Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Brian Eno: The Innovator

Transcript

Brian Eno: The Innovator · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Not many musicians cite design or architecture as their inspiration,
0:32
Speaker 1: but sitting in a beautifully designed German airport in nineteen
0:35
Speaker 1: seventy eight, Brian Eno was inspired to create atmospheric music
0:39
Speaker 1: to complement the space. His landmark album Music for Airports followed,
0:45
Speaker 1: and with it Eno created ambient music, an entirely new
0:49
Speaker 1: genre that still thrives today. Brian ENO's fifty year career
0:56
Speaker 1: is teaming with innovation. He started out playing since in
0:59
Speaker 1: the early seventies as a member of the UK glam
1:02
Speaker 1: rock band Roxy Music, went on to record a series
1:05
Speaker 1: of solo albums and eventually produced career defining albums for
1:09
Speaker 1: a host of bands, including YouTube Devo and Cold Playing.
1:15
Speaker 1: His latest project is a radio station through Sono's Radio HD.
1:19
Speaker 1: He'll be streaming three hundred unreleased songs from his decades
1:23
Speaker 1: in music, including some that he's still making today. The
1:27
Speaker 1: station is called the Lighthouse, and on today's episode, Rick
1:31
Speaker 1: Rubin talks to Brian Eno a bit about that station
1:35
Speaker 1: and also about his love for the musical space that
1:38
Speaker 1: exists between humans and machines. Eno also recalls predicting the
1:43
Speaker 1: birth of hip hop and the back of a Cab
1:45
Speaker 1: with David Byrne and explains why listening to Beyonce playing
1:48
Speaker 1: through a wall is strangely satisfying. This is broken record
1:57
Speaker 1: liner notes for the Digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's
2:06
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin with Brian Eno. I'm gonna starting a funny
2:09
Speaker 1: place because just now, before we started, I was thinking
2:12
Speaker 1: about a lot of things, and the last thought that
2:14
Speaker 1: came up before I made notes this morning was to
2:17
Speaker 1: ask what was the last bit of technology to come
2:21
Speaker 1: along that has influenced the way you work? There have
2:26
Speaker 1: been a few. I've been working quite a lot with
2:30
Speaker 1: my friend Peter Chilvers, who's an musician and a coda
2:34
Speaker 1: and we've been working on ways of manipulating MIDI automatically
2:41
Speaker 1: and effectively. What we're doing is taking a MIDI signal
2:46
Speaker 1: and subjecting it to various probabilistic mutations. So, for instance,
2:52
Speaker 1: you have a stream of information going into the MIDI
2:55
Speaker 1: and you say leave out thirteen percent of that. So
2:59
Speaker 1: if you have a drum part, it sounds like the
3:02
Speaker 1: drummer's dropping a beat every so often, or we can
3:05
Speaker 1: say things like every one in twenty beats, double it
3:11
Speaker 1: or move it by a quarter beat. So we can
3:16
Speaker 1: take parts that are fairly fixed, or which are loops
3:20
Speaker 1: in fact, and we can suddenly bring them to life
3:23
Speaker 1: in some very very interesting and uncanny ways. It doesn't
3:28
Speaker 1: really sound like what humans would do, but it doesn't
3:31
Speaker 1: sound like what machines do either, so it's an interesting
3:35
Speaker 1: new zone. I think I've always liked those zones between
3:39
Speaker 1: the human and the mechanical. This is why I love
3:43
Speaker 1: all the voice treatments that are going on now so much,
3:45
Speaker 1: because that's always what I wanted to hear. One The
3:49
Speaker 1: one thing that used to be sacred you could never touch,
3:52
Speaker 1: was the voice, and I always thought, why not. You know,
3:55
Speaker 1: it's just another piece of electronic material, like anything else.
3:58
Speaker 1: We can do what we like with it. Do you
4:00
Speaker 1: ever feel like going the other way? Do you ever
4:03
Speaker 1: start with something that synthetical programmed and decide to create
4:09
Speaker 1: it with traditional instruments? Have you ever done that? I've
4:13
Speaker 1: done that, and it hasn't always been very successful. In fact,
4:18
Speaker 1: it's actually rather rarely being successful for me, and I
4:22
Speaker 1: think it's because what I enjoy about the use of
4:26
Speaker 1: the electronics and the computers is that they do things
4:30
Speaker 1: that humans can't do, and I really like that area
4:34
Speaker 1: just between what we can do and what machines can do.
4:38
Speaker 1: There's this sort of new area that is appearing. I mean,
4:42
Speaker 1: people are noticing it more and more, particularly with vocals.
4:46
Speaker 1: Suddenly there are these ways of singing that you've never
4:48
Speaker 1: heard before. And what's very interesting, of course, is that
4:52
Speaker 1: a new generation of people are learning to sing like that.
4:56
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever seen any of those
4:58
Speaker 1: wonderful things on YouTube where young people have clearly heard
5:03
Speaker 1: a Rihannah record or something like that and thought, oh,
5:06
Speaker 1: that's great, I'm going to sing like that, and they
5:09
Speaker 1: don't actually realize that it's done with an auto tune. Yes,
5:13
Speaker 1: that it was not possible to sing like that until
5:16
Speaker 1: somebody did it with a machine, and then somebody else thought, well,
5:20
Speaker 1: it's possible, so I'll do it. In the case of
5:23
Speaker 1: the first example, where you're removing bits of media information,
5:28
Speaker 1: would you say that the random aspect of the process
5:32
Speaker 1: is always at work for you? I like things when
5:36
Speaker 1: there's a layer of surprise, I suppose, and it's not
5:39
Speaker 1: because I have this John Cage and faith in randomness.
5:43
Speaker 1: For him, it was a sort of religious feeling that
5:47
Speaker 1: randomness tied you into the synchronicity of the world. Somehow,
5:52
Speaker 1: by using randomness, you allowed the state of things to
5:56
Speaker 1: affect your work. It's a nice idea, and I like
5:59
Speaker 1: it and I respect it in his work. For me,
6:01
Speaker 1: it's a way of searching a musical space that I
6:06
Speaker 1: wouldn't do using just my taste. I mean, one's taste
6:10
Speaker 1: tends to propel you into the same areas over and
6:14
Speaker 1: over again. The interesting thing about randomness is that sometimes
6:18
Speaker 1: you're taken somewhere that you didn't expect to go, and
6:22
Speaker 1: sometimes that turns out to be a really interesting new place.
6:27
Speaker 1: So randomness for me is really just a tool, just
6:31
Speaker 1: a way of taking me somewhere different. So it's not
6:34
Speaker 1: random for the sake of random. But through the random process,
6:38
Speaker 1: you find something new that you're looking for that you
6:41
Speaker 1: didn't know you were looking for. Essentially, that's exactly right. Yes,
6:45
Speaker 1: something happens and you kind of recognize that, you think, yes,
6:49
Speaker 1: that makes sense. The reason I think this is interesting
6:52
Speaker 1: is because I think what makes any work of art
6:56
Speaker 1: interesting is or gripping or effective, is the feeling that
7:02
Speaker 1: somebody was living, somebody was living it, somebody was alert
7:07
Speaker 1: and alive and passionate in some way, and the way
7:12
Speaker 1: you get into that state is by being an unfamiliar territory.
