Brian Eno

I first became interested in Brian Eno’s music in 1986 after visiting his exhibition of video sculptures in the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin. I was blown away by the spacey soundtrack. I was unaware of his solo work and collaborations through the seventies and up to then, but that changed immediately. Over the next few years I bought every EG record I could find in the shops and crossed them off my list of “must haves” one at a time. It changed my music ear for ever with names like Fripp, Budd, Michael Brook, Lanois, Roedelius, Hassell, Roger Eno, Laraaji suddenly beginning to populate my record collection.

This shift in listening habits affected my writing greatly and I spent many nights writing under the mixed influences of alcohol and ‘EG music’. My interests veered off towards Reich and Glass and opened up to many kinds of music while the poetry sometimes rose with the swell and sometimes floundered.

It is a number of years now since I have written in that way and I have not been keeping in touch with Eno’s music or the others on the list.(Maybe that explains the drop off in my output). In music, I’ve been getting to know the classical composers.But Brian Eno has influenced me hugely. If I was taking a few discs to my desert island I would have to include “Discrete Music”, Apollo and perhaps one or two others. I would also be taking Laraaji’s “Day of Radiance” which Eno produced and which is one of the few albums that produces a surge of happiness every time I hear those intoxicating notes on the dulcimer. Here is the first track, I strongly recommend you listen on earphones to get the full effect.


There is an online book on Eno : BRIAN ENO HIS MUSIC AND THE VERTICAL COLOR OF SOUND by Eric Tamm at http://www2.hku.nl/~renate/blindenfotografie/documten/BE.doc
And there's a very generous video to be seen at http://www2.kah-bonn.de/1/27/livee.htm