Brian Eno/ Harold Budd

Started by snyprrr, March 12, 2009, 09:04:27 PM

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snyprrr

dAVID bOWIE?

is this classical?

Daverz

Not unless it's performed by Bang On a Can. :P

snyprrr

Kronos Qrt. does American Idol?
better yet, TV themes.

Daverz

Here's the Bang On a Can recording of Eno's Music for Airports:

http://www.amazon.com/Music-Airports-Robert-Black/dp/B0000069CI

It was reviewed in Fanfare.

snyprrr

i did like Eno's Pachelbel var.

Dax

It's a musical myth that Eno "discovered" ambient music by accident (not dissimilar to the idea that Steve Reich is supposed to have "discovered" phasing by playing back the same material on 2 tape recorders) - the idea came from English experimental music of the late 60s (rather than Satie) whose cause Eno was one of the very few to meaningfully publicise in the 1970s, by putting out recordings on the Obscure label.

bwv 1080

Jon Hassell and the rest of the cabal around Pran Nath was a big influence.  Eno collaborated with Hassell on the Fourth World series in the late 70s

Brian Eno wrote here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/nov/09/jazz.urban

QuoteThose first few months in the city were a formative time for me. I didn't know many people, and I had time on my hands, so I was open to things in a way that I might not have been in a more familiar landscape. I listened to a lot of live music and bought a heap of records. One of the most important was by a musician I'd never heard of - a trumpeter called Jon Hassell. It was called Vernal Equinox.

This record fascinated me. It was a dreamy, strange, meditative music that was inflected by Indian, African and South American music, but also seemed located in the lineage of tonal minimalism. It was a music I felt I'd been waiting for.

I discovered later, after I met and became friends with Jon, that he referred to his invention as Fourth World Music (which became the subtitle of the first album we made together: Possible Musics). I learned subsequently that Jon had studied at Darmstadt with Stockhausen (as indeed had Holger Czukay from Can, another occasional colleague), that he'd played on the first recording of Terry Riley's seminal In C, and that he'd studied with the great Indian singer Pran Nath.

We had a lot to talk about. We had both come through experimental music traditions - the European one, as exemplified by Stockhausen and Cornelius Cardew, and the American one of Cage and Terry Riley and LaMonte Young. At the same time, we were aware of the beauty and sophistication of all the music being made outside our culture - what is now called "world music". And we were both intrigued by the possibilities of new musical technology.

But beyond these issues, there was a deeper idea: that music was a place where you conducted and displayed new social experiments. Jon's experiment was to imagine a "coffee coloured" world - a globalised world constantly integrating and hybridising, where differences were celebrated and dignified - and to try to realise it in music.

His unusual articulacy - and the unexpected scope of his references - inspired me. In general, artists don't talk much about how or why they make their work, especially "why". Jon does. He is a theorist and a practitioner, and his theories are as elegant and as attractive as his music: because in fact his music is the embodiment of those theories.

We spent a lot of time together, time that changed my mind in many ways. We talked about music as embodied philosophy, for every music implies a philosophical position even when its creators aren't conscious of it. And we talked about sex and sensuality, about trying to make a music that embraced the whole being and not just the bit above the neck (or just the bit below it).

It was in these conversations that, among other things, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which I made with David Byrne in 1981, was nurtured. All of us were interested in collage, in making musical particle colliders where we could crash different cultural forms with all their emotional baggage and see what came out of the collisions, what new worlds they suggested.

If I had to name one over-riding principle in Jon's work it would be that of respect. He looks at the world in all its momentary and evanescent moods with respect, and this shows in his music. He sees dignity and beauty in all forms of the dance of life.

I owe a lot to Jon. Actually, a lot of people owe a lot to Jon. He has planted a strong and fertile seed whose fruits are still being gathered.


Funny thing is Pran Nath is a rather mediocre Khayal singer - a very minor figure in Hindustani music.  But he was no doubt charismatic and a good teacher of the tradition, which Jon Hassell learned to emulate with his trumpet

snyprrr

It IS interesting all the strands accumulating in the 60s and 70s. Wasn't there a great book on this subject called "New Sounds"? That's were I learned about all these 3rd and 4th streams. Ahhh, the things we take for granted today!

7/4

Fripp, Eno, Budd, Hassell...such an influence on me in my younger years...  ::)

I still listen, but there's plenty of other music to check out.

However...Budd started writing for string quartet in recent years and Eno just put out Lux, the best ambient he's done in years.

Sean

Huge Eno fan here, everyone must get playing Thursday afternoon, it's on Youtube, the video with the surreal painting of the lady and the garden- can't find you the link from where I am. I've played this piece countless times when wasn't sure what else to put on.

The Apollo collection is marvellous stuff, though Neroli is a weaker sequel.

Music for airports remains his masterpiece, again complete on Youtube- search on '...complete album' if I remember.


TheGSMoeller

Bang on a Can have a great live recording of Music for Airports. I listen to it more than the original studio take.

snyprrr

Quote from: 7/4 on May 26, 2013, 02:23:55 PM
Fripp, Eno, Budd, Hassell...such an influence on me in my younger years...  ::)

I still listen, but there's plenty of other music to check out.

However...Budd started writing for string quartet in recent years and Eno just put out Lux, the best ambient he's done in years.

Do you play any?

Sean

Hi 7/4 will get hold of Lux when I can, sounds most interesting. S

Quote from: 7/4 on May 26, 2013, 02:23:55 PM
Fripp, Eno, Budd, Hassell...such an influence on me in my younger years...  ::)

I still listen, but there's plenty of other music to check out.

However...Budd started writing for string quartet in recent years and Eno just put out Lux, the best ambient he's done in years.

7/4


7/4

Quote from: TheGSMoeller on May 26, 2013, 04:11:39 PM
Bang on a Can have a great live recording of Music for Airports. I listen to it more than the original studio take.

There's a transcription of Apollo for Icebreaker with BJ Cole that's interesting on Canteloupe, the BoaC label.

snyprrr

Quote from: 7/4 on May 27, 2013, 04:13:00 AM
Sure!

Guitarist, composer, microtonalist.

So, do you 'tune' your guitar in Just Intonation,...hey, there's 'guitar' threads in the performer section of this site!!!! Meet U THERE!!

7/4

Quote from: snyprrr on May 27, 2013, 06:31:59 AM
So, do you 'tune' your guitar in Just Intonation,...hey, there's 'guitar' threads in the performer section of this site!!!! Meet U THERE!!

A couple of them.

Rinaldo

Quote from: TheGSMoeller on May 26, 2013, 04:11:39 PM
Bang on a Can have a great live recording of Music for Airports. I listen to it more than the original studio take.

Damn, how did I miss that?! I LOVELOVELOVELOVE the studio version.

7/4

Quote from: Rinaldo on May 27, 2013, 07:11:58 AM
Damn, how did I miss that?! I LOVELOVELOVELOVE the studio version.

They kind of snuck it out. I thought it was going to get a lot of attention, but I guess not.

TheGSMoeller

Quote from: Rinaldo on May 27, 2013, 07:11:58 AM
Damn, how did I miss that?! I LOVELOVELOVELOVE the studio version.

That's a lot of love, Rinaldo. :)