Ever wondered how a composer plays with silence to create evocative music? Roger Eno has been honing his ambient and emotive music since 1983’s seminal Apollo: Atmosphere’s And Soundtracks, an album he made with his older brother Brian and the producer Daniel Lanois.
Roger chats with Paul about his style and his unique approach of "decomposition" in the creation of music. They delve into his life's experiences, from being a music therapist to his recent signing with esteemed German classical label Deutsche Grammophon and how it has impacted his work. His new LP, The Skies They Shift Like Chords is a testament to his ability to play with silence, create space in music and make every sound intentional. Get to know about his influences, his inspirations, and his aspiration for listeners to fill in the gaps in his music with their own interpretations.
They also discuss the influences of his upbringing, his close connection with the English countryside, and his creative processes.
Eno is set to release his second solo album for Deutsche Grammophon this autumn. Released 13th October, ‘The skies, they shift like chords…’
Lost and Sound is proudly sponsored by Audio-Technica
Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more.
Subscribe to the Lost and Sound Substack for fresh updates and writing here.
Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins
Ever wondered how a composer plays with silence to create evocative music? Roger Eno has been honing his ambient and emotive music since 1983’s seminal Apollo: Atmosphere’s And Soundtracks, an album he made with his older brother Brian and the producer Daniel Lanois.
Roger chats with Paul about his style and his unique approach of "decomposition" in the creation of music. They delve into his life's experiences, from being a music therapist to his recent signing with esteemed German classical label Deutsche Grammophon and how it has impacted his work. His new LP, The Skies They Shift Like Chords is a testament to his ability to play with silence, create space in music and make every sound intentional. Get to know about his influences, his inspirations, and his aspiration for listeners to fill in the gaps in his music with their own interpretations.
They also discuss the influences of his upbringing, his close connection with the English countryside, and his creative processes.
Eno is set to release his second solo album for Deutsche Grammophon this autumn. Released 13th October, ‘The skies, they shift like chords…’
Lost and Sound is proudly sponsored by Audio-Technica
Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more.
Subscribe to the Lost and Sound Substack for fresh updates and writing here.
Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins
Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio Technica. Audio Technica are a global but still family run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges, microphones, studio quality yet affordable products, because they believe that high quality audio should be accessible to all. And I'm speaking to you right now wearing the M50X headphones. They're for the studio, they're for everyday. I speak to all my guests wearing these headphones, including what you're about to hear, but whatever way you like to listen yourself, head on over to AudioTechnicacom to check out all of their range of stuff. Ok, then, lost and Sound.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to Lost and Sound. I'm Paul Hanford. I'm your host. I'm a writer, author and university lecturer based in Berlin, where I'm speaking to you now from. And this is the show where, each episode, I have conversations with the musical innovators, the outsiders, the mavericks, the artists that do their own unique thing, and we talk about music, creativity, life, the things that inspire us to make the things that we make. Previous guests have included peaches, suzanne Chiani, jim O'Rourke, chilly Gonzalez, hania, rani, ghost, poet Graham Cox and Mickey Blanco and Thurston Moore, and today on the show, I have a chat with pianist composer Roger Eno. My book Coming to Berlin is an all good bookshops and available by the publisher's website, that's Velocity Press, and Lost and Sound is a sub-stack too. If you like writing about music, about writing, writing music, key type things, there's a link in the podcast description for that. Check it out.
Speaker 1:Ok, so today, right now, I'm speaking to you from Rosenteller Platz in Mitte in Berlin. If you're not familiar with this area, this is kind of like the soho of Berlin. It's quite busy, there's lots of trams, there's lots of life, it's quite fast, fast, particularly in comparison to lots of other parts of Berlin, and it's quite also quite contrasting, quite a lot contrasting with the music and the daily life of the guest I spoke with today. Yes, his name is Roger Eno, pianist, composer. His music is often described as ambient and when I hear Roger's work I hear a great deal of space. It's basically like there's so much space in his music, there's no sounds that seem to be in a rush and, rather like last week's guest Simo Sel, there's a real emphasis on how to play with silence. But yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:Roger is, of course, the younger brother of Brian Eno. His first Roger's first recording experience was with his brother as well, as well as producer Daniel Lanois with the album Apollo Atmospheres and Soundtracks back in 1983. That's a seminal record. That is one of those albums that, even if you don't realise it, even if you don't think you've heard music from the album you have, you absolutely have, and that might be because you've watched Trainspotting it is, of course, the music from the toilet scene in Trainspotting is part of is a track from Apollo, but it's one of those albums that has infiltrated the musical landscape over the last I don't know what is that almost 40, yeah, 40, 40 fucking years, blimey, okay. But Roger then was very young at the time, much younger than Brian.
