Brian Eno Impact on EDM
In all of Ambient electronic music history there has been nobody more influential and impactful than Brian Eno. The Brian Eno impact is ubiquitous with the genre of Ambient music. He is even the person who coined the term “Ambient” to describe the music. Ambient music is electronic music that is beatless. It is not “dance” music in any real sense, but it is important to the tale of Electronic Dance Music. In common parlance nowadays, the term Ambient also can refer to experimental music that doesn’t have a regular dance beat. It is often played in Chill Rooms at parties and festivals. Brian Eno is one of the fathers of that sound and culture!
Brian Eno impact has bled into all forms of EDM due to his experimentation with sound via synthesizers! Eno is one of the very first musicians to embrace the new synthesizers. He starts in the 1960s when the equipment was still huge analog modular rigs that were for studio use only. He also is a trailblazer when the new mobile synths by makers like Moog and Buchla in the 1970s. If it has been the cutting edge of synthesizer based music, Brian Eno has been there since the very beginning!
Brian Eno’s birthday is May 15th, this week, so I think it makes good, timely sense to explore and chart his impact on Electronic Dance Music. His influence is massive! Brian Eno impact on EDM can be illustrated by the fact he has samples in 399 songs, 756 covers, and 94 remixes! What an enormous chartable impact! In addition, his vision of how synthesizers are used to make music has touched all forms of EDM. Every serious lover of Electronic Music has at least heard of Brian Eno!
Brian Eno Bio
Born as Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno in Suffolk, England on May 15, 1948. For his music career he shortened it to the simpler, Brian Eno. He is a British musician, composer, record producer and visual artist best known for his contributions to Ambient music and work in rock, pop and electronica. Completely unsurprising, his formal education was at two different colleges to get a degree from studying Experimental Music.
Honestly, his greatest long-standing accomplishment is in the realm of Electronic Music, which his explorations into sound vastly influenced. “Eno champions theory over practice, serendipity over forethought, and texture over craft; in the process, he forever altered the ways in which music is approached, composed, performed, and perceived, and everything from punk to techno to new age bears his unmistakable influence.” (allmusic.com)
He was keyboard and tape delay player for Roxy Music from 1971 to 1973. After he left Roxy Music he was a member of several other rock or experimental bands. He then began releasing solo projects. In 1978 he released “Ambient1: Music For Airports”, from which the genre he is best known for takes its name. That music is Ambient music. He is known for his synthesizer music, tape delay work, and electronic effects innovations.
In addition to his musical endeavors, Eno also frequently ventured into other realms of media. He is well known for art installations. Eno also has done multiple experimental video art projects. Also, he has even done a series of screen savers for computers. Therefore, his body of work is very diverse! With that being said, music is what he is best known for.
Brian Eno Music
Brian Eno impact is in the fact he is a prolific producer of innovative music that changed the musical landscape. It is also in the influence his music has on other musicians’ art. He is best known for his Ambient music productions. That is also what has led to his greatest impact on EDM.
“A 1975 car accident that left him bedridden for several months resulted in perhaps his most significant innovation, the creation of ambient music. Unable to move to turn up his stereo to hear above the din of a rainstorm, he realized that music could assume the same properties as light or color, and blend thoroughly into its given atmosphere without upsetting the environmental balance.” (allmusic.com). This epiphany led to the creation of an entirely new style of music that is still alive and well today!
He’s credited with creating the genre of music, Ambient, and for giving it its name. Thereby, there really isn’t any more of an impact one musician can have! That’s epic! What a legacy. Brian Eno has released a host of Ambient albums through his solo work as well as albums that are Ambient in groups. He has been prolific in his release of music consistently from the 1970s up into modern 2000s. Many of his best loved works are in collaborations with other established artists. With regard to EDM, he has work on Astralwerks and Warp records. Additionally, he has work with Jon Hopkins and a member of Underworld, as well as many others!
His Music Through Examples
Truthfully, I say in many previous episodes, the real evaluation of the impact an artist makes is through listening to their music! Although that is true, it is worth noting how many sampled songs, covers, and remixes his music has led to. There are 400 songs sampling his music, 759 covers, and 94 remixes. That’s an enormous discography of impacted music from his own work!
For this section we are going to use one of his songs for each example, sampled, covered, and remixed, We will give an example of the song and then one of the song that came from it. It is only a cursory examination of his wide body of work! To explore a wider range of his music, you can follow the link below for a list of his “50 Best Songs” he produced.
