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People Always Focus On People Like Me Who Use Synthesizers, Right, Which Are Explicitly Electronic And Therefore Obvious. "ah, Yes, That's Electronic Music." But They Don't Realize That So Is The Concept Of Actually Taking A Piece Of Extant Music And Literally Re-collaging It, Taking Chunks Out And Changing The Dynamics Radically And Creating New Rhythmic Structures With Echo And All That. That's Real Electronic Music, As Far As I'm Concerned.

-Brian Eno

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People Always Focus On

Brian Eno

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People Always Focus On People Like Me Who Use Synthesizers, Right, Which Are Explicitly Electronic And Therefore Obvious. "ah, Yes, That's Electronic Music." But They Don't Realize That So Is The Concept Of Actually Taking A Piece Of Extant Music And Literally Re-collaging It, Taking Chunks Out And Changing The Dynamics Radically And Creating New Rhythmic Structures With Echo And All That. That's Real Electronic Music, As Far As I'm Concerned.

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Ambient Music Is Intended To Induce Calm And A Space To Think.

My Guitar Only Has Five Strings 'cause The Top One Broke And I Decided Not To Put It Back On: When I Play Chords I Only Play Bar Chords, And The Top One Always Used To Cut Me There.

American Television Really Is Pathetic.

American Television

One Of The Interesting Things About Having Little Musical Knowledge Is That You Generate Surprising Results Sometimes; You Move To Places You Wouldn't If You Knew Better.

You Don't Have To Act As If You Know What You're Doing

My Kind Of Composing Is More Like The Work Of A Gardener. The Gardener Takes His Seeds And Scatters Them, Knowing What He Is Planting But Not Quite What Will Grow Where And When - And He Won't Necessarily Be Able To Reproduce It Again Afterwards Either.

I Had A Lot Of Trouble With Engineers, Because Their Whole Background Is Learning From A Functional Point Of View, And Then Learning How To Perform That Function.

What Matters In Modern Music Is Not The Part You Can Write Down, The Words And The Tune, But The Rest - The Texture, The Atmosphere, The References And Associations.

I Prefer To Shoot The Arrow, Then Paint The Target Around It. You Make The Niches In Which You Finally Reside.

I Have These Headphones, Which Pretty Much Exclude Everything Else So That You Can Really Completely Control The Sound That You're Hearing. I Don't Use Them Very Much, I Have To Say. I Very Rarely Listen On Headphones.

I Hate The Rock Music Tradition. I Can't Bear It!

The Smart Thing In The Art World Is To Have One Good Idea And Never Have Another.

Anything Popular Is Populist, And Populist Is Rarely A Good Adjective.

Complexity And Intelligence Grow From Simplicity, Not From Greater Complexity.

Once I Started Working With Generative Music In The 1970s, I Was Flirting With Ideas Of Making A Kind Of Endless Music - Not Like A Record That You'd Put On, Which Would Play For A While And Finish.

A Culture Is The Sum Of All The Things About Which Humanity Can Choose To Differ.

For Instance, I'm Always Fascinated To See Whether, Given The Kind Of Fairly Known And Established Form Called Popular Music, Whether There Is Some Magic Combination That Nobody Has Hit Upon Before.

I Think The Other Thing That's Important Is Getting To A Place, Which Very, Very Rarely Happens With Improvising Groups, Where Somebody Can Decide Not To Play For A While. You Watch Any Group Of Musicians Improvising Together And They Nearly All Play Nearly All The Time. In Fact I Often Say That The Biggest Difference Between Classical Music And Everything Else Is That Classical Musicians Sometimes Shut Up Because They're Told To, Because The Score Tells Them To. Whereas Any Music That's Sort Of Based On Folk Or Jazz, Everybody Plays All The Time.

I'm Bloody Awful At Multi-tasking.

I Don't Want To Do Free Jazz! Because Free Jazz - Which Is The Musical Equivalent Of Free Marketeering - Isn't Actually Free At All. It's Just Constrained By What Your Muscles Can Do.

People Tend To Play In Their Comfort Zone, So The Best Things Are Achieved In A State Of Surprise, Actually.

If You're In A Forest, The Quality Of The Echo Is Very Strange Because Echoes Back Off So Many Surfaces Of All Those Trees That You Get This Strange, Itchy Ricochet Effect.

There Is A Sort Of Convergence Starting To Happen Between The Computer And Musical Instruments, But It's Still Quite A Long Way Off.

I Had Wanted A Tape Recorder Since I Was Tiny. I Thought It Was A Magic Thing. I Never Got One Until Just Before I Went To Art School.