Speaker 1:Roger made his first solo album, voices, in 1985, at the age of 26. He's had a really interesting life before. Before he got into releasing music, he spent time as a music therapist, he even busked for a while and since then has been making music for films, or rather he has a lot of his music has appeared in films and also he spent a lot of time refining and defining his own piano style, partly influenced by Eric Sati, partly influenced by the surroundings of where he lives in the English countryside. And we spoke because he's just about to release his second album on the very, very, very revered German classical label Deutsche Grammophon. The album is called the Skies. They shift like chords. It's out in October.
Speaker 1:It's a beautiful record. It's one of those records. Again, it's so contrasting to where I'm sat right now in one of the busiest, most metropolis-like parts of Berlin. It's an album full of choir and beauty and emotion and I had a really good chat with them. I really really enjoyed chatting with Roger and you're going to hear it now. I've been really loving the new album and listening to it again in a cafe this morning just preparing some notes. I was listening to the track Illusion and the way that the piano and the strings both have space for each other. With your music it sounds like every sound is there for a reason. I kind of get the feeling that there's no. Nothing is there by accident. Is that sort of like an intentional process for you?
Speaker 2:It's completely intentional, because a lot of the stuff that I take influence from isn't musical. It would be poetry or how would I put this. Well, it's art. Generally, visual art does it for me, and out of those, there are some particular favourites that I have, like Rothko, vermeer is one of my favourites, and these people work basically in silence. Vermeer is a master of painting quiet.
Speaker 2:There's a great one, one of his hits, which I went to the Wright Museum to see when I was playing in Stadelich I think it was in Amsterdam a few months ago which is called A House or A Street in Delft, I think it is and it's basically people washing their courtyard in down a little alley, but the overall feeling of this is one of atmosphere rather than visual events, thanks to me.
Speaker 2:So what I try to do is to replicate in music what those influences give to me in either poetry or art. Poetry is about taking a subject and then making allusions out of that. So you're using that as a starting point. You're using the poetic as a starting point and making this a kind of mirage that people can then interpret in their own way. So I'm starting to use much more now gaps in music, because I like the idea that there are places where the listener has a chance to consider what's happened and what's going, what might happen, so they become part of the compositional process, whereas before I don't like the idea really of a composer or a writer saying this is what I think and this is what I expect you to think. I like things to be much more ambiguous than that and actually more interactive, if you like, with the in my case the listener.
Speaker 1:So it's like you're putting down, like you're putting down like a kind of a suggestion. Perhaps You've got it exactly.
Speaker 2:So, in these gaps that you spoke of, what I like the thought of I don't know whether people will do it or will do it, but is that they've got time to make up a part themselves. They can slip their own little piece of jigsaw into the bit that's missing, which I think is quite a nice idea. Even if it doesn't, if people don't do it, I like it as an idea.
Speaker 1:And that's a little bit of reminds me as well as a little bit of like. I first came to that sort of concept around music, around the kind of the classic John Cage kind of idea. Wow, you know, like, and firstly, you know, when I was a kid I just didn't get that. Then I kind of realized that, you know, it kind of allows you to sort of just hear what you want in that space as well. You know, was that something that was important to you?
Speaker 2:And I didn't think of it as intellectually as that. I just naturally gravitated to things that had more space in them. I got to cage through Sati Eric.
Speaker 2:Sati in the in the mid to late 70s and when I heard his music, I was at music college at the time and that meant studying like forms and sonata forms and fugues and biddley bar, you know, things like this, basically complicated stuff which I really had no interest in, because as soon as I heard what Eric Sati was doing, I thought this is just genius.
Speaker 2:His strip everything extraneous away, leaving this extraordinarily tender skeleton, so that as soon as I heard him I thought, well, this is, this is my room. I had a really good piano teacher at the time, a fellow called Robert Bell, who got the noise the noise out of the piano that I'm like I've heard. So all I wanted to do was learn how to get that sound, because once you have a particular, it's like Gilmore's guitar. You know he doesn't need much more than a strap and he's off. That's his thing. And I knew that if I could get this sound that Robert had, then that would be my, my way into into a composition style that basically most people overlook because they're too involved with the technical and the flashy and the flamboyant and the basically overpowering.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really interesting what you're saying about that. I mean like the kind of idea of like too much technique and stuff, and I feel that that is something that's still pushed in kind of Western academic music to a degree Completely, and it's quite sort of masculine and patriarchal as well.