7:15
Speaker 1: I think you're you're most alive when you're not quite
7:20
Speaker 1: sure what is going on, when you're you're slightly flying
7:24
Speaker 1: by the seat of your pants and you have to
7:27
Speaker 1: negotiate it somehow. That's that's why we love improvisation so much,
7:32
Speaker 1: because people are deliberately putting themselves at risk in a way,
7:37
Speaker 1: soaring out into the unknown, and somehow dealing with it.
7:41
Speaker 1: And that process of hearing someone dealing with it is
7:45
Speaker 1: the difference between life and death in a piece of work.
7:48
Speaker 1: I think. So I suppose all all of the strategies
7:54
Speaker 1: and techniques that I use, and they are quite a
7:57
Speaker 1: lot of them. Besides randomness, are really ways of trying
8:03
Speaker 1: to find myself in a new place, because I get
8:06
Speaker 1: excited when I'm in a new place. I like being
8:09
Speaker 1: in unfamiliar surroundings. I always used to say that artists
8:13
Speaker 1: are either cowboys or farmers, really, and they're both both
8:18
Speaker 1: ways of being an artist to find you know, the
8:20
Speaker 1: farmer wants to find a piece of territory and fully
8:24
Speaker 1: explore it and exploit it. You know. You could say
8:28
Speaker 1: the last twenty years of Mandrea and was like that.
8:30
Speaker 1: When Mondrea finally settled on the style that we all
8:35
Speaker 1: know him for, he just carried on doing it. But
8:40
Speaker 1: the other kind of artist is the one who just
8:42
Speaker 1: wants to find somewhere new. He just wants to find
8:47
Speaker 1: the next frontier, the next piece of territory, and that's
8:50
Speaker 1: what he gets turned on by. So I think I'm
8:54
Speaker 1: more in the second category, though, people listening to my
8:58
Speaker 1: work would say, but it all sounds exactly the same, Brian.
9:06
Speaker 1: Do you have that same approach in life beyond? Are
9:09
Speaker 1: you an explorer? Have you lived all over the world?
9:12
Speaker 1: Do you continue to put yourself in new situations as
9:16
Speaker 1: a human being as opposed to an artist. I have
9:19
Speaker 1: such an amazing amount of inertia, you wouldn't believe it.
9:23
Speaker 1: I wouldn't leave my studio if I had the choice. Probably, No,
9:28
Speaker 1: it's not that bad. But the only reason I ever
9:31
Speaker 1: go anywhere really is because I don't have a choice.
9:34
Speaker 1: For instance, I had to go to New York in
9:37
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight do something for a week, and it
9:42
Speaker 1: was a nice, lovely weather. When I arrived, it was
9:45
Speaker 1: this time of year. Somebody said, well, I've got a
9:49
Speaker 1: sublet if you want to stay, And I ended up
9:52
Speaker 1: spending five years there just because it was a nice
9:56
Speaker 1: day when I arrived. Yes, I didn't have any intention
9:59
Speaker 1: of living in New York. And then I left New
10:02
Speaker 1: York because I had to go to Tokyo to do something.
10:06
Speaker 1: And I was away in Tokyo and somebody robbed my
10:09
Speaker 1: studio and took everything. Actually everything was gone, and somebody
10:15
Speaker 1: rang me up and said, your whole studio has disappeared.
10:18
Speaker 1: And I suddenly had this feeling of relief. I thought, oh,
10:23
Speaker 1: I don't have to go back to New York then,
10:25
Speaker 1: So then I moved to Toronto after that for a
10:29
Speaker 1: little while. But I don't really move very much unless
10:32
Speaker 1: I have to for some reason, or unless I don't
10:35
Speaker 1: plan things very well. I'm pretty happy wherever I am. Actually,
10:39
Speaker 1: I think we have that income and it's funny. I'm
10:43
Speaker 1: wondering if the urge to adventure creatively is the balance
10:51
Speaker 1: for the fact that we lived such her metical lives.
10:54
Speaker 1: I think that's a very good theory. Yes, I know
10:57
Speaker 1: that whatever I'm doing in my work always seems to
11:01
Speaker 1: be balancing what is happening in the rest of my life.
11:04
Speaker 1: For instance, when I lived in New York. I lived
11:06
Speaker 1: on a very very very noisy corner. It was on
11:11
Speaker 1: the corner of Broom and Broadway, so Broadway very busy street,
11:16
Speaker 1: and then Broom was the cross street where all the
11:19
Speaker 1: big trucks used to go on their way to the tunnel.
11:22
Speaker 1: I lived at the top of the building, but it
11:24
Speaker 1: used to kind of rock with this sound. And it
11:27
Speaker 1: was whilst I lived there that I made the quietest
11:30
Speaker 1: music I've ever made. And I'm sure what I was
11:34
Speaker 1: trying to do was to make the place in the
11:37
Speaker 1: music that I needed to be able to get to
11:40
Speaker 1: sometimes as a relief from living in New York. And
11:44
Speaker 1: then I moved back to England about two years later,
11:49
Speaker 1: three years later, and I moved to the countryside, to
11:52
Speaker 1: the town that I grew up in, very quiet, small
11:56
Speaker 1: country town. And then I made the loudest music I'd
12:01
Speaker 1: ever made in my life. Again, I think I needed
12:05
Speaker 1: a bit of city, I needed some grit, some noise.
12:10
Speaker 1: So yes, I think I think that's kind of what
12:13
Speaker 1: artists do. They're always making worlds, and sometimes worlds that
12:18
Speaker 1: they would just like to visit and look at. Sometimes
12:21
Speaker 1: worlds they would like to spend time in earlier, you
12:24
Speaker 1: said we're born with a particular taste. Do you feel
12:27
Speaker 1: like your current taste is the taste you were born
12:31
Speaker 1: with and or has it evolved and changed over the
12:35
Speaker 1: course of your life. That's a very good question. I
12:38
Speaker 1: remember when I first started painting, because painting was the
12:41
Speaker 1: first artistic thing I did. I never learned to play
12:44
Speaker 1: an instrument, so I was a painter as a kid.
12:49
Speaker 1: And I remember I loved combinations of red and blue
12:54
Speaker 1: that produced the mo violet range of the spectrum, and
12:58
Speaker 1: I did loads of paintings just exploring that sort of
13:03
Speaker 1: what I felt was a melancholy, deep area of color,
13:07
Speaker 1: and certainly the melancholy of it was a big part
13:11
Speaker 1: of what attracted me, and I don't think that's ever gone.
13:16
Speaker 1: I still have that feeling for It's sort of a
13:19
Speaker 1: nostalgia for other futures that could have happened but didn't.
13:25
Speaker 1: If you see what I mean. How old were you
13:27
Speaker 1: at this time that you were painting. Oh, I started
13:30
Speaker 1: when I was about nine or ten, but I got
13:33
Speaker 1: into the purple area when I was about thirteen or fourteen.
