by Brian Eno (Music 781.66 Eno)
Although he’s not the first ambient musician, Brian Eno is the first to use the word to describe musical activities. He’s a remarkable producer who has worked with massive artists such as U2, David Bowie, and the Talking Heads. He’s a fascinating musician himself, who was an important element of the band Roxy Music, and he went on to release a number of pop song-oriented solo albums as well. Then there is the massive universe of his work with ambient music, generative music, collaborations with artists from the worlds of classical, jazz, rock and world music. While he’s maybe not the biggest household name in music by himself, his efforts have been essential to many developments in the music we all know and love. And almost everyone in the world has heard at least one piece by Brian Eno: he composed the startup sounds for Windows 95, the operating system that launched Microsoft into the modern era.
Speaking of 1995, the year was also
immortalized in Eno’s life in print: he kept a diary throughout the year of
1995, which was published the following year as A Year With Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno’s Diary, 1995.
The book was recently re-published in a 25th anniversary edition, which you can
borrow from the Polley Music Library.
This new edition features a brief
but very interesting new introduction, which was written during the height of
the pandemic in mid-2020. Simply put, Eno tried to reflect on what has happened
in the 25 years since his Diary was published, and he approached this by
compiling a list of words and phrases that are common in pop culture today, but
essentially didn’t exist then. Modern life moves quickly! Reading
his dozen-page list of words invokes a wide range of responses in this reader,
from amusement to stress, and it’s remarkable to think how rapidly these
concepts have grasped the attention of the public at large. His list tends to
lean on very recent words and phrases, mostly from the last five years or so,
but it’s worth noting that the 25- year gap includes a massive shift in our
technology: the internet was in its infancy, not really used by the general
public, and computers were still boxes that sat on desks with monitors and
peripherals attached. It’s been a remarkable 25 years, indeed.
Eno doesn’t come right out and say
this, but I think that setting up a re-reading
of this Diary with a moment of pondering modernity helps
to put it in a context that we might otherwise neglect. It wasn’t that long
ago, after all, but arguably the book represents the end of the “analog age.”
As you read the book, Eno is working with computers and software in his studio,
for both music and visual art, but he was an early adopter, and these
descriptions of his artistic involvement with computers must have felt very
different to read in 1996. At one point he is reading
the then-new book Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte, one of the earliest
books that attempted to speculate on how this evolving technology would affect
us individually and culturally. Some of the art being produced with computers
was still very much in its infancy: “onto a computer art show, which was
customarily disappointing. Tiny ideas writ enormous, and cheap tricks writ
dazzlingly expensive.” And this was in the middle of the short-lived era of the
CD-ROM, which seemed to hold so much promise for new ways to distribute
information and new kinds of multimedia formats. Remember those?
The bulk of the diary section
itself finds a very busy Eno working on projects all over the world. His
writing style is friendly, and he sometimes has beautiful descriptions of his
first impressions of people he meets: “The people here are desert
flowers—they can be completely dormant until conditions are right, and then
frenzied with energy.” But mostly he is focused on business and enjoying
time with his family — he’s not as philosophical in the moment as one might
suspect, and he’s not name-dropping and hopping from party to party like we
found in Warhol’s diary. Instead, we get the impression that Eno is ultimately
a pretty normal person who just happens to work across many fields, maybe a
pioneer of the “gig economy” that he mentions in his new introduction. And he
is uniquely thoughtful as he moves between various projects, always ready with
the perfect insight to keep things moving.
But perhaps my favorite section of
the book is the so-called “swollen appendices,” which occupy about a quarter of
the book’s size. These are really a collection of short essays that lay out
Eno’s thoughts on a variety of topics. If you want a brief overview of Eno’s
contributions to music and art, this might be the best place to start. The
essays are arranged in alphabetical order by title, which places what might be
the most useful one, “Ambient Music,” at the beginning. Some are dated at this
point–CD-ROMs raise their antiquated head here again—but others point to work
that Eno continued to develop in more recent years, such as “Generative Music.”
There are letters to colleagues, descriptions of projects, and some thoughts on
international sociopolitical issues. Most of these things still feel fresh and
relevant today, testimony to the universal applicability of many of Eno’s
ideas. Of note, these essays cover a wider span of time—most are from the 90s,
but some go back further, and they make references that can span his whole
career.
All told, it’s a book that remains
interesting and often invigorating so many years later. I often feel a kind of
kinship between Eno’s work and the writings of John Cage, in that both were
able to produce written explanations of their ideas that have had as much or
more influence than the music they made using those ideas. It’s a book that
will likely give you some new ideas to try in your own work, or just an
engaging look at a year in a very interesting person’s life if you’re not a
musician yourself!
(If you enjoy this, you may also
wish to try On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno by David
Sheppard, or Brian Eno: Oblique Music by Sean Albiez.)
( official Brian Eno web
site )
Read
Scott C.’s review of Brian Eno’s album Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks in the September
2020 Staff Recommendations here on BookGuide!
Recommended
by Scott S.
Polley Music Library
Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
Check out this, and all the other great music resources, at the Polley Music Library, located on the 2nd floor of the Bennett Martin Public Library at 14th & "N" St. in downtown Lincoln. You'll find biographies of musicians, books about music history, instructional books, sheet music, CDs, music-related magazines, and much more. Also check out Polley Music Library Picks, the Polley Music Library's e-mail newsletter, and follow them on Facebook!
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