When Our Governments Want To Sell Us A Course Of Action, They Do It By Making Sure It's The Only Thing On The Agenda, The Only Thing Everyone's Talking About. And They Pre-load The Ensuing Discussion With Highly Selected Images, Devious And Prejudicial Language, Dubious Linkages, Weak Or False 'intelligence' And Selected 'leaks'.

In Art, You Can Crash Your Plane And Walk Away From It

Musicians Are There In Front Of You, And The Spectators Sense Their Tension, Which Is Not The Case When You're Listening To A Record. Your Attention Is More Relaxed. The Emotional Aspect Is More Important In Live Music.

I Think One Of My Pursuits Over The Years Is Trying To Answer The Question Of 'what Else Can You Do With A Voice Other Than Stand In Front Of A Microphone And Sing?'

In Terms Of What Has Been Happening Recently, There Have Been, I Think, Some Really Interesting New Instruments That Have Come Out That Sort Of Show Me The Direction Of The Future. Korg Has Introduced The - They've Had A Whole Series Now Of These Things Called Kaoss Pads. They're Wonderful Because They Do Get Your Muscles Working Again. And What Djs Do, Of Course, With Their Dj Turntables Now, The Cd Turntables, Which Have Pitch Change And Speed Change And Everything Else. They're Doing Something That I Think Is Interestingly Physical.

Basically, You're Still Sitting There Using Just The Muscles Of Your Hand, Really. Of One Hand, Actually. It's Another Example Of The Transfer Of Literacy To Making Music Because The Assumption Is That Everything Important Is Happening In Your Head; The Muscles Are There Simply To Serve The Head. But That Isn't How Traditional Players Work At All; Musicians Know That Their Muscles Have A Lot Of Stuff Going On As Well. They're Using Their Whole Body To Make Music, In Fact.

Ambient Music Must Be As Ignorable As It Is Interesting.

The Most Important Thing In A Piece Of Music Is To Seduce People To The Point Where They Start Searching.

Not Many People Bought Velvet Underground Lps, But Those Who Did, Started A Band.

Velvet Underground

I Love San Francisco And Brighton Has Something Of San Francisco About It. It's By The Sea, There's A Big Gay Community, A Feeling Of People Being There Because They Enjoy Their Life There.

People Always Focus On People Like Me Who Use Synthesizers, Right, Which Are Explicitly Electronic And Therefore Obvious. "ah, Yes, That's Electronic Music." But They Don't Realize That So Is The Concept Of Actually Taking A Piece Of Extant Music And Literally Re-collaging It, Taking Chunks Out And Changing The Dynamics Radically And Creating New Rhythmic Structures With Echo And All That. That's Real Electronic Music, As Far As I'm Concerned.

Art Is Not An Object, But A Trigger For Experience.

Once You've Grown To Accept Something And It Becomes Part Of The System You've Inherited, You Don't Even Notice It Any Longer.

I Remember When In The Early Days Of Rock'n'roll, When Everything Sounded Totally Different, All Amazing And Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah. Now You Can Play Me One Second Of Any Record From That Time, And I'll Say "1959" Or "1961." I Can Hear Precisely. It's Like It Has A Huge Date Stamp On It.

Everything Is An Experiment Until It Has A Deadline. That Gives It A Destination, Context, And A Reason.

Perhaps When Music Has Been Shouting For So Long, A Quieter Voice Seems Attractive.

Any Constraint Is Part Of The Skeleton That You Build The Composition On - Including Your Own Incompetence.

I Believe That Singing Is The Key To Long Life, A Good Figure, A Stable Temperament, Increased Intelligence, New Friends, Super Self-confidence , Heightened Sexual Attractiveness, And A Better Sense Of Humor.

Self Confidence

Every Collaboration Helps You Grow. With Bowie, It's Different Every Time. I Know How To Create Settings, Unusual Aural Environments. That Inspires Him. He's Very Quick.

I've Never Used A Pc In My Life; I Don't Like Them.

As Struggles Go, Being An Artist Isn't That Much Of One.

Being An Artist

The Point About Melody And Beat And Lyric Is That They Exist To Engage You In A Very Particular Way. They Want To Occupy Your Attention.

Pop Is Totally Results-oriented And There Is A Very Strong Feedback Loop.

When You Make Something You Are Always Offering Some Choices And Denying Others.

Think Inside The Work - Outside The Work

The Micro-compositions Are The Pieces Themselves, But The Macro-composition Is The Whole Set Of Them And How It Moves From Track To Track And How The Titles Relate To One Another, For Example. Always When I Do Records Like This Of A Selection Of Instrumental Pieces - The Titles, To Me, Are Very Important.