13:38
Speaker 1: I was very, very impressed by Mondrea, and from early
13:41
Speaker 1: on I used him as an example earlier, but I
13:44
Speaker 1: loved the simplicity of his pictures because I kept thinking,
13:47
Speaker 1: how can something that is so simple objectively, you know,
13:53
Speaker 1: how can that have such an effect on me? It
13:55
Speaker 1: was the closest thing to magic that I had ever seen,
14:00
Speaker 1: And at the same time I was I loved duop music.
14:04
Speaker 1: Now you're probably probably a bit too young for duap,
14:06
Speaker 1: aren't you, But I'm a fan of duo up. I
14:09
Speaker 1: am too young for it, But there was a growing
14:11
Speaker 1: up in New York there was a radio show on
14:14
Speaker 1: the oldie station on Sundays. They played two or three
14:19
Speaker 1: hours of duop every weekend, dan Quae Reid and I
14:22
Speaker 1: listened to it religiously, and I absolutely love dua Yeah,
14:26
Speaker 1: well this that had the same sort of effect on me,
14:28
Speaker 1: because duop is a very simple music in many senses,
14:33
Speaker 1: you know, it's mainly about voices, not not about lots
14:37
Speaker 1: of instruments and lots of playing. And in fact, the
14:40
Speaker 1: closer it was to a cappella, the more I liked it.
14:43
Speaker 1: And I just loved the fact that four voices could
14:48
Speaker 1: produce such a range of colors and feelings that seemed
14:53
Speaker 1: to me like on a par with Mandrea and you
14:55
Speaker 1: know how. And I was always very drawn to this
14:58
Speaker 1: idea of doing as much as possible with as little
15:01
Speaker 1: as possible. I was never impressed by the kind of
15:04
Speaker 1: music that used you know, complicated time signatures and amazingly
15:10
Speaker 1: brilliant playing and so on. It's sort of impressive, but
15:13
Speaker 1: for me, there was not the same magic in that
15:17
Speaker 1: you could see the trick being done, you know, So
15:20
Speaker 1: that part of my taste hasn't changed. I really am
15:24
Speaker 1: always drawn to things that look like anybody could do them,
15:29
Speaker 1: where you think I could have made that, but I
15:32
Speaker 1: fucking didn't. Why didn't I part I don't know if
15:38
Speaker 1: you have this feeling that part of the feeling of
15:41
Speaker 1: one of the feelings I always have that tells me
15:44
Speaker 1: something is great is kind of anger that I didn't
15:50
Speaker 1: do it. I don't have that, but I understand it.
15:58
Speaker 1: I do. I'm so thankful when there's something that I
16:00
Speaker 1: like that I didn't make, because it's so exciting, it's
16:03
Speaker 1: like Wow. Often I make things more out of the
16:08
Speaker 1: need for them to exist. Yes, that's exactly right. I
16:12
Speaker 1: want this music to exist. Yeah. The only reason I
16:15
Speaker 1: make music, The reason I got into this line of
16:19
Speaker 1: work was because I was experiencing hip hop music and
16:24
Speaker 1: the records that were being made didn't reflect what it
16:27
Speaker 1: actually was. So my earliest work was really just documenting
16:31
Speaker 1: something that I was already a fan of and it
16:35
Speaker 1: just didn't exist in the world, so I didn't really
16:37
Speaker 1: have a choice. So when I do hear something that
16:40
Speaker 1: I like, I get very excited because I'm always looking
16:44
Speaker 1: for something that feels like a new way in Yes,
16:49
Speaker 1: what you said there is something that I've often thought
16:52
Speaker 1: that the things that influenced me most in terms of
16:55
Speaker 1: actually making things are the things that I hear that
17:00
Speaker 1: don't quite succeed where I listened to them. I think
17:05
Speaker 1: that's a brilliant idea, And do you know what if
17:08
Speaker 1: they had done this and that and this other thing
17:12
Speaker 1: and left that bit out, that would be even better.
17:16
Speaker 1: So quite often when I'm thinking like that about something,
17:19
Speaker 1: I realize that I'm I'm inventing something new which isn't
17:23
Speaker 1: that thing, but isn't something that I really had thought
17:27
Speaker 1: about before either. So it's it's quite often hearing something
17:32
Speaker 1: just missing the mark that makes me think that could
17:35
Speaker 1: be better. That's been an important thread for me. Do
17:39
Speaker 1: you find that if you look back, the most interesting
17:43
Speaker 1: things have hit you that way, like when you first
17:45
Speaker 1: hear something or see something, you don't know whether you
17:50
Speaker 1: like it or not, or maybe it makes you laugh,
17:52
Speaker 1: or it seems ridiculous or yes, but then you come
17:55
Speaker 1: around to loving it or maybe loving it the most. Yes, yes, yes, absolutely.
18:01
Speaker 1: I really admired the who I'd loved that, my generation
18:05
Speaker 1: and things like that, And then they released a song
18:09
Speaker 1: called Happy Jack. I thought they shouldn't release lightweight material
18:14
Speaker 1: like this. They are a serious, revolutionary, radical band. What
18:18
Speaker 1: are they doing releasing this kind of material? And I
18:24
Speaker 1: even wrote to Pete Townsend saying saying, you shouldn't be
18:30
Speaker 1: releasing stuff like this, You're much too important, or something
18:36
Speaker 1: to that effect. And it was about three or four
18:41
Speaker 1: months later that I suddenly got it that this was
18:44
Speaker 1: a kind of pop art. So that's one example of
18:47
Speaker 1: something where I had a real change of mind. And
18:51
Speaker 1: I've had more of those in painting than in music.
18:55
Speaker 1: In music, I kind of very often have a pretty
19:00
Speaker 1: good feeling of what is about to happen. I don't
19:04
Speaker 1: mean that I could make it, but I'm not incredibly
19:09
Speaker 1: prized by it. For instance, I remember saying to David Byrne,
19:14
Speaker 1: we were in a car in Los Angeles in nineteen
19:16
Speaker 1: eighty and I said, I think there is going to
19:20
Speaker 1: be a kind of music where people kind of shout
19:25
Speaker 1: poetry over beats. And indeed there was. It wasn't entirely
19:32
Speaker 1: an unscripted idea. I'd heard something on MPR. It was
19:40
Speaker 1: a poet, a black poet from somewhere in America, reading
19:46
Speaker 1: this poem called Cadillac. I spent years trying to find
19:51
Speaker 1: this thing. I never found it. I wrote to MPR
19:54
Speaker 1: and I phoned them up and everything. It was called
19:56
Speaker 1: Pink Cadillac. And he just did this amazing, very rhythmic
20:01
Speaker 1: poem about how he wanted a pink Cadillac and how
20:05
Speaker 1: cool it was and how it turned rounded the corner
20:08
Speaker 1: and things like that. And I thought, this is a
20:11
Speaker 1: new kind of music. I mean, I had I knew
20:15
Speaker 1: about the last poets. They they were sort of in
20:18
Speaker 1: the back of my mind as well. But I just
20:20
Speaker 1: suddenly had this vision of a popular music, not a
20:25
Speaker 1: music that would only be on NPR, but a popular
20:28
Speaker 1: music that people would want to hear, that had heavy
20:31
Speaker 1: beats and speech, not songs. Was the pink Cadillac piece
20:39
Speaker 1: that you heard, did it have a beat or was
20:41
Speaker 1: it a cappella? I think it was a cappella or
20:45
Speaker 1: just had a very I can't remember it very well now.
