Speaker 1: The other one I'm doing.
Speaker 2: It's a song I wrote with David Bowie about thirty
Speaker 2: years ago. I think the only release it had was
Speaker 2: as a B side. Actually it's a great song and
Speaker 2: so I'm taking that apart and rebuilding it with some hyaenas.
Speaker 3: Good evening and welcome to a special bonus episode of
Speaker 3: Midnight Chats. First time we've ever done this, but we
Speaker 3: do have an extra episode this week which we wanted
Speaker 3: to bring you. Tonight's guest is Brian Eno, and whilst
Speaker 3: we normally put out an episode of Midnight Chats every
Speaker 3: Monday night at midnight, this is a little extra special
Speaker 3: episode that we've been working on.
Speaker 1: Greg.
Speaker 3: I'm going to let you introduce this because this is
Speaker 3: very much your baby.
Speaker 4: Let's call it our Earth Day Special because that's coming
Speaker 4: up and I'll explain that in a second. But yeah,
Speaker 4: we wanted to bring you this because it's hot off
Speaker 4: the press, it's straight out in the oven stew, it's
Speaker 4: still scolding hot. This couldn't wait till our normal Monday
Speaker 4: midnight drop. That's because, like you say, earlier today there
Speaker 4: was an announcement about a super innovative music initiative led
Speaker 4: by Earth percent who Are an organization co founded by
Speaker 4: Brian Eno, our trailblazing guest on the podcast Tonight. Lots
Speaker 4: of amazing artists involve, and lots of new music being
Speaker 4: released today. So what you're about to hear, you can
Speaker 4: actually go out and listen to those songs on streaming services, etc.
Speaker 4: Today because this is all about Earth Day and that's
Speaker 4: coming up this Monday, April to twenty second, and as
Speaker 4: many people know who will be listening, that's the day
Speaker 4: that's marks all around the world by people and communities
Speaker 4: and others sharing their support for the protection of our
Speaker 4: environment and the planet. And so Brian and Earth Percent
Speaker 4: they have this initiative it's called Sounds Right, which is
Speaker 4: all about crediting the sounds of nature in songwriting. It's
Speaker 4: absolute genius, or I think it is, and it's explained
Speaker 4: in the chat you're about to hear, and I should
Speaker 4: say also post some links into the show notes so
Speaker 4: that people can go and read and listen to the
Speaker 4: next everything else more about it.
Speaker 3: Basically earlier this week on episode with MGMT, I made
Speaker 3: a joke at the beginning that you were best friends
Speaker 3: with them because I was being annoying and I'm going
Speaker 3: to make the same joke now, but it's not so
Speaker 3: much a joke this time. Because you've met Brian Eno
Speaker 3: a few times through different things. We've recorded a podcast
Speaker 3: with him, another podcast that we did a while ago.
Speaker 3: But he does sound like he really genuinely.
Speaker 1: Likes you in this.
Speaker 5: Am I that difficult to like? I can?
Speaker 3: I mean, I can see why. There's something about someone
Speaker 3: that you revere, that's that's you know, like a legendary figure.
Speaker 3: When they say your name back to you, do you
Speaker 3: find this like he says Greg back to you, Yeah,
Speaker 3: which I'm pretty sure some of the some of the
Speaker 3: episodes I've recorded I've left and they've not known my
Speaker 3: name by the Whereas the way he talks about it,
Speaker 3: he says Greg back to it. I think it's really
Speaker 3: sweet and it's really lovely, and he clearly enjoyed talking
Speaker 3: to you about it. As I said, you've spoken before.
Speaker 3: We've been to his studio. It's not like a normal studio, though,
Speaker 3: is it? You recorded this there? But it's not like
Speaker 3: you expect recording studios to be, with a big mixing
Speaker 3: desk and a wall of glass where you've got a
Speaker 3: booth inside. It's it's like an empty room it is.
Speaker 4: I mean, just to speak to that first point that
Speaker 4: you make, just to clear up, I'm not Besti's with Brianino,
Speaker 4: have met him before. He's an incredibly amiable guy, very humble,
Speaker 4: very sweet, very down to earth basically. But you're right,
Speaker 4: it is the stuff of dreams to go to Brianino's studio,
Speaker 4: drink some mint tea with him and you're hearing this,
Speaker 4: he plays me some new music. We went into the
Speaker 4: little side room and he played me some new music,
Speaker 4: which was just like I was playing it cool obviously.
Speaker 4: I was just like, oh sure, yeah, Brian just playing
Speaker 4: a bit of new music.
Speaker 1: Totally fine.
Speaker 5: But you're right.
Speaker 4: The studio itself, it's not what you'd expect, probably not
Speaker 4: full of instruments and huge sound desks and sort of
Speaker 4: memorials and memories to the legendary albums and music that
Speaker 4: have been recorded there. It's pretty sparse, like it's a
Speaker 4: table and some chairs and some of like Brian's artwork
Speaker 4: sort of around the place, and a humble kitchen and it's. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think every time an artist comes there, they really do.
Speaker 4: They bring their own thing to it, do you know
Speaker 4: what I mean? It's like a blank canvas for them
Speaker 4: to go and explore.
Speaker 3: Do you think we need to tell our listeners, not
Speaker 3: tell our listeners, remind our listeners who Brian Peter Georgio.
Speaker 5: Is, Well, you go for it. Shoot.
Speaker 3: I think most people you know are aware of who
Speaker 3: you know is. But in case you don't, hear is
Speaker 3: a seventy five year old man from Melton, Suffolk, as
Speaker 3: we all know, are you reading it doesn't matter where
Speaker 3: I'm getting my facts. He's got three children. He was
Speaker 3: born in nineteen Stop.
