10 Outstanding Brian Eno Productions

Dear listeners,

This week, I saw Gary Hustwit’s lively documentary “Eno,” about the musician, artist and producer Brian Eno. I’d recommend it to you — but it’s highly unlikely that you will see the same version of the film that I did.

Formally inspired by Eno’s longtime fascination with generative art, “Eno” is essentially created anew each time it’s screened. A computer program called Brain One (a playful anagram of “Brian Eno”) selects from 30 hours of interviews with Eno that Hustwit conducted and 500 hours of archival footage, fitting it into a structure that lasts about 90 minutes. According to the Brain One programmer Brendan Dawes, 52 quintillion possible versions of the movie exist. I did not even know, before seeing this film, that “52 quintillion” was a real number.

Some of my favorite parts of the version of “Eno” that I saw concerned his work as a producer. He’s certainly been a prolific one, working with traditional rock bands (Coldplay, U2), avant-garde composers (Harold Budd) and a whole lot of legends in between (David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads). Eno is neither a classically trained musician nor a conventional technician, and his role in the studio can be hard to define — maddeningly so, to certain record-label executives over the years. Admitted Bowie, in a clip from the film I saw, “I don’t really know what he does.” He meant that as a compliment.

The most interesting parts of “Eno,” for me, shed a little more light on that elusive “what.” As a producer, he is equal parts agitator and sage. When he and Bowie were hitting a wall during the making of Bowie’s 1977 landmark “‘Heroes,’” they each pulled cards from Eno’s deck of Oblique Strategies cards, which provide creative jumping-off points; the result was the hypnotic ambient composition “Moss Garden.” When Bono was struggling to complete a soon-to-be classic U2 track, Eno showed patience. When Talking Heads were looking for a new musical direction before making “Remain in Light,” Eno played them one of his all-time favorite musicians, Fela Kuti. The rest — in so many clips of Eno in the studio — is history.

Inspired by “Eno,” today’s playlist is a collection of songs produced by the man himself. Eno the Producer is merely one side of this multifaceted artist, but I appreciated that the sense of multiplicity baked into the structure of “Eno” speaks to how difficult it is to define him with a single identity. There are probably nearly 52 quintillion possible Brian Eno playlists I could have made — Jon Pareles made another in 2020, selecting 15 of Eno’s best ambient compositions — but here is the one I chose. It flows well from start to finish, but if you’re feeling inspired by Hustwit’s generative approach, you’re certainly welcome to put it on shuffle.

Line my eyes and call me pretty,

Lindsay