20:48
Speaker 1: In fact, I only heard it that once. It just
20:52
Speaker 1: stuck in my mind, and I can still remember the
20:55
Speaker 1: cadence of some of it. And there may have just
20:58
Speaker 1: been a you know, that pink callac that kind of
21:06
Speaker 1: feeling to it, you know, and I thought, yeah, that
21:08
Speaker 1: is definitely new. We'll be right back after a quick
21:12
Speaker 1: break with more from Brian Enow. We're back with more
21:18
Speaker 1: from Rick Rubin and Brian Eno. Can you remember any
21:21
Speaker 1: other forms of music that either do or don't yet
21:26
Speaker 1: exist that you've imagined. Yes, there's one that has just
21:31
Speaker 1: come into existence, I think, and it's something that I
21:35
Speaker 1: have been sort of playing around with. Do you know
21:38
Speaker 1: this listening practice? I don't really know what to call
21:42
Speaker 1: it exactly. I could call it music, but I'm not
21:45
Speaker 1: sure this is the right word for it. It's called
21:48
Speaker 1: as mr H. This is where people are listening very
21:53
Speaker 1: close up. Noisest like this, and there's lots of smacking
21:57
Speaker 1: lips and that kind of thing. And basically people tell
22:05
Speaker 1: quite long stories, but they're hardly stories. It's about that sound,
22:09
Speaker 1: and they often use stereo microphones so they can move
22:13
Speaker 1: their voices from one from one of your ears to
22:15
Speaker 1: the other and back and forth. It's very, very interesting
22:19
Speaker 1: because these are quite long pieces, and just go on
22:23
Speaker 1: YouTube and have a look. They've got millions and millions
22:26
Speaker 1: of listeners, so there's a lot of people doing this.
22:30
Speaker 1: So I heard these first of all, I think three
22:34
Speaker 1: or four years ago. I heard the first ones and thought,
22:36
Speaker 1: this is really interesting. This is like having somebody wandering
22:41
Speaker 1: around inside your head whispering to you. And I thought,
22:46
Speaker 1: this is kind of a night. It's like ambient music. Actually,
22:50
Speaker 1: there's a sort of diminution of content in favor of sound.
22:54
Speaker 1: So it's a kind of live of the moment sound
22:59
Speaker 1: experience that doesn't really have a past or a future.
23:03
Speaker 1: You know. It's not what philosophers called teleological. It doesn't
23:08
Speaker 1: doesn't go somewhere, it doesn't have a goal. It's a
23:13
Speaker 1: steady state experience. And this, of course is what I
23:16
Speaker 1: always wanted ambient music to be. Like a like a
23:19
Speaker 1: picture on the wall. You don't expect it to change
23:22
Speaker 1: all the time. What changes is you, the listener. The
23:26
Speaker 1: art stays relatively still. So I heard this as mr
23:30
Speaker 1: Stuff and thought, this is a kind of ambient music,
23:34
Speaker 1: And I thought, what about making music that is vocal music?
23:42
Speaker 1: But like that, I had never really thought about ambient
23:45
Speaker 1: music being vocal before then. In fact, it was for
23:49
Speaker 1: me specifically not vocal. It was a sort of deliberately
23:54
Speaker 1: personality free music. And putting a voice in there to
23:58
Speaker 1: me was to say to draw all the attention to
24:01
Speaker 1: the voice and say, oh, here's somebody with something to
24:05
Speaker 1: tell you, And I really didn't want that. But then
24:08
Speaker 1: when I heard this ASMR, I thought, this person clearly
24:12
Speaker 1: has nothing to tell me at all. They're talking about
24:15
Speaker 1: how they comb their hair and doing it for twenty
24:20
Speaker 1: five minutes. Clearly the message is not about combing hair.
24:25
Speaker 1: The message is about being inside a voice for a
24:28
Speaker 1: decent length of time. So I started to think, what
24:35
Speaker 1: would you do to existing music to make it occupy
24:39
Speaker 1: that same space, And then I started experimenting with my
24:45
Speaker 1: favorite tool of all in the studio, which is the
24:47
Speaker 1: low pass filter. Just taking off all the high frequency
24:51
Speaker 1: of things has an amazing psychological effect to me. It
24:56
Speaker 1: creates scale, distance, warmth, and a weird sort of intimacy,
25:05
Speaker 1: which is quite strange, I think because you know, missing
25:09
Speaker 1: a lot of detail. Your brain very actively engages with
25:13
Speaker 1: those kinds of sounds. That's my theory about why it's
25:16
Speaker 1: interesting anyway, So I started thinking, perhaps there could be
25:22
Speaker 1: a kind of music like that where we take existing songs,
25:27
Speaker 1: you know, a Rihannah record, or and we just put
25:31
Speaker 1: it through a low pass filter, but really a really
25:34
Speaker 1: radical low pass filter. So nothing above say two hundred
25:38
Speaker 1: and fifty hurts is audible. If you listen to a
25:44
Speaker 1: Beyonce record through a wall, it's not exhausting, it's warm.
25:49
Speaker 1: So about a week ago somebody said to me, oh,
25:53
Speaker 1: have you heard this new as Mr Music thing, and
25:58
Speaker 1: described exactly that same experiment. So it's like you're listening
26:03
Speaker 1: to records that are being played in another room. So
26:07
Speaker 1: you just have that sort of comforting. You can't really
26:15
Speaker 1: figure out what it is, but it's sociable somehow, it's friendly.
26:20
Speaker 1: It's like having other people around. It's like a daydream almost. Yes, yes, yes,
26:26
Speaker 1: that's a good way of saying it. Yeah, sounds fantastic.
