Brian Peter George St. Jean le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (born 15 May 1948 in Woodbridge, Suffolk) is a British electronic musician, music theorist and record producer. As a solo artist, he is probably best known as the father of ambient music.Eno first came to prominence as the keyboardist and sonic wizard of the 1970s art rock band Roxy Music. After leaving the group, Eno recorded a series of idiosyncratic rock albums, later turning to more abstract soundscapes on groundbreaking albums like ''Another Green World'' (1975) and ''Ambient 1/Music for Airports'' (1978). Since then, he has produced dozens of albums (many with similarly-minded collaborators such as Harold Budd and Robert Fripp) which have displayed his unique approach to music. He has also occasionally returned to the pop song format.His production credits include some of the most respected albums of David Bowie, Talking Heads and U2.Eno has pursued several artistic ventures parallel to his music career, including visual art installations, a regular column in the newspaper ''The Observer'' and, with artist Peter Schmidt, Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards recommending various artistic strategies.
Education and early musical career
Eno was educated at Ipswich Art School and the Winchester School of Art, graduating from the latter in 1969. While at art school, he developed an interest in using tape recorders as musical instruments, and he experimented with his first (sometimes improvisational) bands.Roxy Music
Eno started his professional musical career in London, with the highly-successful glam/art-rock band Roxy Music, from 1971 to '73. As a self-professed "non-musician", at the band's early live shows Eno was to be found not on stage, but behind the mixing desk, where his efforts went way beyond the usual balancing of the volume levels: he would process the instrument sounds through his VCS3 synthesizer, tape recorders and other electronic devices, frequently singing backing vocals as well. Eno soon graduated to join the rest of Roxy on stage however, where his bizarre costumes contributed to a large part of the band's visual appeal. Public interest in Eno fuelled a rivalry between him and Roxy's leader, Bryan Ferry, who sacked him from the band on completion of the tour for their second album, while expecting Eno to keep his share of the band's considerable debts.Solo work
Eno embarked on a solo career almost immediately. Between 1973 and 1978 he created four influential solo albums of electronically inflected pop songs – ''Here Come The Warm Jets'', ''Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)'', ''Another Green World'' and ''Before and After Science''. ''Tiger Mountain'' contains the galloping "Third Uncle", one of Eno's best-known songs. Critic Dave Thompson writes that the song is "a near punk attack of riffing guitars and clattering percussion, "Third Uncle" could, in other hands, be a heavy metal anthem, albeit one whose lyrical content would tongue-tie the most slavish air guitarist."http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=33:0l2zefuk5gf1 He played with Phil Manzanera in the band 801. Eno continued his career by producing a larger number of highly eclectic and increasingly ambient electronic and acoustic albums. He is widely cited as coining the term "ambient music," low-volume music designed to modify one's perception of a surrounding environment, producing his ''Ambient'' series (''Music for Airports'', ''The Plateaux of Mirror'', ''Day of Radiance'' and ''On Land''). Eno describes himself as a "non-musician" and coined the term "treatments" to describe his modification of the sound of musical instruments, and to separate his role from that of the traditional instrumentalist. His skill at using "The Studio as a Compositional Tool" (the title of an essay by Eno) led in part to his career as a producer. His methods were recognized at the time (mid-70s) as unique, so much so that on Genesis's ''The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway'', he is credited with "Enossification."Eno started the Obscure label in Britain in 1975 to release works by less-known composers. The first group of three releases included his own composition, ''Discreet Music, '' and the now-famous ''The Sinking of the Titanic'' by Gavin Bryars. The second side of Discreet Music consisted of several versions of Pachelbel's canon to which various algorithmic transformations have been applied, rendering it almost unrecognizable. Side 1 consisted of a tape loop system for generating music from relative sparse input. These tapes were later used as backgrounds in some of his collaborations with Robert Fripp of King Crimson, most notably No Pussyfooting. This methodology (coined Frippertronics) was later used by Robert Fripp, among other artists, on future albums. Only ten Obscure albums were released, including works by John Adams, Michael Nyman, and John Cage. At this time he was also affiliating with artists in the Fluxus movement and worked with the Portsmouth Sinfonia.In 1981 he collaborated with David Byrne, of Talking Heads, on ''My Life in the Bush of Ghosts'', which was built around sampling recordings and radio broadcasts from around the world. Eno collaborated with David Bowie as a writer and musician on Bowie's influential "Berlin trilogy" of albums, ''Low, "Heroes"'' and ''Lodger'', on Bowie's later album ''1. Outside'', and on the song "I'm Afraid of Americans". Eno has also collaborated with John Cale, former member of Velvet Underground, on his trilogy ''Fear'', ''Slow Dazzle'' and ''Helen of Troy'', Robert Wyatt on his ''Shleep'' CD, with Jon Hassell, with the German duo Cluster, with composer Harold Budd and others. In 1992, Eno released his take on 'club electronica' titled ''Nerve Net''.Eno returned in June of 2005 with Another Day on Earth. It was the first major album of his since ''Wrong Way Up'' (with John Cale) to feature vocals prominently. The album is, unsurprisingly, different to his 70's solo work, as musical production has changed since then, as evident in Another Day on Earth's semi-electronic production.Producing records and other projects
From the very beginning of his solo career in 1973, Eno has been much in demand as a producer. His lengthly string of producer credits includes albums for Talking Heads, U2, Devo, Ultravox and James. He also produced the 1993 album When I was a Boy by Jane Siberry. This album is widely regarded as a masterpiece and is, in the opinion of many, Siberry's finest hour. He won the best producer award at the 1994 and 1996 BRIT awards. Despite being a self-professed "non-musician", Eno has contributed to recordings by a huge number of artists as varied as Nico, Robert Calvert, Genesis, Edikanfo, and Zvuki Mu, in various capacities such as use of his studio/synthesizer/electronic treatments, vocals, guitar, bass guitar, and even just as being 'Eno'. In 1984, he composed the "Prophecy Theme" for the David Lynch film ''Dune'', and performed by the group Toto.He collaborated on the development of SSEYO's Koan generative music system, which he used to create his hybrid album ''1''.Brian Eno 1996:
"Some very basic forms of generative music have existed for a long time, but as marginal curiosities. Wind chimes are an example, but the only compositional control you have over the music they produce is in the original choice of notes that the chimes will sound. Recently, however, out of the union of synthesisers and computers, some much finer tools have evolved. Koan Software is probably the best of these systems, allowing a composer to control not one but one hundred and fifty musical and sonic parameters within which the computer then improvises (as wind improvises the wind chimes).The works I have made with this system symbolise to me the beginning of a new era of music. Until 100 years ago, every musical event was unique: music was ephemeral and unrepeatable and even classical scoring couldn't guarantee precise duplication. Then came the gramophone record, which captured particular performances and made it possible to hear them identically over and over again.But now there are three alternatives: live music, recorded music and generative music. Generative music enjoys some of the benefits of both its ancestors. Like live music it is always different. Like recorded music it is free of time-and-place limitations - you can hear it when and where you want.I really think it is possible that our grandchildren will look at us in wonder and say: "you mean you used to listen to exactly the same thing over and over again?"CSJ Bofop 1996: