The Working Life of Brian Eno (1986 - 2005)

By exploring the third part of Brian Eno's career in strict chronological order, we begin with a hit – “With Or Without You” by U2. We can hear that infinite guitar, a style that Robert Fripp explored as early as 1972, and taken up here by the Edge. Eno would stay on as the very privileged producer of the famous Irish band until 2009. They even hid together under the pseudonym the Passengers in order to compose music for imaginary films. Far more secretly, Eno moved to Moscow to record and produce Zvuki Mu.

At the same time, his ambient experiments were being turned into installations. The piece “Ikebukuro” (named after the Tokyo district where the installation took place) is both meditative and dramatic – a pinnacle of the genre. But Eno is so much more than just a geeky genius. He was also part of a gospel choir for five years! So it comes as no surprise that he joined the Neville Brothers in New Orleans for a song. Ugandan artist Geoffroy Oryema called on his services, as did his friend John Cale on two occasions – for a dark album (Words of the Dying) and a luminous one (Wrong Way Up which Eno and Cale co-wrote). Nerve Net (1992), a strange, sombre album in the manner of a David Lynch film, marks his timely return to pop. It is a difficult, tortuous, and magnificent album.

Other than his work with Canadian singer Jane Siberry representing a bit of a low point in his career, Eno co-wrote two songs with Slowdive (an English shoegazing band who are still gaining recognition), joined UNKLE for one track, and produced James, a Manchester-based band whom he convinced to release a series of studio improvisations for their very experimental album, Wah-Wah. Blur invited him (along with Bowie) onto the track “M.O.R” which took up the chord progressions of “Boys Keep Swinging” and “Fantastic Voyage”. Eno was taking on the role of mentor for the young generation.

He returned to ambient with 1993’s Neroli (the name of an orange oil that accompanied a few limited editions of the album), perhaps the most sedate and dense music he had ever composed. With Laurie Anderson, he conjured a nightmarish atmosphere before finding Bowie again, who was changing tack once more by trying his hand at some electro music.

Eno remixed Can and 808 State, as well as being remixed himself by Jah Wobble (“Spinner”). Unfairly underrated, the album The Drop gave birth to ‘Unwelcome Jazz’, a ‘jazz that nobody asked for, and nobody cares about’. More than jazz, it was an outlandish cross between Fela's rhythms and the extensive melodies of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. In contrast to The Drop’s relative bitterness, I Dormienti is ambient music made to help people sleep. It was part of an installation combining music and medicine held in London in 1999, in collaboration with the Italian painter Mimmo Paladino. Doctor Eno has said that his style is aimed at the parasympathetic system, in other words at getting you to let go. A therapeutic dimension to add to the numerous qualities already present in his work...

We finish off with a few reunions. A friend – Robert Wyatt of Shleep and Cuckooland –, an enemy – Brian Ferry (at least for the length of a song), and even Robert Fipp with whom he would go on to explore the infinite possibilities of the guitar loop. But that’s another story...