26:30
Speaker 1: On the other side of that, are lyrics ever important
26:34
Speaker 1: to you? They're very rarely the thing I'm most listening
26:38
Speaker 1: to in music. I think the base requirement for me
26:46
Speaker 1: in lyrics is that they don't make the music stupid,
26:50
Speaker 1: which turns out to be quite a high bar in
26:52
Speaker 1: many cats Now people say do up lyrics are stupid,
26:56
Speaker 1: but I don't think they are at all. They serve
26:59
Speaker 1: the music absolutely. Do up lyrics are the way of
27:04
Speaker 1: making a voice become musical. What is always awkward to
27:07
Speaker 1: me is when somebody feels they have something to say
27:11
Speaker 1: and it's important and you get these clumsy pieces of
27:16
Speaker 1: scanning and the rhymes don't sound stupid, and so I
27:21
Speaker 1: can't bear that. I'd rather just leave out the voice
27:24
Speaker 1: completely than have that. But I mean, there are lyricists
27:27
Speaker 1: who I absolutely adore, like I always say Joni Mitchell,
27:32
Speaker 1: who's for me, one of the greatest songwriters of all time,
27:36
Speaker 1: and her lyrics are so clever and intricate and always
27:43
Speaker 1: worth returning to that I'm always hearing new things in
27:47
Speaker 1: her singing and new interpretations of what she's saying. And
27:51
Speaker 1: there are a few people like that, very very few
27:55
Speaker 1: whose work I actually do really want to know. The
27:59
Speaker 1: lyrics of where do you think the line is between
28:02
Speaker 1: sounds and music? It's where that line is is actually
28:07
Speaker 1: one of the things I've thought about most in thinking
28:12
Speaker 1: about music, I had an accident years and years ago
28:15
Speaker 1: where I was confined to bed for a while and
28:19
Speaker 1: one afternoon, a rainy afternoon, a friend of mine came
28:22
Speaker 1: over and I said, as she left, I said, can
28:26
Speaker 1: you just put a record on for me? This is
28:28
Speaker 1: I had a record player, but it wasn't close to
28:30
Speaker 1: the bed, so she put this record on. It was
28:34
Speaker 1: a record of Welsh harp music, and she just put
28:37
Speaker 1: the needle on. She left, and it was actually very quiet,
28:40
Speaker 1: but I couldn't get up to change the volume, and
28:43
Speaker 1: the rain was beating down outside, and I suddenly had
28:48
Speaker 1: this realization that I loved the fact that the music
28:54
Speaker 1: seemed to be arising out of the rain. It wasn't
28:58
Speaker 1: on top of the rain. Sometimes it was submerged by
29:01
Speaker 1: the rain. But these notes, the loudest notes, were appearing
29:04
Speaker 1: out of the rain, and I thought, how lovely to
29:07
Speaker 1: co opt the surroundings to become part of the music.
29:11
Speaker 1: So this was in nineteen seventy four, I think or five.
29:16
Speaker 1: So I started thinking, what about if you made a
29:18
Speaker 1: kind of music that didn't have a hard edge to it,
29:22
Speaker 1: that didn't have a hard boundary, that wasn't done so
29:26
Speaker 1: that you knew that that was a musical sound and
29:29
Speaker 1: that everything else was just random everyday noise. I thought,
29:34
Speaker 1: what about softening the edges of the music so that
29:37
Speaker 1: you include some things that could be noise outside of
29:41
Speaker 1: the music. That could be the street, or the rain,
29:44
Speaker 1: or the wind or something like that. So I started
29:47
Speaker 1: building in this sort of where ambient music started coming from,
29:52
Speaker 1: was this idea of making music that had a soft
29:54
Speaker 1: edge that blended into the rest of the world. So
29:58
Speaker 1: this idea of saying, let's make the edge soft so
30:02
Speaker 1: that the music can invite in more of the rest
30:06
Speaker 1: of the world. It draws it in and that becomes
30:09
Speaker 1: part of the composition as well. And I think this
30:13
Speaker 1: was at the time I was starting to think about
30:16
Speaker 1: messiness as well, that I didn't want the work to
30:22
Speaker 1: be sort of in a little capsule, tidily closed off
30:27
Speaker 1: from the rest of the world. I wanted it to
30:29
Speaker 1: feel like it was somehow connected to it that it
30:32
Speaker 1: bled into the rest of the world. What did you
30:35
Speaker 1: look like at the time at that point in time,
30:37
Speaker 1: how were you dressing. I think I still had long hair,
30:42
Speaker 1: I was still wearing makeup. I think then, yeah, mid seventies.
30:46
Speaker 1: I was, yes, and I wore a lot of unusual clothes.
30:55
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering, like, how the just the justa positions,
30:59
Speaker 1: you know, it's like the person who's dressed like that
31:02
Speaker 1: making the music that you don't look at or don't
31:04
Speaker 1: pay attention to. It's it's really interesting. Now, you're absolutely right,
31:08
Speaker 1: it's sort of inconsistent. And it became clearer to me
31:13
Speaker 1: that they were inconsistent that my physical appearance was saying
31:19
Speaker 1: look at me, but my musical output was saying it's nothing.
31:23
Speaker 1: It's just a tint. It's just an atmosphere, you know,
31:26
Speaker 1: no big deal, carry on with your life. And maybe
31:30
Speaker 1: that was again looking for the balance. Yes, yes, you
31:34
Speaker 1: know the art was looking for the balance, and yep,
31:36
Speaker 1: I never thought of that. That's very very likely true.
31:41
Speaker 1: From about the late seventies on, I started to not
31:45
Speaker 1: want to be a pop star, and really that was
31:49
Speaker 1: that was because I thought it was misleading people. You know,
31:52
Speaker 1: if if the whole thing is about me, that's actually
31:56
Speaker 1: not a very interesting subject. To be honest, I'm not
31:59
Speaker 1: a boring person or anything like that, but I didn't
32:02
Speaker 1: think that my personality was the thing that I had
32:08
Speaker 1: to offer the world. Yeah, that you saw larger issues, yes, exactly,
32:15
Speaker 1: like what is the edge? What is the edge of art?
32:18
Speaker 1: That was the issue that really interested me. I think,
32:22
Speaker 1: what do we call art? And why where do we
32:25
Speaker 1: draw the boundary? And what do we what do we
32:28
Speaker 1: mean by art anyway? You know, for me, the most
32:31
Speaker 1: interesting question for a long long time has been why
32:36
Speaker 1: do we want to make art at all? And why
32:39
Speaker 1: do we want to listen to it? I mean, it's
32:41
Speaker 1: an incredibly deep question. Why do we like music? Why?
32:48
Speaker 1: You know, if you think about it, what is music?
32:50
Speaker 1: It's a kind of arrangement of noises. But you know,
32:54
Speaker 1: we have incredibly strong feelings about them. If you said
32:58
Speaker 1: to a Martian who just landed on Earth, you played
33:01
Speaker 1: them four string quartets. You know, there's Shostakovich, there's a Brahms,
33:06
Speaker 1: there's whatever else, and then there's one done by a computer,
33:09
Speaker 1: and there's one played by a group of talentless fourteen
33:13
Speaker 1: year olds who've just got those instruments. And you said,
33:17
Speaker 1: what's the difference between those? They probably say, well, there's
33:20
Speaker 1: no difference. They all sound exactly the same. But we
33:24
Speaker 1: are hearing very very very fine distinctions between these things.
33:29
Speaker 1: We obviously care about and value these experiences in quite
33:36
Speaker 1: intense ways. And since I was about seventeen, I've been
33:40
Speaker 1: thinking about this question, what are we doing it for?
33:45
Speaker 1: What are we hearing? Why does it matter? We clearly
33:50
Speaker 1: can live without music, It's not like food. We can't
33:53
Speaker 1: live without food, and we can't live without clothes, and
33:56
Speaker 1: we can't live without communicating with other human beings. And
34:00
Speaker 1: there are all sorts of things we have to do.
34:02
Speaker 1: Music isn't one of them, Painting isn't one of them, Sculpture,
34:06
Speaker 1: none of those things that we call arts a thing
34:09
Speaker 1: that we have to do. So why are we doing them?
