Brian Eno

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno was born in Woodbridge, England, on May 15, 1948. Raised in rural Suffolk, an area neighboring a U.S. Air Force base, as a child he grew enamored of the "Martian music" of doo wop and early rock & roll broadcast on American Armed Forces radio; a subsequent tenure at art school introduced him to the work of contemporary composers John Tilbury and Cornelius Cardew, as well as minimalists John Cage, LaMonte Young, and Terry Riley. Instructed in the principles of conceptual painting and sound sculpture, Eno began experimenting with tape recorders, which he dubbed his first musical instrument, finding great inspiration in Steve Reich's tape orchestration "It's Gonna Rain."

After joining the avant-garde performance art troupe Merchant Taylor's Simultaneous Cabinet, as well as assuming vocal and "signals generator" duties with the improvisational rock unit Maxwell Demon, Eno joined Cardew's Scratch Orchestra in 1969, later enlisting as a clarinetist with the Portsmouth Sinfonia. In 1971 he rose to prominence as a member of the seminal glam band Roxy Music, playing the synthesizer and electronically treating the band's sound. A flamboyant enigma decked out in garish makeup, pastel feather boas, and velvet corsets, his presence threatened the focal dominance of frontman Bryan Ferry, and relations between the two men became strained; finally, after just two LPs -- 1972's self-titled debut and 1973's brilliant For Your Pleasure -- Eno exited Roxy's ranks to embark on a series of ambitious side projects.

The first, 1973's No Pussyfooting, was recorded with Robert Fripp; for the sessions Eno began developing a tape-delay system, dubbed "Frippertronics," which treated Fripp's guitar with looped delays in order to ultimately employ studio technology as a means of musical composition, thereby setting the stage for the later dominance of sampling in hip-hop and electronica. Eno soon turned to his first solo project, the frenzied and wildly experimental Here Come the Warm Jets, which reached the U.K. Top 30. During a brief tenure fronting the Winkies, he mounted a series of British live performances despite ill health; less than a week into the tour, Eno's lung collapsed, and he spent the early part of 1974 hospitalized.

Upon recovering, he traveled to San Francisco, where he stumbled upon the set of postcards depicting a Chinese revolutionary opera that inspired 1974's Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), another sprawling, free-form collection of abstract pop. A 1975 car accident which left Eno 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. Heralded by the release of 1975's minimalist Another Green World, Eno plunged completely into ambient with his next instrumental effort, Discreet Music, the first chapter in a ten-volume series of experimental works issued on his own Obscure label.

After returning to pop structures for 1977's Before and After Science, Eno continued his ambient experimentation with Music for Films, a collection of fragmentary pieces created as soundtracks for imaginary motion pictures. Concurrently, he became a much-sought-after collaborator and producer, teaming with the German group Cluster as well as David Bowie, with whom he worked on the landmark trilogy Low, Heroes, and Lodger. Additionally, Eno produced the seminal no wave compilation No New York and in 1978 began a long, fruitful union with Talking Heads, his involvement expanding over the course of the albums More Songs About Buildings and Food and 1979's Fear of Music to the point that by the time of 1980's world music-inspired Remain in Light, Eno and frontman David Byrne shared co-writing credits on all but one track. Friction with Byrne's bandmates hastened Eno's departure from the group's sphere, but in 1981 he and Byrne reunited for My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, a landmark effort that fused electronic music with a pioneering use of Third World percussion.

In the interim, Eno continued to perfect the concept of ambient sound with 1978's Music for Airports, a record designed to calm air passengers against fears of flying and the threat of crashes. In 1980, he embarked on collaborations with minimalist composer Harold Budd (The Plateaux of Mirror) and avant trumpeter Jon Hassell (Possible Musics) as well as Acadian producer Daniel Lanois, with whom Eno would emerge as one of the most commercially successful production teams of the 1980s, helming a series of records for the Irish band U2 (most notably The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby) that positioned the group as one of the world's most respected and popular acts. Amidst this flurry of activity, Eno remained dedicated to his solo work, moving from the earthbound ambience of 1982's On Land on to other worlds for 1983's Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks, a collection of space-themed work created in tandem with Lanois and Eno's brother Roger. In 1985, Eno resurfaced with Thursday Afternoon, the soundtrack to a VHS cassette of "video paintings" by artist Christine Alicino.

After Eno produced John Cale's 1989 solo effort Words for the Dying, the duo collaborated on 1990's Wrong Way Up, the first record in many years to feature Eno vocals. Two years later he returned with the solo projects The Shutov Assembly and Nerve Net, followed in 1993 by Neroli; Glitterbug, a 1994 soundtrack to a posthumously released film by Derek Jarman, was subsequently reworked by Jah Wobble and issued in 1995 as Spinner. In addition to his musical endeavors, Eno also frequently ventured into other realms of media, beginning in 1980 with the vertical-format video Mistaken Memories of Medieval Manhattan; along with designing a 1989 art installation to help inaugurate a Shinto shrine in Japan and 1995's Self-Storage, a multimedia work created with Laurie Anderson, he also published a diary, 1996's A Year with Swollen Appendices, and formulated Generative Music I, a series of audio screen savers for home computer software. In August of 1999, Sonora Portraits, a collection of Eno's previous ambient tracks and a 93-page companion booklet, was published.

