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Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!peterr
From: peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Brian Eno discussed in print
Message-ID: <1490@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 9-Jun-83 01:42:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.1490
Posted: Thu Jun  9 01:42:50 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Jun-83 05:48:46 EDT
Organization: CSRG, University of Toronto
Lines: 36

The June 1983 issue of "down beat", a jazz-oriented magazine published in
Chicago, has a cover story on Brian Eno, one of the prime popularizers of
ambient music.  For someone who used electronics in popular music early on,
he has some interesting comments on synthesizers:
   "To me, synthesizers are a bit like formica.  If you see it from a
distance, it looks great -- this big panel of blue or pink or whatever that
fits in well with your designer home.  But when you get close to the surface
of formica and start looking at it, it's not interesting; nothing's going on
there.  Contrast this with a natural material like wood, which looks good from
a distance but also is interesting at any level of microscopic inspection;
its atomic structure is even strangely interesting as opposed to formica, which
is regular and crystalline.  Think of the forest, for instance.  You look at it
from the air and it's rich, complex, and diverse.  You come in closer and look
at one tree and it's still rich, complex, and diverse.  You look at one leaf,
it's rich and complicated.  You look at one molecule, it's different from every
other molecule.  The thing permits you any level of scrutiny.  And more and 
more, I want to make things that have that same quality . . . things that
allow you to enter them as far as you could imagine going, yet don't suddenly
reveal themselves to be composed of paper-thin synthetic materials".

(I'm not sure I believe that all the molecules in a leaf are different,
 but it's not that important.)

Eno thus favours "found" sounds (he pokes around parts of New York City
banging on things) to synthesized ones, at least for now, though he is
quite happy to manipulate these sounds extensively before they go on disc.
Such is only one of the many non-traditional considerations that go into
his music, as revealed by the article.  Recommended.

In the same mathematical/mystic vein, here's an addition to the list of
things written on the lead-out grooves of records:  Side two of the 1975
Atlantic re-issue of "Tonto's Expanding Head Band", an all-electronic
studio creation of producers Robert Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil, contains
some well-wishes from the producers and the phrase
  "The only way out of a circle is through the center"
on the vinyl, wrapped around the label.    p. rowley, U. Toronto.