Speaker 2:Exactly, you're right again. Yeah Well, that's, that's how I kind of view it. It's all it's sort of ego based. If you're calling that masculine, then I'd agree with you, because I think that you know there might be I'm not qualified and there's not enough time to go into that what potential differences there are between sexes, but you do tend to think that, or I do at least tend to think that the masculin's are a bit more balshy and they want to shout a bit louder than females, which generally, believe me, that isn't my way of doing things, although I'm a start kind of throw a wadby occasionally.
Speaker 1:Well, we all do sometimes.
Speaker 2:I sleep by your nails. You're a guitar player.
Speaker 1:Oh fuck, no, that's actually. Maybe these are long lingering from a long time ago. I did play guitar. I was in bands and stuff like in the late 90s, early 2000s, but no, this is, this is probably just from writing. All right, and the kind of destruction you get from living in Berlin, really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is that where you are? Yeah, this is where I am, and you recorded part of the album in Berlin as well.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I was in Teldex, which I'm trying to think. I don't actually know which. I think I did know which part area it was. But that studio, paul, I tell you is it's just top of the range. It really is extraordinary. It's one that the Deutsche used for their, for their artists, and the I'm not a big tech head by any means, but you know it's full of vintage Neumann mics and amplifiers and preamps and the people that work there are proper experts, like Tom Meisters Do you know that term.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, from living here. Yeah, yeah All right.
Speaker 2:So they're top of the range. They're like musicians, technicians, they're physicists and mathematics. They're just these big heads with ears that are there to help you, and it's a real honor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? Because, as well, because it's like your second album with Deutsche Grammophon as well, and I didn't realize until I kind of researched a bit further but they were like the longest running record label in the world.
Speaker 2:And I think they were the first. I think 1898 or something like this. Yeah, I'm not sure it's worth checking out because I could be wrong, but yeah, I mean they've just been going for. Well, yeah, it's over a century. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:And so to join those ranks and stuff like that. You only built up such a reputation beforehand but to sort of be you know part of Deutsche Grammophon. You know the connotations of, like you were saying, the Tonmeister stuff, the kind of you know the German precision and the kind of how did how? What did that mean for you? You know what did that sort of mean in terms of what you fed into your artistiveness after that.
Speaker 2:There were two things that happened that made me have to do. You mind if I just put a light on, I've got a nice yeah, yeah, you do it, yeah. And what happened was that within a couple of, maybe a year apart or two years apart, I got my old college, gave me a doctorate and honorary doctorate, which I thought, oh, this is really really cool for me. I was very, very pleased with that. And then Deutsche signed me up, deutsche Grammophon, which obviously go, coming from a kind of classical background, if you like. You know they were one of the record labels and then when you go to a classical, you go for Deutsche Grammophon, like if you went for jazz, you'd go for blue. Yeah, there are some, some labels that have got an ECM came later with Vinter and Vinter. Do you remember those?
Speaker 1:I don't remember Vinter and Vinter no.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was another German company. They were great for packaging. They did a real number on there. They were on their CDs, but they used lovely materials. So there are these kind of specialists and when one of those asked me to join them, I thought, well, I'm going to have to read a people and now thinking about me unlike I'm thinking about myself and I just say I'm just doodling around, you know, because music came out and this sort of thing, and I sort of had to, without getting big-headed and losing humility, I thought, hang on, I'm being seen as someone serious. So perhaps I stopped thinking that way myself, which has been quite an education in a way. You know, when you think I don't know, I don't know your line, but if you suddenly think, well, all these people are now thinking that I'm this, maybe I am that, so you have to kind of question, you know, to look into yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because that's really interesting, actually, isn't it? Because it's like did you sort of feel like you know, like this was already you, but like to sort of be acknowledged of? It must have been sort of strange.
Speaker 2:There you go, you have to kind of climb into yourself.
Speaker 1:You know the you that's already actually been there all along.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Right. That's precisely what happened. But I also realized that after about a year I've got to pull the brakes on because I was tended to get a little bit more big headed than I used to be, which I didn't like seeing. So you know, I took some unusual measures to deal with that. Oh, yeah. So I was basically taking a lot of strong cannabis and getting in a camper van and having a word with myself.
Speaker 1:That's. That's like the dream, though, isn't it? Did you? Where did you go on like a bit of a road trip?