Around 1998, Eno was working heavily in the world of art installations and a series of his installation soundtracks started to appear, most in extremely limited editions (making them instant collectors items). In 2000 he teamed with German DJ Jan Peter Schwalm for the Japanese-only release Music for Onmyo-Ji. The duo's work got worldwide distribution the next year with Drawn from Life, an album that kicked off Eno's relationship with the Astralwerks label. In 2004, Virgin and Astralwerks began a reissue campaign of his early EG albums. The campaign continued into 2005, the year Eno released his first solo vocal album in 15 years, Another Day on Earth. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was reissued in 2006 with seven unheard tracks added to the album

Brian Eno and the Microsoft Sound

The other day, poking around my computer, I happened to click on the "Properties" dialogue box of "The Microsoft Sound". This little sound file, which plays each time Windows 95 starts, is familiar to all users of the operating system (at least those users that have a sound card on their PC's). I first got a look at Windows 95 three years ago and the little sound, heard hundreds, perhaps thousands of times since then, has become as familiar and mundane as the other audio of my daily life -- the alarm clock, the ring of my telephone, the sound of my upstairs apartment neighbor working out on some tortuous exercise machine. But there's something different about the Microsoft Sound -- something erie, disturbing, and disconcerting.

It surprised me to examine the properties of The Microsoft Sound and discover that the "Author" of the sound isn't some Microsoftie, locked away in a room in Redmond with a Visual C++ laptop in one hand and a synthesizer in the other. The Sound was created by the eminent and well-known composer of aural wallpaper for airports and other bland spaces, Brian Eno. It brought to mind the ad campaign when Windows 95 was released and the exorbident amount of cash paid to those living statues of rock antiquity, the Rolling Stones, to "Start" us all up. I was expecting screaming guitars and white-man's faux blues when I installed Windows 95. Instead, I got calming New Age synthesizer.

How much money has Brian Eno made from the "Microsoft Sound"? Was he paid a flat fee? Is the composition registered with ASCAP or BMI? Think about it -- as Windows 95 has become the dominant operating system on the PC platform in the US (and perhaps worldwide), Eno's royalties from the Sound could be enough to buy the former Soviet Union. In the heralded capitalistic system created for the protection of very well known composers, musicians, record producers, and music corporate types, Eno has the possibility to earn his keep in several ways. Perhaps Eno received a flat fee for the sound as a contract worker for Microsoft. In that case, he could charge a fortune since he would be giving up all rights to the Sound in the future. (One wonders if, in this case, he received any benefits such as stock options or health insurance, just like a full-time, permanent Microsoft employee.) Eno could be receiving a royalty for each copy of the Microsoft Sound sold with Windows 95, similar to the moneys received by musicians and their managers when they sell a compact disc (or "LP" in my day). There could also be mechanical royalties involved -- did you realize that a composer and musician receives funds each time a recording is played on a jukebox? Is a record kept of the number of times the Microsoft Sound is played on our machines to tally the annual amount of Microsoft tithing to post-modern composers?

Perhaps it is no surprise that Brian Eno was called on to create (is compose the right word here?) The Microsoft Sound. Eno has built an entire career on high-art music that the listener is not supposed to actually hear. It is no coincidence that just over the hill from Redmond, the offices of Microsoft, is Seattle, the international headquarters for Muzak, that corporate purveyor of aural wallpaper for elevators and, yes, airports. It is interesting to note that the people who started the alternative "grunge" rock sound to rebel against the plastic world of Michael Jackson and New Wave originally worked at Muzak in Seattle.

Far more interesting than the economics of the Eno-Gates connection are the questions raised by the nuances of the composition itself -- just what is the Microsoft Sound? I remember the first time I heard it. Visiting a friend who was Beta testing Windows 95 and had just set it up on his system, he started the computer, the desktop appeared and I said, "My God--that sounds like something from Days of Our Lives!" Since then, I've asked several people what it sounds like, and most agree that it sounds like some kind of music from a soap opera.

Recently, however, I have started thinking about that observation further -- the Microsoft Sound isn't just music from a soap opera, it is a piece of music that would serve a very specific purpose in a daytime drama. The Sound is not something that would be used to open or close a soap opera, but would probably be used as a subtle "bridge" between scenes. It starts with a gentle crescendo, implying a note of completion but is unresolved and continues, not to a resolution, but sliding into a statement that repeats and fades into the background.

That particular quality of the Microsoft Sound is what makes it so disconcerting. I often wonder if it taps into some deeply hidden inner child within us. I imagine Bill Gates meeting with Eno and the marketing and ergonomic experts of Microsoft to choose the Start Up Sound for Windows 95. Gates hears it, subconsciously going back to a childhood filled with erector sets, toy calculators, and perhaps a toy mainframe computer with tiny little toy punch cards that started him thinking about DOS. A television plays in the background as the inner child Gates plays computer and a soap on the tube transitions from one scene to another. Back in the present, in Redmond, Gates nods and says, "Yes ... this one."

Considering the predominance of Windows computers in the home and workplace and the number of times we hear the Microsoft Sound each day, don't you think it may awaken that same deep subconscious inner child within all of us? We arrive at work and turn on our computer; we hear the Sound and begin the day. Our computer shuts down promptly at 5:00 pm, silent, with no "Shut Down" sound. We go home, turn on our computer, the Microsoft Sound acting as a "bridge" between the scene at work that just ended and the scene at home that is just beginning. The process repeats when we go to work the next day.

Windows 95 has come a long way in the past two years and so have we. The OJ Simpson Trial. The confrontational talk show hosts like Jerry Springer. The sex scandals at the White House. The daytime drama of fiction has sprung to life in prime time television and the evening newscasts. The Microsoft Sound, in its own way, provides a soundtrack for the soap opera that is the days of our lives.

rand

The author is an Academic Computing Specialist at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He once estimated that he hears the Microsoft Sound at least forty times each day.

rand@coolcatdaddy.com

Discography:

After The Heat

Ambient 1, Music For Airports