BRIAN ENO: DISCREET MUSIC (1975)
1) Discreet Music; 2) Fullness
Of Wind; 3) French Catalogues; 4) Brutal Ardour.
First things first: in general, I «like» and
«accept» Eno's ambient albums, or, rather, the philosophy behind these albums.
They are not supposed to be listened to — they are supposed to be heard when you're busy doing other
tasks, and not only is that something right up every reviewer's alley, it is
an understandable and perhaps even necessary niche, that «furniture music»
conception of Satie's. Of course, any
piece of music could become furniture music if you so desired, but the mistake
of so many mediocre artists is that they aim for loftier goals while never
rising above furniture music level — not to mention that, like furniture itself,
furniture music can widely vary in quality.
Do not, therefore, make the mistake of
listening to Discreet Music
intently, in order to achieve some transcendental illumination or advance to
Arhat level with a super cheat code. Legend says that the idea to make this
kind of music came to Brian when he was lying in a hospital bed, listening to
an album of 18th century harp music with the volume turned all the way down,
unable to get out of bed and turn it up — «feeling» the sounds rather than
«hearing» them directly. Perhaps if this accident had not happened, he would
have gone on making pop records, all the way into 1986 and beyond. But it did,
and although Discreet Music is not
tied into it directly (not featuring any harp music at all), it marks the start
of the gradual, and utterly painless, transmutation of Brian Eno into
furniture.
As a first try, though, the album is distinctly
different from the «typical» Eno ambient album. The first side (30 minutes of
the title track) is all electronic, but the second side is not — it consists of
three minimalist chamber pieces, performed by the so-called «Cockpit Ensemble»,
conducted by Gavin Bryars who also co-arranged the pieces with Eno, all three
being «deconstructed» variations on Pachelbel's Canon In D Major. In the future, Eno would largely refrain from
twiddling around with classical motives (at least those not transposed to the electronic
format), but this remains a curious and somewhat unique experiment, though,
obviously, not to everybody's liking.
The algorithmic nature of ʽDiscreet Musicʼ has
been described in many sources, and I would probably mess something up trying
to retell the process — all that interests us, really, is that there are only
two simple superimposed musical phrases here, produced by an EMS Synthi AKS
machine and then subtly played around with for half an hour. The «melody» has a
becalming, somewhat pastoral feel (you could imagine it as a call-and-response
session between several shepherds, piping each other in some high mountainous
area), and for about three or four minutes, you could even give it your
attention — then go on about your business if you have any business. If you don't... well... try to get some. It'll
save you the trouble of hating the track's last twenty minutes, and pointless
hatred tends to shorten people's life spans.
The three «Pachelbel variations», all based on
cutting out small pieces of the original and stretching, twisting, and looping
them until they begin to look like polyethylene pieces under a microscope, all
have the same mood and feel — a seemingly endless sea of extended violin tones.
Fortunately, the violins are well tuned and there is no musical hooliganry
involved, so the sound never becomes irritating, which is an essential quality
for furniture music.
The simple reason why this experiment, to me,
looks like a successful one, is because it lacks ideological pretense.
«Minimalism» as such tends to take itself seriously, even when the minimalist
is clearly endowed with a sense of humor — think Steve Reich, for instance —
and this results in experiments that are ugly and crazy when you «listen» and
annoying and off-putting when you restrict yourself to «hearing». Eno's
understanding of ambient, however, has not the slightest intention of messing
up our layman conventions of «musical beauty» — such as were, among other
people, set up by the likes of Pachelbel himself.
The idea is simple: you just cut yourself out a
small piece of that beauty, then magnify it tenfold, fiftyfold, hundredfold,
and set it out as a desktop background, and see (hear) what happens. It is even
reflected, I believe, to some degree in the punny album title: this is
«discreet» music, as in, «music to be played privately and quietly», and it is
also «discrete» music, consisting of these separate chopped-up and meticulously
scrutinized pieces, each of which is taxed to the max for every ounce of
«beauty» it can yield. I am totally at home with this ideology, as long as I am
not forced to play this stuff at top volume with my ears glued to the speakers.
I will not, however, give it — or any of Eno's «good» ambient albums, for that
matter — an individual «thumbs up», since it kind of goes against my principles
to describe furniture music in terms of blue, red, or gray. And in any case, discreet
music should be rated discreetly. No need to shout about it.
This one is on my short list of introductory albums that sabotaged my interest in exploring the artist's work until much later.
ReplyDeleteAnother one was something something "...That You Can Dance To"
"Music That You Can Dance To" by Sparks?
DeleteThere are early examples of, if not exactly "minimalist" music, then western avant garde music that goes on for a long time with very little seeming to happen, that are certainly ugly and crazy, and maybe even count as conventionally beautiful: Dennis Johnson's "November," Harold Budd's "Madrigals of the Rose Angel," maybe Morton Feldman's "Rothko Chapel" et al.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting idea, though, that Eno gets around the latent annoying quality of even the gentlest, prettiest examples of that kind of music by designing it to not be listened to. (Though I'm not sure he does get around it.)
Personally, I like this the best of his ambient albums because I find the synthesizer tones used in the title track to be particularly lovely.
Jesus: meant to write "certainly NOT ugly and crazy."
Delete