Speaker 5: Right there, tell us about his contribution to music history.
Speaker 3: Please fifteenth of Mace got birthday coming up? You know, is,
Speaker 3: of course the godfather of ambient music. That's one of
Speaker 3: his things. He worked with Bowie a lot, especially on
Speaker 3: his Berlin trilogy. A member of Roxy Music early on,
Speaker 3: a visual artist, a sound designer. He's produced so many
Speaker 3: other people as well. You two, Coldplay, talking Heads, Bowie, etc.
Speaker 1: Et cetera.
Speaker 3: There's so much to get into, but this, as Greg
Speaker 3: says is, it's focused on a particular new project that
Speaker 3: he's got coming up. It's really fascinating stuff. We put
Speaker 3: loads of links in the description of this podcast so
Speaker 3: you can check out all the things that they're talking about.
Speaker 3: What if I missed out Greg before we go.
Speaker 4: What I would say is that there's a lot of
Speaker 4: chat about music and climate in here, which as you
Speaker 4: can tell, I love talking to Brian about. But there's
Speaker 4: also the release of what's been called the definitive documentary
Speaker 4: of Brian Nay's life. He could have made this at
Speaker 4: any point probably in the life like three decades, but
Speaker 4: has chosen to do something now. So we talk about that.
Speaker 4: It's called Eno, but of course this is Brian Eno,
Speaker 4: and so there's a twist. So this film is a
Speaker 4: generative film, so it's different every time it's screened. That's
Speaker 4: because it's using AI and it's being premiered in London
Speaker 4: at the Barbercane Cinema tomorrow night, Saturday the twentieth. And
Speaker 4: there's also a soundtrack that goes with the album that's
Speaker 4: got some unreleased music on it, and that's out now,
Speaker 4: so if people are interested in that, they can go
Speaker 4: and listen to that and check it out right now.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's probably enough from us. Thank you for downloading
Speaker 3: this episode of Midnight Chats. If you're new to us,
Speaker 3: this is the Late Night Music Interview podcast. Please do
Speaker 3: give us a follow wherever you're listening. We're also on
Speaker 3: social media at Midnight Chats pod. Instagram is your best
Speaker 3: bet there. Stay in touch dm US, let us know
Speaker 3: what you're thinking of these shows. There's some video clips
Speaker 3: from some of our interviews, including this one with Brian Eno,
Speaker 3: a special one this week. We'll all be back next Monday,
Speaker 3: but here is an extra episode for this week. Greg
Speaker 3: Cochran talking to the legendary Brian Eno.
Speaker 4: Brian, welcome to Midnight Chats and thank you for inviting
Speaker 4: us to do this in your studio, which is a
Speaker 4: place steeped in creativity and myth and legend and can
Speaker 4: I add very nice mint tea.
Speaker 5: Thanks thanks for inviting us here to have a chat
Speaker 5: with you today.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Greg. It's a pleasure to suit you again.
Speaker 4: You two, and we're sharing this episode of the podcast
Speaker 4: around Earth Day. So I want to start by talking
Speaker 4: to you about your work in climate change, in the
Speaker 4: climate space and your passion for that, your kind of
Speaker 4: activism in that area, and how you've brought that together
Speaker 4: with your music and the music community more broadly. Some
Speaker 4: people listening to this will be familiar with Earth percent
Speaker 4: the organization that you co founded, so maybe four years
Speaker 4: ago now perhaps for you. Yeah, the tagline of Earth
Speaker 4: Ascent is unleashing the power of music in service of
Speaker 4: the planet. So I wonder if you could start by
Speaker 4: briefly telling us a bit about what earth percent is
Speaker 4: and what are you doing when you say you're unleashing
Speaker 4: the power of music in service of the planet.
Speaker 2: So Earth Percent is really a way of connecting the
Speaker 2: music business to the problem of climate change. So a
Speaker 2: lot of money flows through the music business, and most
Speaker 2: of the people I know, artists and business people in
Speaker 2: the industry as they like to call it, are concerned
Speaker 2: about climate change, and many of them don't quite know
Speaker 2: how to address it. So it's not for lack of
Speaker 2: goodwill or generosity. It's out of confusion really that they're thinking,
Speaker 2: there are so many things to do, it's such an emergency.
Speaker 2: What can I do? And so we wanted to see
Speaker 2: if we can answer that question and set up a
Speaker 2: simple way for people to be sure that any contribution
Speaker 2: they made.
Speaker 1: Was being used well. So our initial idea.
Speaker 2: Was to say to people, give us one percent of
Speaker 2: your income from say your next tour or your next
Speaker 2: album or a song or a show, and we will
Speaker 2: make sure that that goes to people who are really
Speaker 2: being effective in terms of dealing with climate change. And
Speaker 2: this is very often the smaller organizations that you wouldn't
Speaker 2: normally hear about. We don't support green Peace or Friends
Speaker 2: of the Earth or things like that, not because we
Speaker 2: don't like them, but because.
Speaker 1: They already have a high profile.
Speaker 2: So we're looking for smaller organizations who are doing really
Speaker 2: critical work. And some of those organizations are as small
Speaker 2: as two or three or five people. We have had
Speaker 2: some help. Some companies have been very generous with us.
Speaker 2: Most of them haven't really yet caught on, so they
Speaker 2: they're kind of leaving it to their artists to do
Speaker 2: the work. But there are, you know, lots of other
Speaker 2: people making money out of music, like promoters or agents, managers, lawyers.
