About Brian Eno
Brian Peter George Eno , also mononymously known as Eno, is an English musician, songwriter, record producer and visual artist. He is best known for his pioneering contributions to ambient music and electronica, and for producing, recording, and writing works in rock and pop music. A self-described "non-musician", Eno has helped introduce unconventional concepts and approaches to contemporary music. He has been described as one of popular music's most influential and innovative figures. In 2019, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Roxy Music.
Born in Suffolk, Eno studied painting and experimental music at the art school of Ipswich Civic College in the mid-1960s, and then at Winchester School of Art. He joined the glam rock group Roxy Music as its synthesiser player in 1971 and recorded two albums with them before departing in 1973. He then released a number of solo pop albums, beginning with Here Come the Warm Jets , and explored minimal music with the influential recordings Discreet Music and Ambient 1: Music for Airports , coining the term "ambient music".
Alongside his solo work, Eno collaborated frequently with other musicians in the 1970s, including Robert Fripp , Harmonia, Cluster, Harold Budd, David Bowie, and David Byrne. He also established himself as a sought-after producer, working on albums by John Cale, Jon Hassell, Laraaji, Talking Heads, Ultravox, and Devo, as well as the no wave compilation No New York . In subsequent decades, Eno continued to record solo albums, and produce for other artists, most prominently U2, Coldplay and Peter Gabriel, and including Daniel Lanois, Laurie Anderson, Grace Jones, Slowdive, Karl Hyde, James, Kevin Shields, and Damon Albarn.
Dating back to his time as a student, Eno has also worked in other media, including sound installations, film and writing. In the mid-1970s, he co-developed Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards featuring aphorisms intended to spur creative thinking. From the 1970s onwards, his installations have included the sails of the Sydney Opera House in 2009 and the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank in 2016. An advocate of a range of humanitarian causes, Eno writes on a variety of subjects and is a founding member of the Long Now Foundation. His modern political activism has also included Gazan tragedy awareness before and during the 2023-24 Gaza–Israel conflict, climate change awareness, anti-Toryism, and the freedom and release of Julian Assange.
Brian Peter George Eno was born on 15 May 1948 in the village of Melton, Suffolk, the son of William Arnold Eno , a postal worker and clock and watch repairer, and Maria Alphonsine , a Belgian national. His grandfather was a multi-instrumentalist who played the saxophone and bassoon whilst he built and repaired pianos and church organs. Eno is the eldest of their three children; he has a brother, Roger, and sister Arlette. They have a half-sister, Rita, from their mother's previous relationship. The surname Eno is derived from the French Huguenot surname Hennot. Along with the rest of the family, in particular the parents, he was raised in the Catholic Christian faith.
I like melancholy and have never found it to be the same thing as moroseness or sadness. I've always enjoyed being melancholy, perhaps because that mood is very much a feature of the environment where I grew up. It's a very bleak place and most visitors find it quite miserable. I don't think it's miserable but it's definitely a sort of lost place in a lost time – nothing has changed in this part of England for many hundreds of years.
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