Free, Open Spaces: Brian Eno’s Favourite Records (2016)

http://thequietus.com/articles/20034-brian-eno-favourite-records-interview

by crunchiebones • 8 years ago

57 35 8 years ago

chasing• 8 years ago

One MBV album on the list and he's going with "Glider," eh?

atombender• 8 years ago

That's a blog copypasting another article. The original is here: http://thequietus.com/articles/20034-brian-eno-favourite-rec....

dang2• 8 years ago

Ok, we've changed to that from http://www.openculture.com/2016/04/brian-enos-13-favorite-re.... Thanks!

dang2• 8 years ago

I was sitting in a café yesterday working on code to rewrite Amp urls on HN when they decided to play Here Come the Warm Jets in its entirety. I tried not listening, but there was no way. So Amp links live on another day.

Edit: the article turns out to be really good, better than the usual list of favorite records, because he talks quite emotionally about what he loves about them and why. Eno is always a great raconteur but I don't think he's usually this personal.

cr18952• 8 years ago

The series has always been an engaging introduction to new music for me.

Nils Frahm's is another good one:

http://thequietus.com/articles/18741-nils-frahm-favourite-al...

spacec0wb0y• 8 years ago

Nice feature, I didn't know about before. http://thequietus.com/features/baker-s-dozen

mitjak2• 8 years ago

Nils is so adorably self aware

jeffmk• 8 years ago

If you don't want to click 13 times:

    Reverend Maceo Woods And The Christian Tabernacle Choir – The Dynamic Reverend Maceo Woods And The Christian Tabernacle Choir In Concert
    Farid El Atrache – Farid El Atrache
    Arif Sag – Umut
    The Golden Gate Quartet – 'Go Where I Send Thee'
    Sly And The Family Stone – Fresh
    Me'Shell NdegéOcello – Plantation Lullabies
    The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground
    Steve Reich – Early Works
    Fela Ransome-Kuti & The Africa '70 – Afrodisiac
    My Bloody Valentine – Glider
    Owen Pallett – Heartland
    Chœur Bulgare Svetoslav Obretenov – Grande Liturgie Orthodoxe Slave
    Joni Mitchell – Court And Spark

siquick• 8 years ago

Sly And The Family Stone – Fresh / Fela Ransome-Kuti & The Africa '70 – Afrodisiac

Did not expect to ever see these names on HN!

throwaway8879• 8 years ago

Big fan of both. Fela is just so groovy, in a very raw/sloppy kind of way. Really love that sound.

baldfat2• 8 years ago

My best to get as many of these works into a playlist.

I enjoy making different playlist of people I really admire their works. I couldn't find several works but I did that best I could.

https://play.google.com/music/playlist/AMaBXym_owacCnlnJw0um...

simonebrunozzi• 8 years ago

Thanks man.

There should be a way to (economically) punish websites that force you to do this.

chrisdhoover2• 8 years ago

You should read the commentary. I especially enjoyed the Golden Gate Quartet, Sly, and Joni comments. If are at all interested in recording engineering, the Joni brief is great.

Uhhrrr• 8 years ago

Title is misleading: "A lot of the choices here end up being considerations on one song as opposed to whole albums, and so I prefer to see it as less of a definitive favourite albums list, and more of a piece where the records are selected to discuss other ideas."

cr18952• 8 years ago

Title is misleading

It's sort of a default title for a long-running series on The Quietus. It's not uncommon that a featured artist qualifies "favorite" somehow.

http://thequietus.com/features/baker-s-dozen

tptacek2• 8 years ago

You could freak out the kids next Wednesday by playing that Steve Reich "It's Gonna Rain" track at them while they come to your house to trick-or-treat. "Bloody hell, that's economy" is, yes, one way to put it.

Afrodisiac is fantastic and I'm sort of dying to mix it up with Remain In Light to see if the influence is as obvious as Eno suggests it is.

Glider is just an MBV EP, and the one song Eno likes on it (Soon) is one of the "hits" from Loveless, the album that followed it, which is one of the most famous and influential modern rock albums of all time and, like, you should already know this and go fix that if you don't.

niel• 8 years ago

I remember the first time I listened to Loveless, back when CD stores still had listening stations with headphones so that you could play an album before you pay. I gave the CD to the girl behind the counter, after she loaded the disk I pressed play on the controls in front of me, and put on the headphones - completely missing the opening count and wall-of-sound crash in the first few seconds. She pressed stop told me to keep the headphones on and pressed play again. This is cheesy, but it is hard to describe the joy I feel when I play that album ever since that day.