Speaker 2: There's a whole structure behind the music business, and we
Speaker 2: want to persuade them that really, if their artists are
Speaker 2: willing to contribute, so should they be. And one of
Speaker 2: the reasons I want to start this thing was that
Speaker 2: I wanted to say, let's not be pessimistic.
Speaker 1: It won't help.
Speaker 2: It's very easy to be pessimistic, and it's actually an
Speaker 2: overstated case in a way. You know, bad news sells,
Speaker 2: so we see a lot of that, and there is
Speaker 2: a lot of bad news, There's no doubt there's a
Speaker 2: lot of bad news, but there's also a lot of
Speaker 2: good news, and we don't hear much about that. I
Speaker 2: would really like to redress the balance and say there
Speaker 2: is a fight going on. You know, people tend to
Speaker 2: cast the climate fight as we're either going to win
Speaker 2: or lose. It isn't as simple as that we will
Speaker 2: never win. We're going to have to do a lot
Speaker 2: of adapting and we can lose in many different ways.
Speaker 2: If we manage to restrict climate temperature rise to something
Speaker 2: like two percent, there's a chance two point one percent
Speaker 2: is quite a lot worse than two percent. Two point
Speaker 2: two percent is quite a lot worse, and it gets
Speaker 2: exponentially more catastrophic as you go up. So it's worth
Speaker 2: every little bit that you can do to stop that
Speaker 2: change happening.
Speaker 1: Anyway, that's enough from me for a moment.
Speaker 4: It's a fantastic summary of where the idea of earth
Speaker 4: percent has come from and why and how you've tried
Speaker 4: to galvanize the music community so far, and there is
Speaker 4: I agree with you a lot more engagement that could
Speaker 4: be coming.
Speaker 5: From the music community.
Speaker 4: You've done an incredible amount of work in quite a
Speaker 4: short period of time. Earlier this year I saw you speak.
Speaker 4: I've seen you speak a couple of times this year,
Speaker 4: but earlier this year I saw you speak alongside Jervis
Speaker 4: Cocker from POULT who's created a project called Biophobia, and
Speaker 4: he's kind of collaborating with Earth percent and appearing at
Speaker 4: Earth percent kind of affiliated and partnered events to deliver
Speaker 4: this new project. I wonder if you'd talk to us
Speaker 4: a little bit about that, what it is, your interpretation
Speaker 4: of what it is, what you've made of it, and
Speaker 4: how you engage Javis to talk about climate and storytelling.
Speaker 2: Javis has been such a treasure. I have to say,
Speaker 2: he's been really, really helpful. So we kind of first
Speaker 2: spoke to him about a year ago and said, would
Speaker 2: be very nice if you join us because you're a
Speaker 2: good front man. People like Jarvis quite rightly. He's a
Speaker 2: very nice person and he's a thoughtful person as well,
Speaker 2: so he's exactly the kind of person you want to
Speaker 2: be a face in a campaign like this. So we
Speaker 2: talked to him probably about a year ago and he said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think I'd be interested to help, and then didn't
Speaker 2: hear from him for quite a long time, and I thought, oh, well,
Speaker 2: perhaps it's not for him. And then he came back
Speaker 2: to us and said, I think I've got an idea
Speaker 2: and okay, fine, love to look at it when you're ready,
Speaker 2: And he turned up at my studio here and he
Speaker 2: performed this piece is really a piece of performance art,
Speaker 2: and he performed it for three of us here, and
Speaker 2: it's about a thirty minute piece and it's so clever.
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the most brilliant things I've
Speaker 2: seen done in this area. And I'll tell you why.
Speaker 2: Without going into details of exactly what it is, I
Speaker 2: can tell you that it's a sort of PowerPoint presentation
Speaker 2: with a difference. The difference being, of course, Javis Cocker,
Speaker 2: who doesn't do a PowerPoint.
Speaker 1: Presentation like anybody else would do it.
Speaker 2: But it's very powerful and it's very moving, and I
Speaker 2: think the reason it's moving is because he's done it
Speaker 2: as himself. It's not Javis suddenly dropping his day job
Speaker 2: to come and talk about climate change as though he's
Speaker 2: a scientist. It's Javis being Javis and applying his mind
Speaker 2: to this issue, his mind and his abilities as an artist.
Speaker 2: That's what I think is really brilliant about it. What
Speaker 2: so often happens is that artists or celebrities, you know,
Speaker 2: sports people, whatever, are sort of invited to talk just
Speaker 2: because they're famous. Their actual experience is not called upon.
Speaker 2: People don't know how to use it, So you get
Speaker 2: people like me just sort of stuck in front of
Speaker 2: a microphone saying something about a subject that really isn't ours.
Speaker 2: You know, you should be talking to climate scientists or
Speaker 2: moral philosophers or other people if you want that kind
Speaker 2: of information. But to take one person's reaction to this subject,
Speaker 2: a person who's thought about it deeply and has thought
Speaker 2: about how to express his feelings about it deeply, that's
Speaker 2: really quite revolutionary. So the reason I'm so excited about
Speaker 2: Javis's contribution is because I think that's the way we
Speaker 2: artists have to tackle this. It's not take off the
Speaker 2: overcoat or the smark or whatever you use as an
Speaker 2: artist and stop being an artist and talk seriously about
Speaker 2: something that We've had a.
Speaker 1: Lot of that and we want something different now.
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, definitely onto this year for Earth Day,
Speaker 4: Earth percent are launching a project called Sounds Right, and
Speaker 4: the idea and correct me if I'm wrong here is
Speaker 4: that nature, the sounds of nature were obviously artistic expressions.
Speaker 5: Original muse.