In Fact, Quite A Lot Of What I Do Has To Do With Sound Texture, And, You Can't Notate That. You Can't Notate The Sound Of "st. Elmo's Fire." There's No Way Of Writing That Down. That's Because Musical Notation Arose At A Time When Sound Textures Were Limited. If You Said Violins And Woodwind That Defined The Sound Texture; If I Say Synthesizer And Guitar It Means Nothing - You're Talking About 28,000 Variables.

I Think It's A Myth That American Public Or Any Other Public Is So Stupid That They Need To Be Constantly Pricked.

Painting, I Think It's Like Jazz.

When I Was At Art College, The Teachers Who Helped Me Were Not The Ones I Agreed With, Or The Ones Who Encouraged Me, But The Ones Who Took Very Strong Positions. Because If Someone Does That, You Can Find Your Own Position In Relation To It: What Is It That I Don't Agree With? In The Studio I Want To Articulate A Position Clearly Enough So That Other People Can Use It - Or Chuck It Away If They Don't Want It.

I Often Work By Avoidance.

Something I’ve Realized Lately, To My Shock, Is That I Am An Optimist, In That I Think Humans Are Almost Infinitely Capable Of Self-change And Self-modification, And That We Really Can Build The Future That We Want If We’re Smart About It.

It's Amazing How Quickly People Get Used To Bad Quality.

There Are Hundreds Of Manufacturers Always Producing Dvices That In General Do The Same Things. Since They Have Slight Structural Differences If You Take One And Fool Around With It And Give It A Good Kick It Will Actually Do Something That It Wasn't Designed To Do. I Have This Relationship With My Synthesizers. I've Had Them For So Long, And I've Never Had Them Serviced, So That Now Practically All Of Their Functions Operate Differently From What They Were Designed To Do. They Do Very Interesting Things Now, But That Means Nobody Else Can Use Them Either.

I Think We're About Ready For A New Feeling To Enter Music. I Think That Will Come From The Arabic World.

Ambient Music Must Be Able To Accommodate Many Levels Of Listening Attention Without Enforcing One In Particular; It Must Be As Ignorable As It Is Interesting.

As Soon As You Externalize An Idea You See Facets Of It That Weren't Clear When It Was Just Floating Around In Your Head.

Everybody Thinks That When New Technologies Come Along That They're Transparent And You Can Just Do Your Job Well On It. But Technologies Always Import A Whole New Set Of Values With Them.

Saying That Cultural Objects Have Value Is Like Saying That Telephones Have Conversations.

If Something Is Good, You Must Torture It Mercilessly Until It Is Either Dead Or Great.

When People Censor Themselves They're Just As Likely To Get Rid Of The Good Bits As The Bad Bits.

I Thought It Was Magic To Be Able To Catch Something Identically On Tape And Then Be Able To Play Around With It, Run It Backwards; I Thought That Was Great For Years.

I Know That If I Had A Television In My Flat I Would Convince Myself That Everything On It Was Really Interesting. I Would Say, 'i'm A Celebrity - Get Me Out Of Here!' Is So Sociologically Fascinating That I Think I'd Better Watch.

I Suppose I Am Reluctant About Being Any Sort Of 'star' And I Didn't Particularly Want To Be Portrayed As One.

I Want To Make Things That Put Me In The Position Of Innocence, That Recreate The Feeling Of Innocence In You.

I've Noticed A Terrible Thing, Which Is I Will Agree To Anything If It's Far Enough In The Future.

We Have Two Different Ways Of Working. One Is Completely Unstructured Where Somebody Just Starts Playing And Somebody Joins In And Then The Other Person Joins In, And Something Starts To Happen. That's Occasionally What Happens. What More Often Happens Is That We Settle On Some Sort Of - A Few Sort Of Structural Ideas, Like, "okay, When I Put My Finger Up, We're All Going To Move To The Extremes Of Our Instruments. So, That Means You Can Only Play Either Very High Or Very Low Or Both. And We're Going To Stay There Until I Take My Finger Down.

Often, I Think You Find That You're Enjoying Certain Things, You've Got This New Way Of Listening, And You Find That You Really Enjoy The Way That Sounds On It And The Way This Other Thing Sounds On It And The Way That Other Thing Sounds On It. So, You're Finding A New Pleasure That You Didn't Know About Before.

I've Got Nothing Against Records - I've Spent My Life Making Them - But They Are A Kind Of Historical Blip.

A Big Ego Isn't Necessarily A Bad Thing. A Big Ego Means That You Have Some Confidence In Your Abilities, Really, And That You're Prepared To Take The Risk Of Trying Them Out.