34:12
Speaker 1: And why is it so universal? We don't know of
34:15
Speaker 1: a culture that doesn't have music, Well, then then I'm
34:19
Speaker 1: not sure that we don't have to do it. If
34:21
Speaker 1: that's well, yes, yes, of course, I mean it's it's
34:25
Speaker 1: it's not functional in terms of survival. It doesn't seem
34:30
Speaker 1: we have never tried the experiment to take it away,
34:34
Speaker 1: but it seems to have some ability to allow us
34:39
Speaker 1: to feel or understand ourselves. The music isn't what's important.
34:45
Speaker 1: It's the reaction that's important. Yes, exactly, it's what is
34:49
Speaker 1: happening to us. Yeah, I imagine it when we tap
34:53
Speaker 1: into that in art, it makes us also feel less alone,
34:58
Speaker 1: not even that someone made it. But there's something out
35:02
Speaker 1: there that resonates with me, even if it's the paint. Yes,
35:05
Speaker 1: I'm not this this thing that doesn't understand itself. Here's
35:12
Speaker 1: something that is being reflected back that resonates with me.
35:17
Speaker 1: I feel a connections that it's maybe it's like love,
35:20
Speaker 1: might be like love. Now, I think this is such
35:24
Speaker 1: an important point that the thing that binds communities together
35:28
Speaker 1: is shared culture, and it's for exactly that reason. I
35:32
Speaker 1: think it's the knowledge that there are a group of
35:35
Speaker 1: other people who have these same feelings. You might not
35:38
Speaker 1: even be able to articulate them. But you know, I
35:41
Speaker 1: can remember this so strongly from when I was young,
35:45
Speaker 1: that you defined yourself almost by the set of feelings
35:50
Speaker 1: that you responded to. So, for instance, I remember it
35:54
Speaker 1: there was a time when you were either a Beatles
35:57
Speaker 1: fan or a Rolling Stones fan, and they were fundamentally different.
36:03
Speaker 1: They talked about a different kind of person. You know,
36:07
Speaker 1: doesn't matter that in the end day all in it
36:09
Speaker 1: up millionaires and it doesn't matter, it's not important. What
36:14
Speaker 1: was important was that they presented these two different pictures
36:18
Speaker 1: of the kinds of feelings that were appropriate to have
36:22
Speaker 1: about the world, and crossing over from one to the
36:26
Speaker 1: other was a big decision. I can remember people having
36:31
Speaker 1: real sort of identity crises about they were finding starting
36:36
Speaker 1: to find the Stones more exciting than the Beatles, and
36:39
Speaker 1: in fact they were starting to find the Beatles a
36:41
Speaker 1: bit sort of whimpy, or vice versa. Actually as well,
36:45
Speaker 1: it happened both ways. So I think you're right that
36:48
Speaker 1: you you tap into a sort of community of feelings
36:53
Speaker 1: and the sense that there are other people who value
36:57
Speaker 1: the same feelings that I value. That's sort of what
37:00
Speaker 1: it's about. Really, It's about saying these feelings have value
37:04
Speaker 1: for me, and there's a lot of others that don't. Yeah,
37:09
Speaker 1: there's also a great feeling in finding a new piece
37:12
Speaker 1: of art and sharing it with someone and enjoying it
37:17
Speaker 1: together is different than enjoying it yourself. There's a real
37:21
Speaker 1: sense of community in enjoying something that you know, we
37:27
Speaker 1: enjoy this, but maybe maybe many people don't, and that's fine. Yes,
37:31
Speaker 1: it's a great feeling of connection, and maybe that's maybe
37:34
Speaker 1: that's the greatest feeling of connection, is the feeling of
37:38
Speaker 1: these shared responses to stimuli. Yes, and incidentally, I think
37:45
Speaker 1: that's the that's the power of religion as well. The
37:50
Speaker 1: power of religion is not the connection with God, but
37:56
Speaker 1: the connection with the rest of the congregation. I think
37:59
Speaker 1: the connection with all of the people who also believe
38:02
Speaker 1: in that particular story. I'm not really religious myself, but
38:07
Speaker 1: I really respond to that idea. You know, I got
38:13
Speaker 1: into gospel music very young. In fact, when I came
38:17
Speaker 1: to America, I was by then a big gospel fan.
38:21
Speaker 1: And what surprised me was that all my hip friends
38:26
Speaker 1: thought it was quite embarrassing if they found a little
38:30
Speaker 1: bit a quaint or something that I liked gospel music.
38:35
Speaker 1: To me, it was just like Dooop had been. It
38:38
Speaker 1: was this amazing, exotic foreign music, and it really came
38:44
Speaker 1: straight through to me. We're going to take a quick
38:47
Speaker 1: break and then we'll be back with more from Briany.
38:49
Speaker 1: Now we're back with the rest of Rick Rubin's conversation
38:56
Speaker 1: with Briany. Now, I've heard the story before of the
39:00
Speaker 1: moment of recognition or the need for what became ambient
39:06
Speaker 1: music based on the Cologne airport. Sitting in the Colone airport,
39:11
Speaker 1: how might it have been different if it would have
39:13
Speaker 1: happened in a natural space as opposed to a man
39:16
Speaker 1: made space. Well, the question really is would it have
39:21
Speaker 1: even occurred to me if I was in a natural space.
39:25
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that it would have done. It was
39:27
Speaker 1: because I was in an incredibly carefully manufactured space, beautiful
39:33
Speaker 1: airport where the architects had really looked at every detail,
39:38
Speaker 1: and the light was beautiful and the lines of the
39:40
Speaker 1: place were beautiful, and somebody in the cafe had put
39:45
Speaker 1: on a cassette of German disco music which was ringing
39:50
Speaker 1: through the airport. I mean, I wasn't postmodern enough at
39:53
Speaker 1: the time to accept that. I just thought, that's not right.
39:57
Speaker 1: That part hasn't been thought about. Everything else has been
40:01
Speaker 1: thought about, but nobody's thought about that. Now. It was
40:05
Speaker 1: a beautiful day and the airport was nearly empty, and
40:07
Speaker 1: I was sitting there bathe in light, and it was
40:10
Speaker 1: one of those cases like we were talking about earlier,
40:12
Speaker 1: where you think I wish there was another kind of
40:15
Speaker 1: music for this situation, and I started thinking, so what
40:19
Speaker 1: would that be? Like? You know, it's an airport, so
40:23
Speaker 1: you can't be too loud. Obviously, people have to hear announcements.
40:28
Speaker 1: It has to be interruptible for the same reason it
40:31
Speaker 1: shouldn't dominate the vocal register, because people need to communicate.
40:36
Speaker 1: So I just was sort of thinking this out, and
40:39
Speaker 1: quite soon I thought, right, I think I know what
40:42
Speaker 1: I could make that music. I know how I could
40:45
Speaker 1: do that. And that's how that first ambient record came about.
40:49
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't unprecedented. I had been working on
40:52
Speaker 1: music a little bit like that before, but I suddenly
40:55
Speaker 1: realized what its role in life could be. If you like,
40:59
Speaker 1: what the place of this music could be. I knew
41:02
Speaker 1: it wasn't dance music. I knew it wasn't radio music.
41:08
Speaker 1: It was functional, but I hadn't yet discovered the function.