Speaker 4: Being that like the first songs, the first stories, the
Speaker 4: first paintings, would have been inspired by our natural surroundings
Speaker 4: and our environments. And that obviously happens all the time
Speaker 4: to this day. But somewhere along the line, we've forgotten
Speaker 4: that nature was important than that always very much taken
Speaker 4: it for granted. So this is about this is a
Speaker 4: project about giving nature the credit that she deserves for
Speaker 4: her contribution to our artistic expressions. And so Earth percent
Speaker 4: have got around sort of a number of artists, fifteen
Speaker 4: or so artists are all sharing unreleased or unheard to
Speaker 4: this point music that feature an artist, and the artist
Speaker 4: is Nature, so she features.
Speaker 5: On these tracks.
Speaker 4: What happens then, is when these songs get listened to,
Speaker 4: when the time comes for the royalties to be distributed,
Speaker 4: Nature gets her credit. She receives a royalty and that
Speaker 4: goes back into one percent, and it's distributed to the
Speaker 4: protection and the elevation and the restoration of nature. Is
Speaker 4: that a neat summary of where the ideas sort of
Speaker 4: come from and how you're trying to approach this.
Speaker 2: That's a brilliant summary, and I wish i'd said it.
Speaker 2: It's really it's exactly exactly right. Yes, First of all,
Speaker 2: the attraction of it is that it does, hopefully if
Speaker 2: it works, and I think it will work, it provides
Speaker 2: a very long term income stream.
Speaker 4: You are one of the artists that are participating as well,
Speaker 4: and so you're sharing the reimagining of a song for this,
Speaker 4: and you've been working on it the past days, I understand.
Speaker 2: So there's two songs I'm working on. One is with
Speaker 2: the Norwegian singer Aurora, who's one of the most extraordinary
Speaker 2: people I've ever met, absolutely original human being. You just
Speaker 2: think who designed her?
Speaker 5: Yeah, she's a lot of fun tog out.
Speaker 2: She's such a one off, wonderful person. So we took
Speaker 2: one of her songs. I think, yes, I am remembering
Speaker 2: the title because it had another title which I'm getting
Speaker 2: mixed up with. But it's called now a Soul with
Speaker 2: No King. It's a beautiful song. And so what we've
Speaker 2: done with that song is we've made a.
Speaker 1: Sort of.
Speaker 2: It's as though she's walking through a forest and then
Speaker 2: we've made a clearing, a kind of sonic clearing in
Speaker 2: the forest, and we've inhabited that with Norwegian birds and
Speaker 2: her voice and it's I think it's.
Speaker 1: Really a lovely result. I'll play you a little bit
Speaker 1: of it later.
Speaker 2: The other one i'm doing, it's a song I wrote
Speaker 2: with David Bowie about thirty years ago, and we recorded
Speaker 2: a version of it. I think the only release it had.
Speaker 1: Was as a B side. Actually, it's a great song,
Speaker 1: and so.
Speaker 2: I'm taking that apart and rebuilding it with some hyenas.
Speaker 5: I was not expecting you to say.
Speaker 2: That, Well, I've got a number of recordings of different
Speaker 2: animals here. I just wanted I wanted big, slightly menacing
Speaker 2: animals in the song, not birds and wind and things
Speaker 2: like that. So I tried a Siberian tiger.
Speaker 1: That was a bit too overwhelming. I tried some rooks.
Speaker 2: I've always loved rooks, but they sounded like ducks in
Speaker 2: that context, which is not quite the same message. And
Speaker 2: the two I've settled on and I'm working with at
Speaker 2: the moment. I haven't finished this piece yet. Hyenas and
Speaker 2: wild pigs. The wild pigs sound really good. They're in
Speaker 2: a kind of frequency range, which is quite hard to
Speaker 2: fit into the music.
Speaker 1: But I'm working on that.
Speaker 2: But so so, yes, we'll have We'll have David Brye
Speaker 2: and some wild pigs.
Speaker 4: There's something so perfect about that, because obviously you enjoyed
Speaker 4: such a sort of warm and surreal, humor filled relationship
Speaker 4: with David.
Speaker 1: He would love it.
Speaker 4: I was going to say, you think you'd approve of
Speaker 4: wild wild pigs and hyenas.
Speaker 2: He'd say, Oh, it sounds good to Babra. I think
Speaker 2: we should go ahead with that. It's one of the
Speaker 2: voices he used a lot in the studio.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what was it that the song is called?
Speaker 5: Get Real? Is that right?
Speaker 1: Get Real?
Speaker 5: Get Real?
Speaker 4: What? Why did you want to revisit that particular song?
Speaker 4: Has that been sort of nagging away at you?
Speaker 1: Or you? Yes?
Speaker 2: So i'd completely forgotten the song.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: I still don't even really remember making it. It was
Speaker 2: pretty quickly done, I think. But I liked the title
Speaker 2: get Real, especially for this, because what we're talking about
Speaker 2: is using real sounds of the earth in a piece
Speaker 2: of music. And I think it's a really good song too.
Speaker 2: I love the song, and it was kind of unfinished.
Speaker 2: I think we had.
Speaker 1: A bit of a surplus of material.
Speaker 2: And I've found other things that we did that that
Speaker 2: never got released, which are also really good. So you know,
Speaker 2: we were working fast and with great excitement and whatever
Speaker 2: got finished when it went out onto records, but that
Speaker 2: piece didn't really get finished. The B side version of it,
Speaker 2: which I think was I don't even know that it
Speaker 2: was a B side. I think it was an extra
Speaker 2: track on a on an album released somewhere something like that.
Speaker 2: But it's a it's a powerful song and with this
Speaker 2: and very good lyrics by the way, it's really a
Speaker 2: good lyric in it.
Speaker 1: And with this new.
