"ENO" The official soundtrack to the generative film about BRIAN ENO

The official soundtrack to Gary Hustwit’s 2024 documentary film “Eno” will be released by UMR on April 19.

Charismatic musician, producer, visual artist and activist is the subject of a new documentary on his career, one of a kind: a different film every time it is screened. Compiled with hundreds of hours of footage, music and interviews, the film explores the music, art and ideas of Brian Eno, giving the viewer an intimate and personal insight into his creative processes.

On Eno’s creative process:

Picasso once said: ‘Inspiration exists, but you have to find it by 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 working until my luck changes.

I am stubborn and confident that I will get somewhere eventually if I keep working.”

Commenting on this new and revolutionary film is a soundtrack that acts as an accompanying sound journey, retracing Eno’s production throughout his rich career. The album’s 17 tracks include early solo work, such as 1974’s “Taking Tiger Mountain” and 1975’s “Another Green World,” acclaimed collaborations with the likes of David Byrne, John Cale, Cluster and, more recently, Fred again… until the music of his latest album, “FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE”, and his 2021 appearance at the Acropolis in Athens with brother Roger.

While it would take a very large box set to completely cover Eno’s work from the last 50 years – including the ambient pieces for which he is known, some of which are album-length, various other notable collaborations, the All Saints, from Warp and Opal – this release managed to include music from 14 different albums over the course of its entire recording career.

THE UNPUBLISHED

Inside there are 3 unreleased recordings and the first, “Lighthouse #429” is available from today. This instrumental is taken from Eno’s Sonos radio station, “The Lighthouse,” where the programming is exclusively dedicated to his vast archive that spans his entire career. Lighthouse #429″ is the first song released by the radio station.

LISTEN TO THE SONG

THE SYNOPSIS

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 Seventies.

He left the group to release a series of solo records and later pioneered the genre of ambient music with 1978’s “Ambient 1: Music for Airports.” As a producer, Brian Eno helped define and reinvent the sound of some of music’s biggest artists, including David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, Coldplay and dozens more. He also composed what may be the most listened to piece of music in the world: the Microsoft Windows startup sound. It is undeniable that Eno changed the way modern music is made.

The definitive documentary about the visionary musician, artist and activist, “Eno” is a typically innovative project: a feature film that is never the same. Gary Hustwit and creative technologist Brendan Dawes developed bespoke generative software to sequence scenes and create transitions from Hustwit’s original interviews with Eno and Eno’s rich archive of never-before-seen footage and previously unreleased music. Each Eno screening is unique, features different scenes, order and music and must be experienced live. Eno’s generative and infinitely iterative quality resonates poetically with the artist’s own creative practice, his methods of using technology to compose music, and his endless immersion in the essence of creativity.

Hustwit’s collaboration with Eno began in 2017, when Eno created an original soundtrack for Hustwit’s film Rams, about German designer Dieter Rams. Hustwit says:

Much of Brian’s career has been focused on developing creativity in himself and others, through his role as a producer but also through his collaborations on projects such as the Oblique Strategies cards or the Bloom music app. I think of Eno as an art film about creativity, with Brian’s 50-year career of output as the raw material. What I try to do is create a cinematic experience that is as innovative as Brian’s approach to music and art.”