New York, NY (Top40 Charts) The official soundtrack to the 2024 Gary Hustwit documentary film Eno will be released by UMR/Universal Music Canada on April 19 (North America and Mexico LP/ CD release date Jun 7th).
The hugely influential musician, producer, visual artist and activist is the subject of a new career spanning documentary that is uniquely generative: a film that's different every time it's screened. Compiled from hundreds of hours of video footage, music and interviews, the film explores Eno's music, art and ideas, giving the viewer intimate personal insights into his creative processes.
Accompanying this groundbreaking new film is a soundtrack that serves as a companion audio journey touching on Eno's output throughout his rich career. The 17 tracks included on the album feature work from early solo outings such as 1974's Taking Tiger Mountain and 75's Another Green World, acclaimed collaborations with the likes of David Bryne, John Cale, Cluster and more recently, Fred again... all the way through to music from his latest album, FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE, and his 2022 appearance at the Acropolis in Athens with brother Roger.
Whilst it would take a very extensive box set to fully cover Eno's work over the past 50 years - including his ambient pieces for which he is known, some of which are album length, various other notable collaborations, the All Saints, Warp and Opal years, this release has managed to fit music from 14 different albums throughout his entire recording career. Within it are 3 previously unreleased recordings, and the first, "Lighthouse #429" is released today. This instrumental track is taken from Eno's Sonos radio station, The Lighthouse, where the programming exclusively delves into his extensive archive spanning his career. "Lighthouse #429" is the first track to have had a public release from the station.
On Eno's creative process ~ "Picasso once said: 'Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working'. I don't wait to be inspired: I start working and (if I'm lucky) I become 'inspired'. And if I'm not lucky I keep at it until my luck changes. I'm obstinate and confident that I will get somewhere in the end if I keep at it."
Eno - the film:
For the past 5 decades, Brian Eno has been at the forefront of musical creativity, technology, and artistic innovation. This self-described "sonic landscaper" began his career as an original member of the legendary Roxy Music in the early 1970s.
He left the band to release a series of solo records and later pioneered the genre of ambient music with his 1978 album Ambient 1: Music for Airports. As a producer, Brian Eno has helped define and reinvent the sound of some of the most important artists in music, including David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, Coldplay, and dozens of others. He also composed what may be the most heard piece of music in the world: the startup sound for Microsoft Windows. Undeniably, Eno has changed the way modern music is made.
The definitive documentary about visionary musician, artist and activist, Eno is a typically groundbreaking project - a feature film that's never the same twice. Hustwit and creative technologist Brendan Dawes have developed bespoke generative software designed to sequence scenes and create transitions out of Hustwit's original interviews with Eno, and Eno's rich archive of never- before-seen footage, and unreleased music. Each screening of Eno is unique, presenting different scenes, order, music, and meant to be experienced live. The generative and infinitely iterative quality of Eno poetically resonates with the artist's own creative practice, his methods of using technology to compose music, and his endless deep dive into the mercurial essence of creativity.
Hustwit's collaboration with Eno first began in 2017, when Eno created an original score for Hustwit's film Rams, about the German designer Dieter Rams. Says Hustwit, "Much of Brian's career has been about enabling creativity in himself and others, through his role as a producer but also through his collaborations on projects like the Oblique Strategies cards or the music app Bloom. I think of Eno as an art film about creativity, with the output of Brian's 50-year career as its raw material. What I'm trying to do is to create a cinematic experience that's as innovative as Brian's approach to music and art."