When You Sing With A Group Of People, You Learn How To Subsume Yourself Into A Group Consciousness Because A Capella Singing Is All About The Immersion Of The Self Into The Community. That's One Of The Great Feelings - To Stop Being Me For A Little While And To Become Us. That Way Lies Empathy, The Great Social Virtue.

Nearly All The Things I Do That Are Of Any Merit At All Start Off Just Being Good Fun.

Feelings Are More Dangerous Than Ideas, Because They Aren't Susceptible To Rational Evaluation. They Grow Quietly, Spreading Underground, And Erupt Suddenly, All Over The Place.

Admirers Can Be A Tremendous Force For Conservatism.

Being Completely Free To Choose What To Do Is Actually Quite Difficult

Sometimes Something Intrigues Me About Particular Sounds, How They Work Together, And I Think "okay, I've Found Something Here; I'm Going To Take It Somewhere." And Sometimes Just To Find A Name For That Sound, Whatever It Is, Ends Up Becoming A Title Of The Piece Or Becoming Part Of The Title.

Working Together

What People Call Unemotional Just Doesnt Have A Single Overriding Emotion To It. The Things That I Like Best Are The Ones That Ambiguous On The Emotional Level.

When I Was Working With Talking Heads What Would Happen Typically Is That They Would Go Out And Start Playing A Track, And I Would Always Run The Tape. I Always Record Everything, Even A Run Through Where You're Trying To Get In Tune. That's A Principle Because Sometimes When The Situation Isn't Clear Interesting Things Happen, And They Are Worth Listening To Again.

I Take Sounds And Change Them Into Words.

Law Is Always Better Than War.

In The 1960s, People Were Trying To Get Away From The Pop Song Format. Tracks Were Getting Longer, Or Much, Much Shorter.

The Biology Of Purpose Keeps My Nose Above The Surface.

The Reason I Don't Tour Is That I Don't Know How To Front A Band. What Would I Do? I Can't Really Play Anything Well Enough To Deal With That Situation.

Of Course, Like Anybody I Repeat Myself Endlessly, But I Don't Know That I'm Doing It, Usually.

The Only Value Of Ideology Is To Stop Things Becoming Showbiz.

People Assume That The Meaning Of A Song Is Vested In The Lyrics. To Me, That Has Never Been The Case. There Are Very Few Songs That I Can Think Of Where I Remember The Words.

Agressive Music Can Only Shock You Once. Afterwards Its Impact Declines. It's Inevitable.

Every Collaboration Helps You Grow.

Repetition Doesn't Really Exist

If You've Spent A Long Time Developing A Skill And Techniques, And Now Some 14 Year-old Upstart Can Get Exactly The Same Result, You Might Feel A Bit Miffed I Suppose, But That Has Happened Forever.

I Hate The Thought That Someone Had Picked Up One Of My Song Records And Was Really Excited About It, And Walks [out Of] A Record Shop With On Land And Is Disappointed Because It Isn't What They Wanted. So, I Try To Make Signs, Graphically And Visually, To Say To People "okay, This Is This Department Of My Work And This Is This Other Department Of My Work." And Of Course I'm Very Pleased If People Like All Of Them, But I Don't Want Them To Feel Deceived At Any Point.

Every Band I’ve Worked With Also Wants To Be Countercultural In The Sense That They Want To Feel That They’ve Gone Somewhere That Nobody Else Has Been.

I Cant Duplicate My Own Successes, Because Part Of The Creation Of That Effect Is Making Something Happen That You Didn't Expect

The Trouble Begins With A Design Philosophy That Equates 'more Options' With 'greater Freedom.'

I'm Always Interested In What You Can Do With Technology That People Haven't Thought Of Doing Yet.

It's Easy To Forget That Your Best Work Is Done When Your Attention Is Fully Engaged.

In England And Europe, We Have This Huge Music Called Ambient - Ambient Techno, Ambient House, Ambient Hip-hop, Ambient This, Ambient That.

I Always Have Wanted To Know How The Whole Thing Was Done, What The Process Involved. And I Don't Particularly Enjoy That My Music Is Stripped Of Ancillary Details, And It Just Sort Of Comes Out Of This Big Tap Called The Internet Like Water. I Like Some Of My Water To Be Neatly Presented In A Bottle. With A Label On It.