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/playlist-the-50-best-songs-produced-by-brian-eno/
Samples
As I said, 400 songs have sampled his music. It is tough to decide which song to share with you simply because this discography is huge – there’s too many songs to choose from! The work I most associate with Brian Eno is flowing, floating atmospheres of synthy sound layered and evolving. So, we picked one of those to show you! It the 1983 hour “Long Version” of the Ambient classic, “An Ending (Ascent)”. There is also a 4 minute version of it on an album. We are sharing the extended version though. There’s a huge array of sounds to sample from this piece and the long length!
The album is available for purchase on vinyl through Discogs:
The song that sampled it is a perfect choice to see how big his impact is on other synth-based musical genres, such as Trance. Trance veterans, Above & Beyond, make a serious masterpiece of quality Trance using multiple elements from the original song! Here, take a listen:
The 12-inch single of this song is available through Discogs:
https://www.discogs.com/release/913979-Above-Beyond-Feat-Zo%C3%AB-Johnston-Good-For-Me
Covers
Brian Eno is famous for his Ambient music, but also is well known for experimental music in general. He has done an enormous amount of solo work but also collaborates with a huge array of other artists. Therefore, the list of songs produced by Brian Eno offers a wide vantage of musical styles to choose from. If you were to cover a song by U2, there’s a good chance you’d be covering a song written and produced by Brian Eno! We’ll see more of this phenomenon when we look at remixes of his work.
This particular song from the mid-1970s by Brian Eno is more of the experimental music style. It has the feel of a Psychedelic Rock song you would hear from Jimi Hendrix. Heavily effected guitars an trippy vocals layer over an ambient drone. The whole feel of the song is a trippy, demented romp down the mind of a crazy person having an episode. Experimental Rock at its finest! Take a listen!
You can pick up a copy of the 7-inch single – it is on at Discogs:
https://www.discogs.com/release/1215431-Eno-Babys-On-Fire
The cover of the song is a piece of amazing! It has become a club classic and is quite sought after. The band is Superpitcher and the song is still titled, “Baby’s On Fire”. It is a slice of sophisticated Tech House. Sharp beats and minimal, clean percussion, it has a nice vocalist singing the words to the Brian Eno classic! Take a listen!
Pick up a copy of the 12-inch single from Discogs:
https://www.discogs.com/release/255852-Superpitcher-Babys-On-Fire
Remixes
As I said, his music has been remixed almost 100 times. Crazy…. Brian Eno impact through the official remixing of his own music has produced some masterpieces! As I stated earlier, Eno has collaborated with an enormous number of other artists from U2 and Robert Fripp to Underworld and our song below, Gavin Bryars.
This song is a pure, Ambient soundscape from 1975. It’s amazing to think he doing this style of music and working with synthesizers 50 years ago! Brian Eno wrote and produced the song. Effectively he made it. It is far ahead of its time. Take a listen!
You can buy this album using this link to Discogs:
https://www.discogs.com/release/25136773-Gavin-Bryars-The-Sinking-Of-The-Titanic
After hearing the original song you can probably imagine that it is perfect for a modern remix! The trick with this remix was to maintain the Ambient nature of the original song while updating it to a new, fresh approach! I can’t personally think of anyone better to do that than the modern day Mozart, Mr. Richard James, aka Aphex Twin!
The Aphex Twin “Big Drum Mix” does a phenomenal job of staying true to the mood of the original while completely creating something new and exciting! Aptly named the “Big Drum Mix”, Aphex Twin adds a punishing kettle drum banging Trip Hop beat under Eno’s Ambient soundscape making it a tasty bit of IDM, or Intelligent Dance Music! This is Aphex Twin at his best! What a fitting honor for Brian Eno. It really is the pairing of two musical geniuses! Take a listen!
You can pick up a copy of this remix on the compilation “26 Mixes For Cash” or as a CD single on Discogs:
https://www.discogs.com/master/32301-Gavin-Bryars-Raising-The-Titanic-The-Aphex-Twin-Mixes
Conclusion
This was a very powerful episode for me. I knew of Brian Eno and knew some cursory information on his Bio, but I knew nothing of his music or details of his discography and body of work. Mostly, I just knew he made up the term Ambient to describe the beatless music. Researching and writing this episode has been a great education for me. I learned so much! I hope you learned a bunch too!
Brian Eno really is an amazing musician and visionary. His body of work is vast and so innovative it defies comprehension! I hope you feel that you now know a bit about him and understand his impact on EDM! With every episode, we try to bring you knowledge about the roots of EDM and still make it interesting and engaging. I think that is accomplished here.
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