Speaker 2: Kind of container that we're putting it in of being
Speaker 2: a song about relationship with the earth, I think it
Speaker 2: really works. I haven't finished it yet, so this is all.
Speaker 2: I think it will really work, I should be saying.
Speaker 4: I'm positively well, it's I mean, the original song is
Speaker 4: sort of like quite like a rollicking kind of like
Speaker 4: sort of yeah, since like rock song, isn't it because
Speaker 4: it was part of the one outside sessions, that's right.
Speaker 4: So this real imagining of it, is it going to
Speaker 4: sound kind of slightly alien? Is it going to be
Speaker 4: something very different? Or is it going to be there
Speaker 4: or are there kind of similarities to that original?
Speaker 2: Quite a lot of it will be similar. I've been
Speaker 2: wondering about whether to add more than hyenas and pigs,
Speaker 2: in the sense of whether to add instruments, new instruments.
Speaker 2: I still haven't decided about that. That's sort of a
Speaker 2: it's slightly a moral question as well of can I
Speaker 2: can I.
Speaker 1: Do that without him being here?
Speaker 2: I think he would definitely get the animal connection and
Speaker 2: would want to be part of that.
Speaker 1: I think he would.
Speaker 2: He used to like things I came up with on
Speaker 2: my own anyway, so I think it would be fine
Speaker 2: to go ahead, but I haven't done that it.
Speaker 4: In terms of the other contributions that artists have made
Speaker 4: to this sounds right campaign, I don't know if there's
Speaker 4: anybody else that you know of that's going to be
Speaker 4: involved that you're excited about their participation. I can't remember
Speaker 4: fair enough, and I wasn't told because it's top secret,
Speaker 4: like I should remind listeners that we are recording this
Speaker 4: like well ahead of actually this this.
Speaker 5: Campaign is darting.
Speaker 4: I'm looking forward to hearing about that sort of challenge
Speaker 4: that artists have almost been set to feature nature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, a lot of it's sort of
Speaker 2: a thing in pop music to feature nature anyway. You know,
Speaker 2: there are lots of outstanding tracks that have that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff coming in. I mean, I'm thinking of remember
Speaker 2: Walking in the Sound, for instance, that song, But lots
Speaker 2: and lots of songs, beach boys songs, beatles songs, that
Speaker 2: and my songs, well you know that just dragged in
Speaker 2: sounds of the outside world. One of the reasons I
Speaker 2: like that is because I like the idea of having
Speaker 2: a music that sort of bleeds at the edges into
Speaker 2: the sounds we hear around us anyway, So a music
Speaker 2: that isn't so cut off from the rest of our experience.
Speaker 2: You know, classical music is totally boundaried. You know exactly
Speaker 2: what the music is and you know exactly what's outside
Speaker 2: of it. But a lot of the music I've been
Speaker 2: interested in, particularly my own ambient work, I've deliberately used
Speaker 2: material that.
Speaker 1: Was ambiguous. It could be in the music, or it.
Speaker 2: Could be the sound of traffic outside or the sound
Speaker 2: of something else happening that wasn't intended to be musical.
Speaker 2: And I like that idea of a sort of soft
Speaker 2: edged art form where there's a bleed with the environment.
Speaker 4: Listening to you speak about this, I can't help but
Speaker 4: think of how like retrospectively, when you think of all
Speaker 4: the music that is lent on the sounds of nature
Speaker 4: over the decades, and every time that nature is either
Speaker 4: informed an actual sound or a lyric or the inspiration
Speaker 4: of how big that the size of that credit would
Speaker 4: be if we'd actually been doing this for the seventy years.
Speaker 4: So hopefully in a few years time, maybe this could
Speaker 4: be adopted as a you know, a default thing that
Speaker 4: just you know, without nature, we wouldn't be having pretty
Speaker 4: much any of these songs.
Speaker 2: What we really hoped for is that gradually people would
Speaker 2: come to think, well, it's completely normal to want to
Speaker 2: make a contribution to the planet.
Speaker 1: That's what we're here for. We are here to look after.
Speaker 2: It, so we want to make it exceptional and odd.
Speaker 2: If people don't, we want them to feel, oh, what
Speaker 2: we've forgotten. Oh yes, we've forgotten to include the planet.
Speaker 5: The ground that we're standing on.
Speaker 1: And it is quite easy to forget.
Speaker 2: And obviously quite a few people have completely forgotten. You know,
Speaker 2: the very wealthy of the world have so forgotten the
Speaker 2: planet that they're now looking for others to go and
Speaker 2: live on and make a mess of.
Speaker 4: One thing I was gonna say is I hope you've
Speaker 4: got a break planned in April, because you're the start
Speaker 4: that you've had to this year has been incredibly full on.
Speaker 4: And also in April, it's not just the activity that
Speaker 4: Earth Percent are doing with the Sounds Right campaign. You
Speaker 4: do also have a documentary film coming out called Eno,
Speaker 4: and also have an album that you're sharing of the
Speaker 4: same name that is music from the documentary and does
Speaker 4: feature some unreleased music. So perhaps if we start with
Speaker 4: the documentary, it's a generative documentary, So you've worked with
Speaker 4: a collaborator called Gary Hustwitz and also someone called Brendan Dahr,
Speaker 4: and it's using AI and it's going to be different
Speaker 4: every time somebody views this documentary. And I'm guessing that
Speaker 4: over the years, you've had plenty of opportunities to make
Speaker 4: a sort of very conventional linear story of your life
Speaker 4: in a documentary form. So I wondered whether you've always
Speaker 4: been reluctant to do that, and have you just been
Speaker 4: waiting for the right opportunity to come along to do
Speaker 4: something that felt more in keeping with the way that
Speaker 4: you might want to tell the story.
