Production Advice

In this video Brian Eno talks about perfume, pornography and pissing in Duchamp’s urinal.

This, from a man who has produced (amongst others) Talking Heads, U2, Coldplay, Devo, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson and James – as well as being a prolific musician and artist in his own right, starting out as a member of Roxy Music in the early 70s, and inventing the genre label “Ambient” along the way.

I know what you’re thinking – another post about Brian Eno ? Already ?!? Change the tune already ! Tell us something useful !

Well, tough. I only just found this, and it’s fantastic, and I wanted to share it with you. I’ll post something technical about using EQ or compressors or something again soon, honest.

In the meantime, if you want some genuine insight into one of the greatest producers of all time, both as a producer and as a person, this is a great place to start. (The other place would be his 1995 book – A Year With Swollen Appendices: The Diary of Brian Eno, which I strongly recommend.)

Sadly the audio quality is poor, and it gets off to a pretty slow start – Paul Morley’s style won’t be to everyone’s taste – but hang in there, it’s worth worth it. By four minutes or so in, we get to the good stuff, and the (apparently) unnecessarily complex presentation begins cleverly making comments about the whole cliched format of the “pop” interview itself.

As well as his production methods, Oblique Strategies and Talking Heads, Eno also talks about lying, perfumes and pornography – and his answers to questions in a restricted number of words are both brilliant and funny.

Unnecessarily complicated, overly cerebral and pretentious ? Well, what did you expect ?!? But along the way Eno also reveals himself as a warm, witty and genuine person – as well as telling us what he really did to transform Achtung Baby into one of the greatest rock albums of all time. (Yes, really – so, I’m a (lapsed) U2 fan – what are you going to do about it ?)

Enjoy.