Musicians - Brian Eno

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	Musicians - Brian Eno

Brian Peter George St. Jean le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (born 15 May 1948 in Woodbridge, Suffolk) is a British electronic musician, music theorist and record producer. As a solo artist, he is probably best known as the father of ambient music.

Eno first came to prominence as the keyboard and synthesiser player and general sonic wizard of the 1970's glam and art rock band Roxy Music (see 1970s in music). After leaving the group, Eno recorded two highly idiosyncratic and original rock albums, before turning to more abstract soundscapes on subsequent albums such as Another Green World (1975) and Ambient 1/Music for Airports (1978). Since then, he has produced dozens of albums (many with similarly-minded collaborators such as Harold Budd and Robert Fripp) which have demonstrated his unique approach to music. He has also occasionally returned to the pop song format.

His production credits include some of the most respected albums by Talking Heads and U2.

Contrary to popular belief, Brian Eno did not produce David Bowie's popular Berlin Trilogy (Low, "Heroes", and Lodger). He performed and co-wrote tracks on all three albums, but they were produced by Bowie and Tony Visconti. He did, however, co-produce Bowie's 1995 album 1. Outside.

Eno has pursued several artistic ventures parallel to his music career, including visual art installations, a regular column in the newspaper The Observer and, with artist Peter Schmidt, Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards recommending various artistic strategies.

Education and early musical career

Eno was educated at the Ipswich Art School and the Winchester School of Art, graduating from the latter in 1969. While at art school, he developed an interest in using tape recorders as musical instruments, and he experimented with his first (sometimes improvisational) bands.

Roxy Music

Eno started his professional musical career in London, co-founding the highly-successful glam/art-rock band Roxy Music, working with them from 1971 to 1973. As a self-professed "non-musician", at the band's early live shows Eno was to be found not on stage, but behind the mixing desk, where his efforts went way beyond the usual balancing of the volume levels: he would process the instrument sounds through his VCS3 synthesizer, tape recorders and other electronic devices, frequently singing backing vocals as well. Eno soon graduated to join the rest of Roxy on stage however, where his bizarre costumes contributed to a large part of the band's visual appeal. Public interest in Eno fuelled a rivalry between him and Roxy's leader, Bryan Ferry, who sacked him from the band on completion of the tour for their second album, while expecting Eno to keep his share of the band's considerable debts.

Solo work

Eno embarked on a solo career almost immediately. Between 1973 and 1977 he created four influential solo albums of electronically inflected pop songs – Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), Another Green World and Before and After Science. Tiger Mountain contains the galloping "Third Uncle", one of Eno's best-known songs. Critic Dave Thompson writes that the song is "a near punk attack of riffing guitars and clattering percussion, "Third Uncle" could, in other hands, be a heavy metal anthem, albeit one whose lyrical content would tongue-tie the most slavish air guitarist."

During this period, he also toured with Phil Manzanera in the band 801, a "supergroup" that played more or less mutated selections from albums by Eno, Manzanera, and Quiet Sun, as well as covers of classic songs by The Beatles and The Kinks.

He was a prominent member of the performance art-classical orchestra the Portsmouth Sinfonia - having started playing with them in 1972. In 1973 he produced the orchestra's first album The Portsmouth Sinfonia Plays the Popular Classics (released in March 1974) and in 1974 he produced the live album Hallellujah! The Portsmouth Sinfonia Live At The Royal Albert Hall of their infamous May 1974 concert (released in October 1974.) In addition to producing both albums, Eno perfomed in the orchestra on both recordings - playing the clarinet. Eno also deployed the orchestra's famously dissonant string section on his second solo album Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). The orchestra at this time included other musicians whose solo work he would subsequently release on his Obscure label including Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman.

Eno continued his career by producing a larger number of highly eclectic and increasingly ambient electronic and acoustic albums. He is widely cited as coining the term "ambient music," low-volume music designed to modify one's perception of a surrounding environment, producing his Ambient series (Music for Airports, The Plateaux of Mirror, Day of Radiance and On Land).

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Musicians - Brian Eno

Education and early musical career

Roxy Music

Solo work

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