Speaker 2: Yes, So I don't like biographical documentaries very much in general,
Speaker 2: and I think it's because in order to make one
Speaker 2: in the conventional way, you have to decide on an
Speaker 2: order of things, and it always looks like this person
Speaker 2: started their life, you know, at sixteen or seventeen, and
Speaker 2: had the big plan into the future, and it was
Speaker 2: all imagined, and look it all happened, how wonderful, Whereas
Speaker 2: my experience is that actually, not only for me, but
Speaker 2: for nearly everyone, it's a sequence of blunders and bits
Speaker 2: of good luck and bad luck, and sometimes grasping an opportunity,
Speaker 2: sometimes failing to grasp one, collisions that you didn't plan.
Speaker 2: It's so much more messy than it's ever made to
Speaker 2: look in documentaries. So documentaries are nearly always misleading in
Speaker 2: that they give this impression of a life carefully planned
Speaker 2: and organized. I think it's much braver to say, no,
Speaker 2: it wasn't planned and organized. A lot of it was chance,
Speaker 2: and I was quite lucky, and there are a lot
Speaker 2: of people that I owe thanks to I'm not a
Speaker 2: self made man. I've been made up by all the
Speaker 2: circumstances around me, including you know, for instance, the fact
Speaker 2: that I was born into a new.
Speaker 1: Welfare state that actually worked at the.
Speaker 2: Time, the fact that I was lucky to get a
Speaker 2: scholarship and a decent education, the fact that art schools
Speaker 2: were free when I was younger, the fact that I
Speaker 2: happened to step on to a particular tube train and
Speaker 2: meet Andy McKay one afternoon when I could have stepped
Speaker 2: through the next door and had a different life. You know,
Speaker 2: there's so many contingencies, and so I've always resisted a
Speaker 2: straightforward narrative of a documentary because I just think it
Speaker 2: isn't true. And then when Gary came along with this
Speaker 2: idea to say let's make he calls it a generative documentary.
Speaker 2: So he's taking all the bits and pieces of he
Speaker 2: can find from my life, several of which I didn't
Speaker 2: even know existed. He's the film of me talking here
Speaker 2: and there and walking down Portobella Road in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: two and things like this, and he's kind of shuffled them,
Speaker 2: and every time you see the film, you see them
Speaker 2: shuffled in a different order. And I have to say
Speaker 2: that is really so much more appealing to me. So
Speaker 2: that if you go and see the film, you'll see
Speaker 2: a different version than I've seen, And if you go again,
Speaker 2: you'll see a different version than either of those two versions.
Speaker 2: And that to me, it seems to me that throughout
Speaker 2: our lives we always keep repairing the narrative of our
Speaker 2: lives anyway, we sort of tell the story differently. Different
Speaker 2: things now seem important than that didn't seem important before,
Speaker 2: and different some things that seemed really critical have faded
Speaker 2: into the background. So we're always doing that shuffling anyway
Speaker 2: in our minds, and I wanted to really have something
Speaker 2: that acknowledged that and said we are shufflers. That's what
Speaker 2: we do. We keep retelling the story to support where
Speaker 2: we want to be now and how we want to
Speaker 2: view our past. It's not a single fixed story.
Speaker 4: I'm quite looking forward to I hope to see the
Speaker 4: film and I'm looking forward to sort of going to
Speaker 4: the pub with other people that have seen the film
Speaker 4: at different times and being almost like a sticker book
Speaker 4: where you open and go, what did your version? When
Speaker 4: did Brian did that? Being the one that you saw? Yeah,
Speaker 4: I quite like that idea. Everybody feels a little bit
Speaker 4: special by the version that they saw.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think I think Gary has done a
Speaker 2: great job, actually, and I think that I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: that a lot of documentaries will now be made in
Speaker 2: ways similar to this. Might not be exactly the same way,
Speaker 2: but I think that idea of which, of course, has
Speaker 2: been in literature for a long time. You know, there
Speaker 2: are many many books written in that way, where flashbacks
Speaker 2: and flash forwards get rearranged in different time sequences. But
Speaker 2: it hasn't happened much in film, and I'm not sure
Speaker 2: that it's ever happened before in documentary.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it and the album that
Speaker 4: accompanies it. There are three underleased tracks that will previously
Speaker 4: unheard tracks that appear on the album. How did you
Speaker 4: find that experience? Because I know that you generally, you
Speaker 4: don't spend an awful lot of time kind of chronicling
Speaker 4: your own work or kind of you know, prefer to
Speaker 4: sort of generally look forward and are creating all the time.
Speaker 4: So this is a sort of retrospective experience sort of
Speaker 4: putting that together?
Speaker 5: How did you find that?
Speaker 1: You're right?
Speaker 2: There are pieces on there that I haven't listened to
Speaker 2: for thirty or forty years. I don't listen to my
Speaker 2: own work that much. I sometimes hear it by accident
Speaker 2: because somebody else is playing it, or somebody wants a
Speaker 2: piece for a film, and so suddenly I'm presented with
Speaker 2: it again, and I like that experience. Actually, usually immediately
Speaker 2: after I finished something, I don't want to hear it
Speaker 2: again for quite a long time. Then it starts to
Speaker 2: slip back into my life occasionally in that In those
Speaker 2: ways I've described, I hear it through a window or
Speaker 2: something and I think, Oh, that's good.
Speaker 1: What is that.
Speaker 5: I did that.
Speaker 2: I've often had that happen where I've thought, oh, I
Speaker 2: like that, and then realized, oh, yeah, I made that.