Speaker 2:No, I just went up to North Norfolk, which is very near, because I love this. I don't say it's really an adventure, but I love this area of England so much. I mean that's what keeps me in this country really, because you know it's a pretty benighted place at the moment. It's not great. No, it's a Tory government. That well, I was going to say for too long, but in my opinion, any Tory governments to do long.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 10 minutes of the Tory government is too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've sort of got the idea, haven't you really? Next, but what, what? What keeps me here? These this is this, littered isn't the term. It's blessed with just hundreds of Saxon medieval churches and these things. Because Christianity is now basically out of popularity. They're left alone, they're isolated, open places where you know I can, I can go and sit and be on my own, which is you talk about getting away from the world that's doing it. The most intrusion you'll get is from from a little old lady that's cleaning the brass rail near the old. We always have a chat, you know. So, yeah, that's, that's why I'd have to get onto that while I'm here. So, yes, I know why I only went to North Norfolk, because I don't really feel much reason to go anywhere else. You can get away from yourself within miles. You know. You don't have to go to. I was going to say go, because that's where every lovely person goes to when they get to me, which is a bit ridiculous, because it's like going to Marks and Spences. There's so many white people.
Speaker 1:Marks and Spences with like some kind of like tie dyed. Nice, yeah, tied up Marks and Spences, yeah that's the one summer range.
Speaker 2:So that, never having been, so what I'm saying is I don't.
Speaker 2:I travel when I work, which is a great blessing, you know I get. I get paid to go Out of many. You know what was I cut the years I was playing in Tasmania, which is a place I wouldn't have thought about going to Australia, Japan, all you know, all over Europe and USA and Canada. So it's not as though I live in a kind of cave, it's just I don't feel the need to travel because I do, and I feel comfort and I can find. What I want in this area, basically, is what it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I kind of feel with your music as well. You said before that you know like most of the pieces of music you do is snapshots of things that were experienced in the moment. So you know, like it did, your surroundings give you a lot of the inspiration for what goes in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's almost. I've got two basic subjects which I keep banging on about. One of it is the geographical, if you like, or the what's it called the psycho geographical is actually, and the other one is is about how transitory our lives are, and it's it's, it's unfortunate, is banging on really a lot of that memento more in these various rather could be interpreters rather gloomy subjects, but I find that sort of intriguing. You know the fact that the only certain thing is that one day we're not going to be here. How do you cope, how do you build your life around that knowledge? What do you want to live with for these little, for these few seconds, in geological terms, that we're on this planet? You know, what do you want to? How do you want to interact with people? What do you want to put out to help others? These are big things for me, big questions, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I mean, you know, because this is that idea of like sort of, is what's about? Like you mentioned about being in the present as well, and what? How does that all play into the idea of the music and being in the present?
Speaker 2:Well, by the way of writing basically most of my work comes from improvisation that are either left intact or reduced, as I'll often find that it's tempting to put more notes in than are necessary. So what I want on my gravestone is decomposer. That's actually a process that I use. It's taking bits out rather than having to. So that's all about what is important now, isn't it? So, working with those delicate methods, I also write scores that the players can interpret themselves. So I don't know if I've got any hand as a pick. I've got some music lying around, but I don't know if I could find it.
Speaker 2:So these would be open scores, like various notes that they could play when they think it appropriate. So therefore, you get a piece made up spontaneously. You've got a rough idea what the atmosphere is going to be, because you put the components in. It's like you know roughly what a meal is going to be like if you use I don't know turmeric kale. You know if you've got the ingredients, but what you don't know is how many ingredients are going to go into that piece at that moment, which I find quite an intriguing thing. The other thing I really like about it is seeing classical music, classical musicians interact with other people more like jazz musicians do, so actually attempt to be listening rather than rigidly reading.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting actually, isn't it? Because it's like you were classically trained but then, like you know, sort of, there's so much improvisation that goes into your music and you know, you're also sort of like you talk about like feeding off the environments around you as well. Was there, was there, was there. You know, I think quite often the classically trained musicians have a sort of rigidity. You know, they might be amazing at. You know, like you say, reading music. Was this? Did you have to? Did you have to go for a process of unlearning at all? Ever to kind of be a decomposition list?
Speaker 2:No, because when I was, when I was, I mean this is, this is years ago.
Speaker 2:You know, I left there in 1979, but what it allowed me to do was play lots of different bands, so I taught myself many different instruments when I was playing in folk bands, trad jazz bands, punk band, orchestras, choirs, the whole range of it. So most of these were improvising. It was only the kind of stuff I had to do to get through the course. It was about reading, because the rest of the bands I was playing with was just having a. I played in the German on par band. I played two bands Amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was called the Kellegai stuff it was called the Sellaghost, sellaghost.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know, that was just bizarre, that one, because we'd kind of play in mock October Fest in London and it's sort of a thing.