When I Work There Are Two Distinct Phases: The Phase Of Pushing The Work Along, Getting Something To Happen, Where All The Input Comes From Me, And Phase Two, Where Things Start To Combine In A Way That Wasn't Expected Or Predicted By What I Supplied. Once Phase Two Begins Everything Is Okay, Because Then The Work Starts To Dictate Its Own Terms. It Starts To Get An Identity Which Demands Certain Future Moves. But During The First Phase You Often Find That You Come To A Full Stop.

It's Nice, I Think, When People Use Your Music For Things You Didn't Think Of.

I'm Struck By The Insidious, Computer-driven Tendency To Take Things Out Of The Domain Of Muscular Activity And Put Them Into The Domain Of Mental Activity.

I'm Always Interested In Something When It Isn't Familiar To Me.

Most Big Concerts Sound Disgusting And Awful And Insultingly Bad. It's Like Going To The Cinema And Been Shown A Scratchy Film Which Is Upsidedown And The Bulb Had Gone On The Projector. The Quality Of Large-scale Live Music Is So Shocking.

So I Believe In Singing To Such An Extent That If I Were Asked To Redesign The British Educational System, I Would Start By Insisting That Group Singing Become A Central Part Of The Daily Routine. I Believe It Builds Character And, More Than Anything Else, Encourages A Taste For Co-operation With Others. This Seems To Be About The Most Important Thing A School Could Do For You.

All Cultures Have These Feelings About Non-functional Areas Of Activity. And The More Time People Have On Their Hands, The More They Commit It To Those Areas.

Rationality Is What We Do To Organize The World, To Make It Possible To Predict. Art Is The Rehearsal For The Inapplicability And Failure Of That Process.

I Think That's Very Significant That We're So Attached To The Idea Now Of - It Was Something I Advocated For Years, That You Can Make Music In Studios, Music Doesn't Have To Be Made As A Real-time Experience. But Now You See The Results Of That In People Who Are Completely Crippled Unless They Know That They Have The Possibility Of "cut And Paste" And "undo." And "undo" And "undo" And "undo" And "undo" And "undo" Again.

Good Teachers Realise That The Students Are The Antenna; They Are Sensing Things That The Teachers Don't Yet Sense.

Put Out As Much As You Can. It Doesn't Do Anything Sitting On A Shelf.

If You Watch Any Good Player, They're Using Different Parts Of Their Body And Working With Instruments That Respond To Those Movements. They're Moving In Many Dimensions At Once.

The Lyrics Are Constructed As Empirically As The Music. I Don't Set Out To Say Anything Very Important.

It Infuriates Me That Stuff From The Internet Routinely Doesn't Include All The Credits. Because As Soon As I Listen To Something, If I Like It, I Want To Know, "who's The Bass Player?" "who Did That?" "who's The Engineer On This?

Stop Thinking About Art Works As Objects, And Start Thinking About Them As Triggers For Experiences.

Stop Thinking About Art Works As Objects, And Start Thinking About Them As Triggers For Experiences... That Solves A Lot Of Problems ... Art Is Something That Happens, A Process, Not A Quality, And All Sorts Of Things Can Make It Happen ... [w]hat Makes A Work Of Art 'good' For You Is Not Something That Is Already 'inside' It, But Something That Happens Inside You.

I'm Very Good With Technology, I Always Have Been, And With Machines In General. They Seem Not Threatening Like Other People Find Them, But A Source Of Fun And Amusement.

Be The First To Not Do What Nobody Has Ever Thought Of Not Doing Before.

Composition Is A Way Of Living Out Your Philosophy And Calling It Art.

Listening To Something Is An Act Of Surrender.

I Hate Talking About Music, To Tell You The Truth.

If You Had A Sign Above Every Studio Door Saying ‘this Studio Is A Musical Instrument’ It Would Make Such A Different Approach To Recording.

I Got Interested In The Idea Of Music That Could Make Itself, In A Sense, In The Mid 1960s Really, When I First Heard Composers Like Terry Riley, And When I First Started Playing With Tape Recorders.

I Think Most Artists Would Be Happy To Have Bigger Audiences Rather Than Smaller Ones. It Doesn't Mean That They Are Going To Change Their Work In Order Necessarily To Get It, But They're Happy If They Do Get It.

The Tools Are Evolving, And People's Interests Are Evolving As Well. So, Suddenly People Like To Hear Bands, People Like Devendra Banhart Or The Xx, Bands That Make A Kind Of Virtue Of Sloppiness. That Isn't What They Would Describe What They're Doing, But The Fact Is They Make A Virtue Of The Sort Of Hand-made Nature Of What They're Doing.

I've Had Quite A Lot Of Luck With Dreams. I've Often Awoken In The Night With A Phrase Or Even A Whole Song In My Head.