Speaker 2: It's it's a really nice experience. And it occasionally happens
Speaker 2: the other way as well.
Speaker 1: Fuck what's that?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah that's me, But funnily enough, it more often
Speaker 2: happens the positive way around. So it's it's kind of
Speaker 2: encouraging to think that you haven't been completely wasting your time.
Speaker 2: And I have a new device I've been using which
Speaker 2: I might be able to show you, but I don't
Speaker 2: know how you will make any use of it in
Speaker 2: your podcast. It's it's a way of I have archive,
Speaker 2: which has about ten thousand pieces in it.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: Some of them are actual pieces, some of them are
Speaker 2: very close duplicates of things in there. You know, there's
Speaker 2: quite a lot of repetition. But I would say there's
Speaker 2: probably four thousand different pieces of music in there, and
Speaker 2: as I said, ten thousand pieces altogether. So my friend
Speaker 2: Peter Chilvers and I have now developed a new piece
Speaker 2: of software that just plays them one on top of
Speaker 2: the other. It just makes a new piece out of
Speaker 2: those existing pieces. And that's been incredibly interesting because the
Speaker 2: algorithm makes choices that I would never ever make. I'd
Speaker 2: never dream of putting these things together, but very often
Speaker 2: they work. I'll show you in a minute. It's quite fascinating.
Speaker 2: In fact, shall I show you now? Yeah, we can
Speaker 2: do because I don't think you'll be able to record
Speaker 2: it on here, but.
Speaker 4: Well what we can do, yeah we can. We can
Speaker 4: stop and have a look at it and come back
Speaker 4: and carry on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just so you've got to.
Speaker 4: Effectively, we just listened to a whole bunch of new
Speaker 4: music which sounded great.
Speaker 1: Pieces that have never existed before.
Speaker 4: What are fantastic tool resource opportunity to kind of pull on.
Speaker 4: That sounds like a real exciting new creative Pathway.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we were talking about the film, the documentary,
Speaker 2: so this is sort of another example of generative work
Speaker 2: in the same way that that documentary is. So just
Speaker 2: to describe to listeners what's going on. I have an
Speaker 2: archive in my studio which has about ten thousand pieces
Speaker 2: of music in it, and some of them are very simple,
Speaker 2: they're a single sound, and some of them are quite
Speaker 2: complicated finished pieces. But Peter and I designed some software
Speaker 2: which enabled the computer to just pick at random among
Speaker 2: those pieces and just stick them together and play them
Speaker 2: all together. Now, that sounds like a recipe for chaos,
Speaker 2: and probably it would be with most other people's music,
Speaker 2: but because a lot of my music doesn't have rhythm
Speaker 2: and doesn't have changing chord patterns, it actually works. And
Speaker 2: so what happens is you hit the go button and
Speaker 2: a new piece of music, a combination of three or
Speaker 2: four or five existing pieces existing in my archive anyway,
Speaker 2: are put together and surprisingly often produce really really interesting results,
Speaker 2: things that I would never dream of doing. If you
Speaker 2: listen to the individual tracks, you'd think that isn't going
Speaker 2: to work with that, but it does when it's with
Speaker 2: that other third thing, you know, So it's been. It's
Speaker 2: been a real education for me and left me with
Speaker 2: the difficult problem of having about trillion pieces of music.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, and having kind of the algorithm or this
Speaker 4: tool is your sort of co producer or co writer,
Speaker 4: is quite an exciting idea. I think, just to circle
Speaker 4: back to the very beginning of the conversation, you've called
Speaker 4: the climate movement the greatest movement, one of the greatest
Speaker 4: movements in human history. And I think a lot of
Speaker 4: us feel quite nervous about twenty twenty four and where
Speaker 4: we're at, and sort of there's more democratic elections taking
Speaker 4: place this year than ever before in any year of
Speaker 4: human history, given the climate context, which is that we
Speaker 4: need to work across boarder is, how does that all
Speaker 4: that make you feel? Like? Do you share a sense
Speaker 4: of nervousness about the sort of trajectory that we're on,
Speaker 4: or you actually like a feeling sort of like this,
Speaker 4: this is an unstoppable thing that's happening and there will
Speaker 4: be progress, or you can feel both these two things
Speaker 4: at the same time.
Speaker 1: Of course, so.
Speaker 2: Well, I do feel both of those very strongly.
Speaker 1: At the same time.
Speaker 2: I see a worldwide trend towards fascism you know, I
Speaker 2: see it in countries like Holland, Germany, England, the USA, Israel,
Speaker 2: more and India. There's more and more countries are facing
Speaker 2: an uncertain future by demanding ridiculous kinds of certainty.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Ethnic cleansing is a sort of stupid attempt at creating purity,
Speaker 2: creating a problem free world by by inventing a false
Speaker 2: problem and then a completely unsuitable solution to it. So
Speaker 2: I see that happening everywhere, and I find it alarming.
Speaker 2: And at the same time I see quite a few
Speaker 2: countries quietly getting on with making a better world. Of course,
Speaker 2: the Scandinavian countries as usual. I don't know why we
Speaker 2: just don't stop trying to govern ourselves and just invite
Speaker 2: them to give us a hand. Yes, dear Finland, you're
Speaker 2: obviously better at this than we are. Can we hire
Speaker 2: you for a little while to sort things out for us?
Speaker 2: And of course the huge threat I think is grotesque inequality.
Speaker 2: Now inequality people think, yes, it would be nice if
Speaker 2: everyone was equal. It's a nice thing, But actually it's
Speaker 2: more than a nice thing. It's really really important. Very
Speaker 2: rich people are very resource hungry.
