Listening to Roxy Music’s 1972 debut album on vinyl in the morning and then going to see the film Eno in the afternoon brings into even sharper relief the distance that the creative world has travelled in the interim and just how much our active listening experience has changed. On the former, the man who is Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno plays an analog synthesiser and draws upon a series of fairly rudimentary tape effects to further enhance the Roxy sound. The latter, taking its title from his surname, is a “generative documentary” whereby the film’s production processes mean that every single time it is shown the viewer’s experience will be different due to the inherent specially developed software that randomly selects alternative scenes.
An opening montage fast-forwards us through Eno’s extensive and most varied career from his brief time in the highly stylised art-pop ensemble Roxy Music to one of his more recent roles as a keynote speaker delivering presentations on the evolution of culture and societal advancement. Across those five decades, we catch glimpses of his work as a musician in his own right, countless collaborations with others, record producer, visual artist, and climate change activist.
Directed by Gary Hustwit, Eno boldly eschews the familiar talking head interview trademark of most music documentaries, concentrating instead on a series of Eno’s own reflections on art and life taken through the ages. Interspersed by various archive footage of him, Eno covers a wide range of topics including mention of his early influences such as the great minimalist composers John Cage and Terry Riley, his vision of making connections between intellectualism and the muscularity of rock’n’roll, androgyny, and the impact upon him when he first heard the “incessant ferocity” of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti.
Eno also speaks amusingly and with great self-deprecation of how his position as the “forefather of ambient music” and the adjective “Eno-esque” became such derisory terms they eventually resulted in “having so much shit heaped on me.” As a consequence of this opprobrium, he turned down a request from Joni Mitchell to work with her on an ambient record, a decision that he still clearly regrets.
Largely recorded either in his home studio or garden, Eno’s musings on the exponential increases in human capability and environmental threat, art, and our wider understanding of the world are cerebral, insightful and fascinating. In the film David Bowie says about working with Eno, “he changes the parameters of what you are doing.” This film will also change the ways in which you think about the creation of art in general and listening to music in particular.
In this unique version of the film the closing scene has the American avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson reading from one of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies’ cards. “Is it finished?” she asks. Such is his inexhaustible creative energy, supreme vision, and constant desire to keep moving forward, with Eno you suspect it never is.
Eno showed at the City Screen cinema in York on 16th July 2024.