I Think, If You Spend A Day Or - As Many People Do - A Life Working Only With That Aspect Of Your Being, The Cerebrum Connected To A Finger, I Feel That The Rest Of You Atrophies, Essentially.

Ideas Reflect The Moment, And So You Have To Use Them. If You Store Ideas, They Wither.

W]hat Makes A Work Of Art ‘good’ For You Is Not Something That Is Already ‘inside’ It, But Something That Happens Inside You.

Whatever You Now Find Weird, Ugly, Uncomfortable And Nasty About A New Medium Will Surely Become Its Signature... The Excitement Of Grainy Film, Of Bleached-out Black And White, Is The Excitement Of Witnessing Events Too Momentous For The Medium Assigned To Record Them.

Black And White

The Artists Of The Past Who Impressed Me Were The Ones Who Really Focused Their Work.

When I Was Young, An Eccentric Uncle Decided To Teach Me How To Lie. Not, He Explained, Because He Wanted Me To Lie, But Because He Thought I Should Know How It's Done So I Would Recognise When I Was Being Lied To.

My Shows Are Not Narratives.

With All Fashion, What We Do Is Play At Being Somebody Else. We Play At Inhabiting Another Kind Of World.

The Whole History Of Pop Music Had Rested On The First Person Singular, With Occasional Intrusions Of The Second Person Singular.

I Have Lived In Countries That Were Coming Out Of Conflict: Ireland, South Africa, The Czech Republic. People There Are Overflowing With Energy.

I Think Generally Playing Live Is A Crap Idea. So Much Of Stage Work Is The Presentation Of Personality, And I've Never Been Interested In That.

Whenever You Listen To A Piece Of Music, What You Are Actually Doing Is Hearing The Latest Sentence In A Very Long Story You’ve Been Listening To - All The Pieces Of Music You’ve Ever Heard.

If I Tried To Make A Commercial Album, It Would Be A Complete Flop. I Have No Idea What The World At Large Likes.

For Me It's Always Contingent On Getting A Sound-the Sound Always Suggests What Kind Of Melody It Should Be. So It's Always Sound First And Then The Line Afterwards.

I Love Good, Loud Speakers.

I Felt Extremely Uncomfortable As The Focal Point, In The Spotlight. I Really Like The Behind The Scenes Role, Because All My Freedom Is There.

Behind The Scenes

Music In Itself Carries A Whole Set Of Messages Which Are Very, Very Rich And Complex, And The Words Either Serve To Exclude Certain Ones Or Point Up Certain Others.

The Difficulty Of Always Feeling That You Ought To Be Doing Something Is That You Tend To Undervalue The Times When You’re Apparently Doing Nothing, And Those Are Very Important Times.

There's A Kind Of Edge To What You're Doing, The Kind Of Leading Edge Of What You're Doing. Inside That Edge [are Elements You] Are Familiar With, And Are Probably Becoming Slightly Bored With, As Well, Over A Period Of Time. "i've Pulled That One Out Before. Oh, No, I Can't I'm Just Fed Up With That. Let's Do Something Else."and You Always Think "oh My God I've Never Done Anything At All Like That Before." But, Of Course, In Retrospect, And To An Outsider, They'll Say, "oh, Yeah That's Typical Eno.

Robert Fripp And I Will Be Recording Another Lp Very Soon. It Should Be Even More Monotonous Than The First One!

I Love The Sort Of Ambivalence Of This, The Ambiguity Of Something - Being, For Instance, In A Quite Busy Mexican Restaurant With One Of These Very Gentle Tracks Playing I Remember As Being Particularly Nice.

The Most Important Thing Is The Thing Most Easily Forgotten.

Easily Forgotten

You Can Hear The Profile Of A Sound, In Retrospect, So Much More Clearly Than You Did At The Time. And I Think One Of The Things That's Going To Be Nauseatingly Characteristic About So Much Music Of Now Is Its Glossy Production Values And Its Griddedness, The Tightness Of The Way Everything Is Locked Together.

I Don't Like Headphones Very Much, And I Rarely Listen To Music On Headphones.

Listening To Music

I Wish There Was A Serious Investigation Into Flying Saucers That Wasn't Conducted By Crackpots. Unfortunately Nearly All Of The People Who Are Interested In Them Kind Of Manufacture The Evidence To Fit The Theories Rather Than The Other Way Around. So It's Very Hard To Find Any Dispassionate Treatment Of Them. Maybe There Isn't Any Scientific Basis In Which Case That's Why You Never See Any Scientific Evidence.

I'm Kind Of An Evangelical Atheist.