Speaker 1: They're actually the problem.
Speaker 2: Very rich people create very difficult, uneven circumstances.
Speaker 1: You know, in the.
Speaker 2: Last four years, the five wealthiest men on the planet
Speaker 2: have doubled.
Speaker 1: In wealth.
Speaker 2: The five billion poorest people on the planet have all
Speaker 2: become poorer, so that wealth spread is increasing, And there
Speaker 2: are all sorts of really really good reasons for thinking
Speaker 2: that's a terrible idea. Inequality is not just a sort
Speaker 2: of cosmetically unpleasant thing. It's actually in ecological terms, in
Speaker 2: ecosystem terms, which is what we should be thinking, and
Speaker 2: it's a disaster. It's if you think of it in
Speaker 2: ecological terms, imagine it's a plague. You know, we have
Speaker 2: a plague of rich people, people who've sucked wealth up.
Speaker 2: As opposed to the libertarian theory was that wealth will
Speaker 2: trickle down. It doesn't wealth trickles up. Wealth is magnetic.
Speaker 2: It sucks more wealth to itself, and we have to
Speaker 2: really deal with that because, of course, the other problem
Speaker 2: is we're supposed to be living in democracies, and everybody
Speaker 2: knows that the idea is one person, one vote. But
Speaker 2: does a guy worth one hundred billion dollars have just
Speaker 2: one vote? Of course he fucking doesn't. Everybody knows that
Speaker 2: money translates into power. So we have a situation where
Speaker 2: you and I might have one vote, but somebody has
Speaker 2: one hundred million votes, and to pretend that that is
Speaker 2: not a factor in a society that calls itself democratic
Speaker 2: is completely ridiculous. So that's the bad news. Sorry, I
Speaker 2: thought I should jump in there and say, on the
Speaker 2: other hand.
Speaker 4: Yes, but I think also let's end on a note
Speaker 4: of talking about for example, you'll work with hard art
Speaker 4: and the way that you for people don't know, it's
Speaker 4: a kind of collective of creatives and artists, a multi
Speaker 4: discipline community. You do meetups, you know, you help each other,
Speaker 4: you exchange ideas. And one event you did earlier this
Speaker 4: year twenty twenty four was called the Fate of Britain.
Speaker 4: It was in Manchester and it was an example of
Speaker 4: the exchange of those ideas and to just because I'd
Speaker 4: like to end on a note of like basically addressing
Speaker 4: that those points that you just made that are incredibly
Speaker 4: important and depressing because it's the realization of the systems
Speaker 4: that we are in and want to stay trapped in.
Speaker 4: But actually no, it takes people to challenge those to
Speaker 4: imagine different features for us to approach different features, and
Speaker 4: so just to speak to you great to hear how
Speaker 4: when you get together with the hard art community or
Speaker 4: whoever it might be, do you feel positive about the
Speaker 4: direction that things could go.
Speaker 2: What's encouraging to me is that we're all starting to
Speaker 2: realize that community is our strength, and so hard art
Speaker 2: is really an attempt to make a new kind of community,
Speaker 2: a community of people who want to agree with each
Speaker 2: other and want to work together and want to reach consensus.
Speaker 2: Now that is profoundly anti capitalist. Funnily enough, capitalism really
Speaker 2: succeeded by telling us all that our strength was in
Speaker 2: being individuals. Margaret Thatcher is a very good example. We know,
Speaker 2: she said there's no such thing as society. They are
Speaker 2: just individuals and their families. What I'm finding more and
Speaker 2: more now is people are realizing that, Okay, the fuckers
Speaker 2: have got the money, but we've got the people, and
Speaker 2: we the people, have to start working together and not
Speaker 2: be distracted by these idiotic culture wars that are confected
Speaker 2: to keep us distracted. They are they're an invention. Actually,
Speaker 2: of course, you can always find people who do think
Speaker 2: like that, but you don't have to put them on
Speaker 2: the front page of the newspaper all the time. So
Speaker 2: it's where you choose to put your focus that matters.
Speaker 2: And I'm finding now more and more people want to
Speaker 2: put their focus on the successes of communities rather than
Speaker 2: the failures of individuals. At the moment, we're stuck with
Speaker 2: this carapace of the old forms of government that have
Speaker 2: gone completely wrong. They're completely corrupted by money. Now you
Speaker 2: know what's his name, Tim Marshall and gb News. This
Speaker 2: this is money talking, that's all. It is, quite literally
Speaker 2: to money talking. And of course it says all the
Speaker 2: right things that press the buttons that there are too
Speaker 2: many immigrants, that climate change activists are nutcases, and so
Speaker 2: it has an audience. We're hoping that what we're doing
Speaker 2: will start to build up another kind of story, in
Speaker 2: another sense of value within within and among people.
Speaker 4: Well, I feel like there's a there's a fantastic kind
Speaker 4: of note to end on. I just want to say
Speaker 4: thanks to you for inviting me here today. What a
Speaker 4: treat to come and speak to you, What a treat
Speaker 4: for everybody's listening as well, to get to hear from
Speaker 4: you and spend this time with you. Thanks for playing
Speaker 4: me some music, and yeah, thanks for all your thoughtful conversation.
Speaker 4: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Greg, It's always a pleasure to
Speaker 1: talk to you.
Speaker 4: Midnight Chats is a joint production between Loud and Quiet
Speaker 4: and to My Studios for iHeartRadio. It's hosted by Stuart
Speaker 4: Stubbs and Greg Cochrane, mixed and mastered by Flow Lines,
Speaker 4: and edited by Stuart Stubbs. Find us on Instagram and
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Speaker 3: For more information, visit loudan Quiet dot com.