In Brian Eno’s mind, music exists beyond categorisation or limitation. He’s the ultimate conceptualist – ideas take precedence over technique and craft, texture and atmosphere dominate melody and rhythm. Sound is unbound.
Born Brian Peter George St John le Baptise de la Salle Eno in 1948, he was raised in rural Suffolk and grew up listening to doo-wop and first-generation rock ‘n’ roll on American Armed Forces Radio, via a nearby US Air Force base. But it was visual art that captured his imagination, and it wasn’t until the late ’60s, while studying at Winchester Art School, that he was introduced to notions of ‘sound sculpture’ via contemporary composers like Cornelius Cardew and John Cage.
Eno is one of few contemporary figures to straddle both the pop world and the avant-garde.
First rising to prominence alongside Brian Ferry as part of glam-rock supergroup Roxy Music, his ambitious side-projects and ground-breaking ambient solo outings of the mid-’70s – No Pussyfooting with Robert Fripp (1973), Here Come the Warm Jets (1973) and Another Green World (1975) – really defined what Eno was about. The studio was his chief compositional means. Sounds were layered, deconstructed and looped, their sources abstracted. Like light or colour, sound could bleed into its surrounds and environment. Ambient music was born. Equally regarded as a hit-maker and an experimental iconoclast, Eno has applied his studio innovations to popular music, producing some of the most critically or commercially successful pop records of all time. David Bowie’s Low, Heroes and Lodger; Talking Heads’ Fear of Music and Remain in Light; six different U2 classics including The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby; and Coldplay’s Viva la Vida all bear the Eno stamp.
Footnote After experimenting with early tape loops and delay methods at art school, Eno considers the tape machine his first instrument.
Luminous is on in Sydney, May 26-June 14.
