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