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Brian Eno

Brian Eno is without a doubt one of the most important artists in rock history. Although he remains slitghly less known than many of his collaborators (including glam rock legend David Bowie), waht Eno has brought to underground and mainstream music is undeniable. Having worked with so many different types of music, it's surprising to hear how his work still feels remarkably his own, whether they be his early glam rock albums, his ambient works or even the albums he's produced. Everything he would touch would bare his unmistakable mark.

I've known about Eno for quite some time, but he has always remained somewhat of an obscure figure for me. It took me many years to actually realize just how big he acutally was. I'll always remember a friend of mine who was a huge Bowie fan who would constantly mention him as being equally important. Until then, my vision of Eno was that of yet another "rock legend", like Led Zeppelin or Bowie, I didn't see a difference, this was all dinosaur rock to these young (but curious) ears. This person was huge fan of the electronica scene which was getting a lot of attention at the time (this is mid to late nineties when I was working in a music store in downtown Montreal). I was already a fan of Philip Glass at the time and my friend mentioned they were about to collaborate so I basically just had to finally give him a try. That and I had been very impressed by the collaboration between Ui and Stereolab (the influence of Eno's early efforts on the latter group are quite obvious) where they covered his work St-Elmo's Fire. Not knowing much about him or where to start, I asked my friend for some advice: Ambient 1: Music For Airports. What a peculiar title, it didn't sound remotely like your habitual rock record album title. That's when I learned of Eno's pioneering work in ambient music (a term which it is said he has fathered). Similarly to Muzak (elevator music), the sounds produced were meant to be "forgotten" or more precisely it was meant for one to lose him or herself within these sounds. It felt like nothing was changing, the tones constant or repetitive (perhaps a look back at his earlier experimental forefathers like La Monte Young), but if one was attentive, small shifts would emerge.

I fell in love with Music For Airports, it's sounds impressed me immensily and I bought the album then and there. It took another ten years before I would decide to dive much deeper and decide to go ahead and get as much of his work as I could. His name would surface here and there throughout the years as I discovered other bands, there was just no more excuses to escape anymore, I needed to know more and went ahead and purchased a pretty complete CD lot of his work on eBay. Many hours of listening ahead of me and I can't wait.

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