padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
but this joking series of Music for [X Thing] aside

you can sum up all of Eno as Music for Graphic Designers

good Eno, bad Eno, it's all graphic designer music

which isn't itself good or bad. it's just the aesthetic, taste, sensibility of graphic design.

how much that coincides or doesn't with "art" is a philosophical question

but that's why he transitions so easily into the current era of TED

he was ahead of the curve, not artistically but in terms of self-branding, marketing your work simultaneously as art and product, etc
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
yr typical hippie sellout
I lived in Oakland for a few years btw and you'd periodically run into these assholes, depending on what circles you moved in I guess

the kind of Silicon Valley OG who'd pick you up hitchhiking in his sports car and try to talk to you about the Dead

that wasn't that long ago - mid-late 00s - but now I assume those guys have largely died off or retired by now
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I suspect you mean something "scientific", rational, detached, unemotional, clean, etc.

Eno has that air about him. Of a man conducting experiments rather than channelling his emotions and soul.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Anyway, I've stuck on "On Land" for the first time perhaps all year. Let's see if it ruins this Indian summer's day.
 

sus

Well-known member
It's an Indian Summer over there? We're dipping into cold weather for this first time since spring
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
s

the kind of Silicon Valley OG who'd pick you up hitchhiking in his sports car and try to talk to you about the Dead

that wasn't that long ago - mid-late 00s - but now I assume those guys have largely died off or retired by now

Out on the road today, saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.

I *love* that song.

I find it deeply weird/great you'd meet this kind of cultural archetype. We live in your cultural shadow on this side of the water.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I think ambient music is nazism for woke liberals honestly. strip out the racialism and leave the (imagined) harmonious totality.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
strong case for most overrated figure in the last half-century of popular music

you'd have to look far and wide to find someone more willing to slap his name on things and take credit for other people's ideas

his "I'm not actually a musician" schtick is the most insufferable humblebrag this side of "all I know is I know nothing"

eno really strives to be anachronistic. somehow above it all. i got the most pleasure listening to him as being part and parcel of his era. artrocker or quixotic electric folkie. also it helps to ignore his persona.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Can you define that aesthetic?
there was a thread about it not too long ago

I can quote you back to yourself

graphic design suggests bland, edges smoothed off, utilitarian, everything in its right place

"sound design". the process is the content.

utilitarianism which lends itself effortlessly to creativity as product, if not in the moment then in the course of a career

both in himself - Windows 95 and more recently apps, mercenary producer for adult contemporary rock, etc

and in the way he prefigures, for example, the current legions of business techno bros

(in the way you could call business techno commercially - or, more commercially - applied conceptronica)
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
granting here that all art is at the same time an aesthetic expression and de facto a commodity, whatever the artist's intentions

and "design" vs "art" is a matter of different emphases in intent and/or production more than a definitive categorical split
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Eno's entire vibe - not recently, always - is "think outside the box"

hence it fits so perfectly into TED etc, business thinking - what is Oblique Strategies but stimulus to think outside the box

that's what I mean by he was ahead of the curve, but not artistically - he was there long before it became de facto business thinking

I do recognize the immediate pragmatic value of creative problem-solving in programming, systems design, or what have you

but it's a profoundly depressing way to approach art, and life in general
 

luka

Well-known member
He has an idea of music as direct from the gut puke it out honesty. As a fellow middle aged man I know where he's coming from albeit I'm more sophisticated 👻
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
i got the most pleasure listening to him as being part and parcel of his era
this is the best approach, I agree

I personally don't rate him very highly in the ranks of 70s art rock weirdos or early analog electronics people, but he at least belongs there
 
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