so the selection of elements and their duration in the piece are arbitrarily chosen, forming a virtually infinite number of variations.

"I think of these things as visual music. The screen is not being used to tell a story - which is what screens normally do - but to show a painting that changes all the time. One of the interesting things about this is that the artist doesn’t actually know what the result is going to be. There will be unique moments in this for every viewer, and every viewer’s experience will be somewhat different. This could be used just as you’d use a painting. People now have larger screens, but these big objects sitting in their rooms are dormant for a lot of the time. If you’re not actually watching television, what you have is a big black hole in the wall. 77 Million Paintings is intended to occupy that downtime so that, instead of having a dead hole in the wall, you have a living picture." -- Brian Eno

No longer available after it sold out. The software still works fine on Windows PCs with Windows 10 (although it may insist on a resolution of 1024x768), but stopped working on Macintoshes after Mac OS 10.6 because 10.7 Lion removed Carbon support. It is surprising that an updated version has not been created, but there you go. They don't even appear to have bothered to renew 77millionpaintings.com.

Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers

Note: A long ambient piece divided into four seasons, based on the installation Twelve Seasons - Music for the Great Gallery. Trivia: This was originally planned as a single track (the advance copies were in this format), but had to be split up into four tracks to allow distribution on vinyl. Here's Brian talking to Mother Jones:

BE: This actually has two genesis stories. The first story was that I was commissioned to make a piece of music for a particular building in Turin that connects two palaces. It's a long gallery—about 100 meters long, 15 meters high—designed in the 1740s by an architect called [Filippo] Juvarra. About a million visitors every year move through it; the people who run the place said they wanted to make them slow down a little bit because they felt that people were kind of racing from one palace to another and not noticing that they were moving through this beautiful space. So they said "Would you make a piece of music to slow people down?" basically. So I made a piece of music that I thought would work. And then I flew over to Turin with my piece of music—all the speakers and everything as I had specified were set up—and I put the piece on, and within 20 seconds I knew it was completely the wrong piece.
MJ: Why?
BE: It just didn't connect with the place at all. First of all it sounded very modern, and the building doesn't look like that. It's an amazing piece of Baroque architecture. It's full of details and, most importantly, it's full of light. It's got huge windows on both sides, so the main impression when you first walk in there is of light and the changing character of light during the day. And my piece had been made in my studio—it's a nice piece, by the way, but very interior, very reflective, introspective; quite dark, I guess you'd say. I had my little portable studio with me, so I thought, okay, I'll spend a couple days sitting here and I'll try to find out what sorts of things are going to work. And by the time I left, I had a palette of sounds and the sort of feeling of pacing that was going to work, and then I came back to London and I made this piece. So the two stories are a) the invitation to make music for a particular space and b) the total failure.
MJ: Which one of those two pieces became LUX?
BE: The music that is being used in the palace became the basis for this album. I set up a thing in my studio where I had a very comfortable bed to lie on and I put speakers at each side of the pillow so I could lie down and be inside this piece of music. (I don't like headphones.) And I did that because I wanted to adjust the music for the palace. While I was doing that, I was thinking, "I really love listening to this piece and, furthermore, it's pretty different to any other piece that I've done." I mean, I'm sure somebody that doesn't know my work well would think, "Yeah that sounds like another piece of clinky-clonk Brian Eno music." To me it's different.
MJ: And your piece will run at the palace for five years, around the clock?
BE: No. Originally I thought it was going to be an around-the-clock idea and so I thought of making a generative piece, which is to say a piece that would keep remaking itself differently forever. But then I heard that actually what they wanted is to have an hour on, an hour off. In fact, I sort of suggested that as well, because I thought there are going to be people who come to this gallery who just want to be in the gallery without Mr. Eno putting his interpretation of the experience on it. And so I started to explore this idea of making the music episodic. And also something that you don't have to listen to from beginning to end—you can enter at any point and leave at any point. So I started working with the idea of permutation, the ultimate something-for-nothing idea where you take a small number of elements and then you cluster them together in as many different ways as time and nature will permit.

Sebastian Rochford