One of life’s universal truths is that Brian Eno is cool. The collar-feathered, gangly limbed, pretty-boy Seventies Brian Eno is cool - the nice-suit, take your breath away blue eyed Eno is cool - the greying, 'yeah I’m ENO who fucking cares' pinned tweet Eno is definitely cool. So of course, not satisfied with turning one-dimensional musicians such as U2 into transcendent megastars; and right after he declared himself a 'non-musician' - Eno expanded his already incredible repertoire out of music into soundtracks for expansive, life-shuddering, paradigm-shift inducing, art.
Now, for the first time, he brings us a collection of these love-letters to the soundscape; in the six volume mantra-mold Music for Installations. This collection of his most ambient and interesting soundtracks is presented here in a contemporary art crescendo; and features the good, the better and the synthesized from his artsy endeavours.
The collection provides us with all the evidence we need to prove that Eno remains the clear king of the discordant, ambient universe. Whilst nine volumes of sanitised drones, whistles, clicks and half-harmonies may seen inaccessible from the exterior; on listen - you find that Music for Installations is anything but.
It's music for spas run by bleached eyebrow goths from Berlin. Spas with massage therapists who sport mullets like Yolandi Visser, black-eyed contact lenses who’ll bless the room with sage before they invite you in. Ethereal. Exciting. Danger, but only slight. The sparse knowledge that you’ll finish the record changed, even if that change is only slight.