When You Look Back On A Historical Period Of Music, It Seems So Obvious To You What The Characteristics Of It Are, But They're Not Obvious At The Time. So, When I Look Back At My Own Work, I Could Easily Write A Very Convincing Sort Of Account Of It That Made It Look Like I Had Planned It All Out From Day One And That This Led Logically To That And Then I Did This And Then That Followed Quite Naturally From That. But That's Not How It Felt.

I'm Fascinated By Musicians Who Don't Completely Understand Their Territory; That's When You Do Your Best Work.

Reggie Watts Is A Most Unusual Talent: A Huge Vocal Range, A Natural Musicality, And A Sidesplitting Wit. Is He A Comedian? A Singer? A Performance Artist? I've Seen Him A Few Times Since Then And I Still Can't Decide. Whatever, He Ain't Like Nobody Else.

Look Closely At The Most Embarrassing Details, And Amplify Them.

I Wanted To Get Rid Of The Element That Had Been Considered Essential In Pop Music: The Voice.

One Of The Things You're Doing When You Make Art, Apart From Entertaining Yourself And Other People, Is Trying To See What Ways Of Working Feel Good, What Feels Right.

At The Party, Rob Partridge Said To Me, "you Gave Hope To Other Balding Men." My New Epitaph: "co-wrote A Couple Of Decent Songs And Went Bald Shamelessly."

Frequently, I Go Straight Into The Studio And See What's Around. I Might Hire A Couple Of Instruments That I've Never Used - Maybe A Particular Type Of Electronic Organ Or An Echo Unit. Then I Just Dabble With Sounds Until Something Starts To Happen That Suggests A Texture. The Texture Suggests Some Kind Of Mood, And The Mood Suggests Some Kind Of Lyric. That's Like Working In Reverse, Often Quite The Other Way Around, From Sound To Song. Although Often They Stop Before They Get To The Song Stage.

Well, There Are Some Things That I Just Can't Get Out Of My Head, And They Start To Annoy Me After A While. Sometimes They're Of My Own Creation, As Well - And They're Just As Annoying. It's Not Only Other People's Ear Worms That Bug Me, It's My Own, As Well.

Nothing So Dates An Era As Its Conception Of The Future.

I've Got A Feeling That Music Might Not Be The Most Interesting Place To Be In The World Of Things.

I Enjoy Working With Complicated Equipment. A Lot Of My Things Started Just With A Rhythm Box, But I Feed It Through So Many Things That What Comes Out Sounds Very Complex And Rich.

I'm Very Opinionated.

The Idea That Something Is Uncool Because It’s Old Or Foreign Has Left The Collective Consciousness.

Human Development Thus Far Has Been Fueled And Guided By The Feeling That Things Could Be, And Are Probably Going To Be, Better.

Once Music Ceases To Be Ephemeral - Always Disappearing - And Becomes Instead Material... It Leaves The Condition Of Traditional Music And Enters The Condition Of Painting. It Becomes A Painting, Existing As Material In Space, Not Immaterial In Time.

Everybody Is Entertained To Death.

People In The Arts Often Want To Aim For The Biggest, Most Obvious Target, And Hit It Smack In The Bull’s Eye. Of Course With Everybody Else Aiming There As Well That Makes It Very Hard And Expensive To Hit. I Prefer To Shoot The Arrow, Then Paint The Target Around It. You Make The Niches In Which You Finally Reside.

The Computer Brings Out The Worst In Some People.

Avant-garde Music Is Sort Of Research Music. You're Glad Someone's Done It But You Don't Necessarily Want To Listen To It.

Some People Are Very Good At Being 'stars' And It Suits Them. I'm Grudging About It And I Find It Annoying.

I've Discovered This New Electronic Technique That Creates New Speech Out Of Stuff That's Already There.

Don't Be Ashamed Of Your Own Ideas. Most Musicians Get Applauded For Sounding Like Someone Else.

I Think Very Often Producers Are Really Trying To Repeat Things. When They Hear Something In The New Songs That They Recognize As Being A Bit Like Something That Was A Success On A Previous Record, They're Inclined To Encourage That.

John Cage Made You Realise That There Wasn't A Thing Called Noise, It Was Just Music You Hadn't Appreciated.

The Problem With Improvisation Is, Of Course, That Everyone Just Slips Into Their Comfort Zone And Does Sort Of The Easy Thing To Do, The Most Obvious Thing To Do With Your Instrument.

I Do Sometimes Look Back At Things I've Written In The Past, And Think, 'i Just Don't Remember Being The Person Who Wrote That.'