To anyone listening to Loveless for the first time: I encourage you to put on your headphones before pressing play. Most of us probably don't have CD store employees to help us with this any more. Maybe you've already learned the "trousers before shoes" rule of listening to music from another album yourself?

tptacek2• 8 years ago

Brian Eno called "To Here Knows When" off Loveless "the most vaguest song ever". I don't know what that means but then I also can't claim to know what "To Here Knows When" is about either.

seanhunter• 8 years ago

+1 "It's gonna Rain" is completely terrifying. Also "Come out to show them" in a similar way. I remember very vividly the first time I heard both of them and it's giving me goosebumps just thinking about it.

Steve Reich came and did a workshop with us when I was doing my degree (based on "Electric Counterpoint") and it was fantastic.

You've got me listening to "Different Trains" now....

mitjak2• 8 years ago

Glider also has Off Your Face, and Glider itself. The latter especially is a highlight. I personally love Tremelo EP the most.

justtopost• 8 years ago

This is way more cliche than I was expecting. This could be the average /mu/ list. Also, not a list of albums as much as albums containing a particular song. Dissapointing on all fronts.

git_rancher• 8 years ago

The what list?

icebraining2• 8 years ago

4chan's music board (http://boards.4chan.org/mu/)

coldtea• 8 years ago

The cliche is expecting something totally obscure. That's so "what white people like"...

Dowwie• 8 years ago

Brian Eno's ambient works make for good programming music. "Music for Airports" has aged so well. His more recent "Music for Installations" is also good.

chrisdhoover2• 8 years ago

The Eno and Cluster records are pretty damn good. And Fripp and Eno

martyvis• 8 years ago

I love articles like this. I have no idea why my tastes in music are so eclectic. (Well it might be something to do with a European Dad that never really understood rock'n'roll whose uncle was a church organist and a Mum who was an assistant to radio station manager and ...) Anyway I'm always look out for artists that have new ways to form sound into compositions. I used to listen to The Daily Planet radio programme on the Aussie ABC, but unfortunately funding for that was taken away. I'd get the playlist and try and find sources to listen to more of the artist or album. So it is great to find lists of songs that others draw interest from that fine from a whole range of genre. Anybody have other go-to lists they use?

awild• 8 years ago

The quietus does a lot of charts that are worth checking out, my music consumption spikes a lot around their releases. It's heavily focused on contemporary music and often read from a very left-wing political view. Another good hub is the /mu/ archive and their charts although it's kind of oblique by design, so ymmv. (A favorite of mine is the How do I into Jazz archive)

baldfat2• 8 years ago

Take a listen to 'All Songs Considered'

I am an older guy that never got stuck into the just one genre nor one era of music. I find a lot of new music here.

https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/

cl0ne• 8 years ago

Here's a good one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_with_Wound_list

pegasus• 8 years ago

Check out WNYC's long-running show New Sounds. Its archives are a treasure trove and there's also an online station now at newsounds.org.

bgeeek• 8 years ago

Slight tangent - subscribe or buy Wire magazine. I believe they ship it internationally. Absolutely fantastic magazine if you want to hear cutting edge, new music or even landmark artists, etc. I actually look forward to reading it every month. Disclaimer: not linked in any way to the mag. It's just great!

fit2rule• 8 years ago

I love the random discovery aspect of music.

I recently had to drive to Pristina, Kosovo and experience the endless misery of the border crossings on the way. I spent more total time in the lines waiting to cross the border than I did driving from Austria.

And that cloud had a silver lining, because at each border, I discovered new music belting out from the hundreds of other drivers also waiting in the hell of border crossing. Nothing would Shazaam, however. The licks and melodies and clear synth lines, or strumming chords of quaint (to me) nearly unrecognisable string instruments that were belting out over the fields were very enticing, and I could really only get a taste of the music these folks were listening to.

On the way back out (the hell was repeated) I noticed the stalls on the side of the road at the Kosovo border, selling cheap CD's of local artists .. so I took the swing and bought a whole, random set of them. Artists I would never have known. And, while a lot of the Kosovo rap is irksome and mundane (at least of my selection), there are a number of gems in the mix - stuff that I really, really like for some reason. And I'd never, in my life, have encountered it if not for those border crossings.

Music really transcends mans banal nature and turns us all into angels.

mattkevan• 8 years ago

Whenever Eno comes up I have to go and watch Adam Buxton's video about Eno and Bowie (and co-producer Tony Visconti) recording 'Warszawa'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FODvjYoVEi8

Free, Open Spaces: Brian Eno’s Favourite Records (2016)

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