41:11
Speaker 1: It was then that I thought, I know what this
41:14
Speaker 1: music could be for. Might there be other forms of
41:18
Speaker 1: ambient music for different use cases? Yes, I did a
41:23
Speaker 1: record called Narrowly. The subtitle was Music for Thinking. That
41:29
Speaker 1: really came out of a response. Well, first of all,
41:32
Speaker 1: hearing from a lot of particularly artists and graphic designers
41:37
Speaker 1: that they liked having my music playing when they were working.
41:41
Speaker 1: They didn't want conventional records which kept stopping and starting
41:46
Speaker 1: and the mood changing, and they were there was lyrics
41:50
Speaker 1: and they were kind of annoying. They didn't want classical
41:53
Speaker 1: music because it sort of felt too old. They liked
41:57
Speaker 1: this music that had this sort of directionless, atmospheric quality.
42:02
Speaker 1: So I thought, oh, good, so it's working. It's working functionally.
42:08
Speaker 1: So I thought, so what about when you want to
42:11
Speaker 1: sit and concentrate on something, You want to have something
42:16
Speaker 1: that kind of calms the world down a little bit
42:19
Speaker 1: around you, that softens, as Eric Sati said, softens the
42:25
Speaker 1: clink of fork against dinner plate or something like that.
42:29
Speaker 1: I forget the quote exactly, but you want something that
42:33
Speaker 1: is sort of a slight barrier to the noises of
42:36
Speaker 1: the world, and it becomes a barrier by sucking them
42:40
Speaker 1: into itself. And so that I came up with this
42:45
Speaker 1: piece Coordinarily, which is an hour long piece, which at
42:49
Speaker 1: that time was the longest I could make it. And
42:52
Speaker 1: I started thinking then about the idea of music that
42:56
Speaker 1: doesn't have a beginning or end, that just is theoretically infinite. Well,
43:04
Speaker 1: that didn't become possible until the nineties when I started
43:08
Speaker 1: working with computer and it was possible to make the
43:12
Speaker 1: kinds of programs I make now where where the music
43:15
Speaker 1: effectively never repeats. And my ambition always then was to
43:21
Speaker 1: try to make an experience a little bit like sitting
43:25
Speaker 1: by a river. So you're sitting by the river. It's
43:30
Speaker 1: always the same river, but as you know, it's never
43:33
Speaker 1: the same river twice, So every time you look up
43:37
Speaker 1: at the river, it's doing something a little bit different. Now,
43:41
Speaker 1: it's not like watching a film where suddenly the river
43:44
Speaker 1: turns blood red or gets much bigger or something like that.
43:50
Speaker 1: I didn't want drama. I just wanted something like nature,
43:55
Speaker 1: subtle variations. Subtle variations, yes, and variations that stay within
44:02
Speaker 1: a kind of range of possibilities and explore that range
44:07
Speaker 1: rather randomly. I just wanted the thing to be what
44:11
Speaker 1: Harold Bud used to call eternally pretty. That was his
44:15
Speaker 1: wif seting it. Dear Harold. He died about two months
44:20
Speaker 1: ago from COVID, very sad. So I dedicate this thought
44:24
Speaker 1: to Harold. So. Yes, So when Harold and I met,
44:28
Speaker 1: we were both pretty much on this groove of thinking,
44:32
Speaker 1: what about making music that isn't designed to upset anybody? Now,
44:39
Speaker 1: of course that sounds pretty uncontroversial now, but in the
44:43
Speaker 1: mid to late seventies that was considered to be the
44:47
Speaker 1: biggest sell out of all time. You know, music was
44:50
Speaker 1: supposed to shake the world and create revolutions and upset
44:55
Speaker 1: your parents and all sorts of things like that. And
44:58
Speaker 1: we thought, what about making music that is just really comfortable?
45:03
Speaker 1: Comfortable was probably the most controversial word you could use.
45:07
Speaker 1: Then what about music that makes you feel warm and
45:12
Speaker 1: friendly and open and able to surrender? When I realized
45:19
Speaker 1: that surrender was really the thing that I was interested
45:21
Speaker 1: in for that kind of music. Obviously, I don't only
45:25
Speaker 1: make that kind of music, but for that I wanted
45:28
Speaker 1: to make something that would make you think I can
45:33
Speaker 1: let something happen to me. I don't have to defend
45:36
Speaker 1: against everything. I can get out of that posture of
45:40
Speaker 1: self defense. If you think of the things that where
45:43
Speaker 1: we achieve transcendence. If you like or ecstasy, it's sex, drugs, art,
45:54
Speaker 1: and religion. Those are all the places where we say,
45:59
Speaker 1: I'm going to let go and just let this thing
46:01
Speaker 1: happen to me. I'm not going to control it. I'm
46:04
Speaker 1: going to be taken somewhere. Now, it's interesting to me
46:07
Speaker 1: that although we are constant trying to control, our biggest
46:11
Speaker 1: thrills come from letting go of control. And so what
46:16
Speaker 1: becomes obvious that is that it's the combination of those
46:20
Speaker 1: two that we should really be specializing in. We should
46:23
Speaker 1: and we should not forget the surrender part. We should
46:26
Speaker 1: not think that surrendering is passivity or cowardice or incompetence.
46:35
Speaker 1: We should say it's one of the ways we deal
46:37
Speaker 1: with the world. So I think art is the place
46:42
Speaker 1: where we go to have this feeling again, to remember
46:46
Speaker 1: that feeling of going with the flow, of letting something
46:49
Speaker 1: happen to us in real life. In the rest of life,
46:52
Speaker 1: I should say, we are still able to do that,
46:55
Speaker 1: we can remember that feeling. For me, there are certain
46:59
Speaker 1: I can see a film that has an energy in
47:04
Speaker 1: it that could affect me for months. Yes, and I'm
47:11
Speaker 1: very open to the energies contained in things, So I'm
47:15
Speaker 1: protective of what I watch for that reasons. I don't
47:18
Speaker 1: want to have a bad time. A lot of the time,
47:20
Speaker 1: I don't choose that. I just want to ask how
47:24
Speaker 1: sensitive you are in that respect. Yes, I think I'm
47:27
Speaker 1: very sensitive in that respect, and to the extent that
47:31
Speaker 1: certain experiences I don't want to have them very often
47:34
Speaker 1: because I don't want them to lose their power. So
47:38
Speaker 1: just about the single album that probably influenced me more
47:44
Speaker 1: than almost any other was the third Valve Underground album.
47:48
Speaker 1: That was a really, really important record in my life
47:50
Speaker 1: because so many things I had been wondering if they
47:54
Speaker 1: were possible suddenly appeared on that album, and also a
47:59
Speaker 1: lot of things I hadn't even conceived of. For that reason,
48:02
Speaker 1: I've never owned the album. I haven't even listened to
48:07
Speaker 1: it that many times because I really wanted it to
48:10
Speaker 1: retain that power. I didn't want it to become commonplace.
48:16
Speaker 1: Another piece like that is the Steve Ripe piece It's
48:19
Speaker 1: going to Rain, that tape piece from I think nineteen
48:22
Speaker 1: sixty four. That absolutely devastated me. The first time I
48:28
Speaker 1: heard it. I understood so many things about music that
48:32
Speaker 1: I had not even dreamed of before that piece, and
48:37
Speaker 1: I still regard it as a key moment in my life.