I Think Audiences Are Quite Comfortable Watching Something Coming Into Being.

A Lot Of The So-called Systems Composers Have This Thing That The System Is Always Right. You Don't Fiddle With It At All. Well, I Don't Think That. I Think The System Is As Right As You Judge It To Be. If For Some Reason You Don't Like A Bit Of It You Must Trust Your Intuition On That. I Don't Take A Doctrinaire Approach To Systems.

I'd Love It If American Kids Were Listening To Muslim Music.

I Often Say To People That Producing Is The Best Paid Form Of Cowardice. When You Produce Things You Almost Always Get Credit, If It's A Good Record, But You Hardly Ever Get The Blame If It's Not! You Don't Really Take Responsibility For Your Work.

I Despise Computers In Many Ways. I Think They’re Hopelessly Underevolved And Overrated.

Also Something That You Don't Have To Listen To From Beginning To End - You Can Enter At Any Point And Leave At Any Point.

The Seven White Notes On The Piano - Each Section Of The Piece (there Are 12 Sections) Is Five Of Those Seven White Notes. If You Calculate It, There Are 21 Groups Of Five Notes In Any Group Of Seven Notes. And Although There Are 12 Sections, This Piece Actually Uses Nine Of Those Groups Because Some Of The Sections Repeat Earlier Ones. So That's The Formula. It's Very Simple As A Way Of Generating Something. It's My Inner Minimalist.

You Just Make Different Music On A Computer. And You Can Make Wonderful Music On A Computer, But Don't Pretend That The Machinery Is Transparent. It Makes As Much Difference To What You're Doing As It Does If You Play An Acoustic Guitar As Opposed To A Kettledrum. You're Not Going To Make The Same Music.

Cooking Is A Way Of Listening To The Radio.

If You Grow Up In A Very Strong Religion Like Catholicism You Certainly Cultivate In Yourself A Certain Taste For The Intensity Of Ideas.

I Got An Amazing 10-cd Set, It's The Music That Alan Lomax Recorded In Haiti In 1936. And What's Incredible Is How Fantastic The Drummers Are And How Off-the-grid They Are. The Liveliness Is Astonishing; They're Just Totally Alive, These Recordings. It's Very Interesting, To Me, To Be Reminded Of That, That There Was A Time When Things Were Not That Tight.

One Night, I Pissed Into An Empty Wine Bottle So I Could Continue Watching Monty Python, And Suddenly Thought 'i've Never Tasted My Own Piss,' So I Drank A Little. It Looked Just Like Orvieto Classico And Tasted Of Nearly Nothing

It Must Be Quite Mysterious To Some People Why I Bother To Carry On. Because, You Know, I Don't Sell That Many Records.

If You Are Part Of A Religion That Very Strongly Insists That You Believe Then To Decide Not To Do That Is Quite A Big Hurdle To Jump Over. You Never Forget The Thought Process You Went Through. It Becomes Part Of Your Whole Intellectual Picture.

With Devices My Technique Is Always To Hide The Handbook In The Drawer Until I've Played With It For A While. The Handbook Always Tells You What It Does, And You Can Be Quite Sure That If It's A Complex Device It Can Do At Least Fifteen Other Things That Weren't Predicted In The Handbook, Or That They Didn't Consider Desirable. It's Normally Those Other Things That Interest Me.

The Time I Like Listening To Music Most On Headphones Is, I Have A Game I Play With My Brother, He's A Musician As Well.and He Sends Me Midi Files Of Keyboard Pieces. So, These Are Pieces Where I Just Get A Midi File; I Don't Know What Instrument He Was Playing Them On; I Know Nothing About His Section Of The Sound Of The Piece, And Then When I'm Sitting On Trains I Do A Lot Of Train Travel I Turn Them Into Pieces Of Music. And I Love To Do That; It's My Favorite Hobby.

You Either Believe That People Respond To Authority, Or That They Respond To Kindness And Inclusion. I'm Obviously In The Latter Camp. I Think That People Respond Better To Reward Than Punishment.

I Don't Live In The Past At All; I'm Always Wanting To Do Something New. I Make A Point Of Constantly Trying To Forget And Get Things Out Of My Mind.

You Know That In Order To Copyright Material Somebody Has To Write It Down For You. Any Piece Of Recorded Material Has To Be Scored In Order For It To Be Copyrighted. I've Seen The Scores Of My Things And They Don't Resemble The Music In Any Way. If You Give Them To Somebody Who Has Never Heard The Music And Say, "what Does This Sound Like To You?" They'll Play You Something That Has No Relationship With The Music It Derives From. Notation Simply Isn't Adequate.

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