48:40
Speaker 1: And I think I've probably listened to it four times.
48:45
Speaker 1: It turned a switch, and the switch stayed turned. Yes,
48:49
Speaker 1: I didn't have to keep turning it again, you know,
48:52
Speaker 1: it stayed turned. In your evolution up to ambient music,
48:59
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to me that you could ever do anything
49:04
Speaker 1: different than that. Do you know what I'm saying? It's
49:06
Speaker 1: like it almost feels like that's the end of the
49:08
Speaker 1: line in terms of the minimalist approach. You you got there,
49:15
Speaker 1: so it's interesting that you do other things like you
49:17
Speaker 1: didn't do the Mandrean staying in the same language only. Yes,
49:23
Speaker 1: perhaps if I had carried on living in New York,
49:26
Speaker 1: I would have done because I would have always wanted
49:30
Speaker 1: more of that kind of music. But I've just had
49:34
Speaker 1: the very interesting experience of do you know about this
49:38
Speaker 1: Sonas project that I'm doing. I don't really tell me. Okay, Well,
49:42
Speaker 1: Sonas asked me to curate a channel for them. Basically
49:47
Speaker 1: it's like my own radio station, and I like the
49:52
Speaker 1: idea of that, but I thought, what I'd really like
49:55
Speaker 1: to do is to curate a station that plays only
49:59
Speaker 1: my music because I've got so much unreleased stuff. You know.
50:04
Speaker 1: I work in the studio every day pretty much, and
50:08
Speaker 1: some of it is just experiments where I try something
50:12
Speaker 1: out just to see what it would do if you
50:15
Speaker 1: tried to make a piece of music like that. And
50:19
Speaker 1: I have thousands of thousands of recordings like that. I
50:23
Speaker 1: just mix everything, you know. When I finished the day,
50:26
Speaker 1: I mix whatever I've done that day. Sometimes it can
50:29
Speaker 1: be five or six different pieces. Even so I have
50:34
Speaker 1: this vast library of stuff. Some of it is really
50:38
Speaker 1: quite interesting, and I thought, how nice would it be
50:41
Speaker 1: to have a radio channel where you just switch it
50:45
Speaker 1: on and outcome pieces of music that you've never heard before,
50:49
Speaker 1: will probably never hear again. And they're all quite different
50:53
Speaker 1: from one another. There's quite a range of stuff. Some
50:57
Speaker 1: of it is very ambient, some of it is very
50:59
Speaker 1: hard beat stuff, some of it's really electronic. Some of
51:04
Speaker 1: it is touchingly human, which is how you describe something
51:09
Speaker 1: that is rather amateur. So for the first time in
51:14
Speaker 1: my life, I thought, well, I'll just start listening through
51:17
Speaker 1: to those things. And so they play on random shuffle
51:20
Speaker 1: out of my computer, and I have to say, I
51:23
Speaker 1: so like the collisions, the strange combinations of things. You know,
51:28
Speaker 1: something from nineteen ninety one next to something I did
51:32
Speaker 1: last year next to something from twenty five, and no
51:38
Speaker 1: rationale to the choices that they're randomly selected. And although
51:45
Speaker 1: some of the music is pretty challenging, a lot of
51:49
Speaker 1: it is quite easy to listen to. And as I
51:54
Speaker 1: would say to people, you'll probably only hear at once,
51:58
Speaker 1: So if you don't like it, just wait, something else
52:01
Speaker 1: will come along soon. Yeah, I have one last question
52:05
Speaker 1: to ask, just because I'm really curious, what's your relationship
52:08
Speaker 1: to spirituality? Well, as you can tell from the way
52:13
Speaker 1: I talk too much, I think about this kind of
52:19
Speaker 1: thing quite a lot. What I always want to do
52:22
Speaker 1: is to cut away as much of the shit as
52:25
Speaker 1: possible and see what's left. So I don't want to
52:30
Speaker 1: be a believer. I want to be somebody who, as
52:33
Speaker 1: far as possible, understands and knows things. Believing things leaves
52:39
Speaker 1: me a little bit unsatisfied. If I find myself believing something,
52:43
Speaker 1: I want to test the belief. I want to say,
52:46
Speaker 1: how do I find out how valid this is? How
52:49
Speaker 1: true this is? Now? In real belief, in proper faith,
52:53
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to do that. Faith is supposed to be,
52:57
Speaker 1: by definition, the acceptance of something that you cannot find
53:01
Speaker 1: evidence for. If you can find evidence for, it's not
53:05
Speaker 1: faith anymore. It's called knowledge. Then. So this is a
53:09
Speaker 1: long way round of saying that I'm not anti spiritual,
53:14
Speaker 1: I'm not anti religion. Actually, in fact, I can see
53:18
Speaker 1: how religion really cements some communities together and really helps
53:23
Speaker 1: people in their lives. But I'm not by nature a believer,
53:28
Speaker 1: So it's difficult for me to use that kind of cement.
53:33
Speaker 1: My cement has to come from trying to understand things
53:36
Speaker 1: and to see how they work, and to share those
53:40
Speaker 1: ideas with other people. Yeah so, I think one one
53:44
Speaker 1: of the other things that surrendering prepares you for is
53:49
Speaker 1: the experience of uncertainty, the experience of not knowing the
53:55
Speaker 1: answer but still having to do something. You know, the
54:00
Speaker 1: fact that you don't know the answer can't cripple you.
54:04
Speaker 1: And of course a lot of people are crippled by
54:06
Speaker 1: not knowing the answer, and so they just choose an
54:10
Speaker 1: inappropriate answer just for the want of an answer. Yes, so,
54:15
Speaker 1: you just have to accept that you don't know the answers,
54:20
Speaker 1: and you will make mistakes, and you will need to
54:24
Speaker 1: change your values and your tools, and some of them
54:30
Speaker 1: might last you a lifetime. But you're lucky if that happens.
54:34
Speaker 1: I haven't got any that lasted me a lifetime. Thank
54:39
Speaker 1: you so much for doing this amazing pleasure speaking with you.
54:42
Speaker 1: Yes you too, I must say I really enjoyed that.
54:48
Speaker 1: Thanks to Brian Eno for sharing as artistic philosophy for
54:51
Speaker 1: us to hear a favorite Brian Eno tracks. Head to
54:54
Speaker 1: Broken Record podcast at part. Be sure to subscribe to
54:58
Speaker 1: our YouTube channel, a YouTube dot com slash a Broken
55:01
Speaker 1: Record podcast we can find all of our new episodes.
55:05
Speaker 1: You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken
55:08
Speaker 1: Record is produced a help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel,
55:11
Speaker 1: Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help
55:16
Speaker 1: from Nick Chaffee. Our executive producer is Mio Labella. Broken
55:20
Speaker 1: Record is a production of Pushkin Industries and if you
55:23
Speaker 1: like the show, please remember to share. Rate interviewers coming
55:26
Speaker 1: a podcast. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richard.