Speaker 1:Wow, so you have all of the alcohol as well. I mean, there must have been quite a boozy sort of situation with. October Fest.
Speaker 2:Yes, which I've always enjoyed. I like a tip, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:Do you have any sort of like, you know, like going back to the beginning as well, like was there a sort of experience to you, like that sticks out to you, of like music, kind of coming into your life from a, from a young age?
Speaker 2:It was always there, but the music was strange because my my parents' blessing you know working class people. They were far from high-brow, I mean extremely decent, very caring people, but they like like mum, like Country in Western. So she likes sort of slim Whitman, jim Reeves, and I can't remember there's another one, what's his name. Oh, you know that, that kind of school.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Dad used to really like brass band and fairground music, so you know, like carousel stuff, and so I ended up playing in a local brass band when I was about well in my teens, which I absolutely loved, so it was all. I was sitting there the other day so it was almost like that was a sort of folk music, and the brass band is very it's kind of scorned upon because it's like working class, not very intellectual. It's all about entertainment and community, all the things actually that I like. Rather than have to analyze it, what do we do if we reverse this and make this a contra, a retrogading version of the first theme Balls to all that? It's just isn't it. It's utter cobblers. You wouldn't go to a dentist with those things. Oh yeah, I can see the problem, but what I'm really interested in not fixing you but talking about the problem is crap, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Well, I think discourse can just be. It can just be a ghost. It could be like a sort of echo chamber, can't it? It could just be, yeah. And then I think sometimes, when that feeds into music as well, I mean, I guess it's just about, if I don't feel something when I'm listening to something, what you could write a million words about it or have a million arguments, but what's the point?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's exactly why I'm sure why music exists because it does something beyond the verbal. It does something far beyond the intellectual. It gets you to somewhere where you can't explain why you like being there. You can't use reason anymore, which is kind of basically why I've started to sort of reject it in my life. I like people that do use rationality, because it means my car works. Someone's invented the fridge. I'm all for that, but that person isn't me. I can relate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't want to think about fridges, I just want to write stuff.
Speaker 1:I think it was about a couple of weeks ago. I changed the shower head for my girlfriend and I'm so unpractical. I was terrified of doing it, terrified of pulling the whole thing out of the wall. I actually managed to do it and to me that was like I had this moment of feeling like the most alpha male on the planet, but it was just literally swiveling in a shower head.
Speaker 2:Oh no, you've got a swagger. When you're doing that kind of thing, it's not traditional.
Speaker 1:We also do that with music a bit as well, don't we? Do you think it's important to have a bit of mystique about the process, even if it might be? Do you like to be transparent, or are there things that you like to kind of keep back, I guess?
Speaker 2:Well, no, it's not through transparency, but it's very difficult to explain how it's done Because, for example, this touch of the piano that's been my bag for years. But to explain actually how you do it to someone, even if you wanted to give the trick away, it's incredibly difficult because extensively you're still just hitting a keyboard. There are microchangers involved with this sort of thing. So it's not being pretty or pretentious or even protective and I don't know if I can get another P in there, because that would be true but it's just that the micro skill involved in that is very difficult to explain. So no, it's not Now I'm quite open about it. But I do tell you the truth. I generally joke about it to deflect it.
Speaker 2:I was reading a Seamus Heaney poem, a fantastic one, right at his, and it was about this man that you really liked who was basically a kind of who was a boozer. And then what did he do? He wasn't exactly a poacher, something like a poacher, you know. He was a bit of a shady fella and Heaney really liked him. But the man would often ask so are you still doing the poetry? Then, sheamus and the Heaney, because he knew this area, didn't quite know how not to sound precious about it, so he had changed the subject to something that this man would be more comfortable with.
Speaker 2:So it wasn't about Heaney himself wanting to not boast. It was about something that's easier to translate than an area. Imagine being a consultant in a hospital and someone comes and say oh so how was your day? How do you actually explain what you've been doing when you've been doing open heart surgery? Yeah, yeah, and I'm not saying my area is as valuable as that. But you get the idea.
Speaker 1:Now, definitely. I think that's just like being empathetic as well, isn't it? I try to do this thing where you're having a conversation with someone and you say you're talking about a film, and they talk about this film, and then they get the name of the actor wrong you knew it was Dustin Hoffman in that film but they say Gene Hackman. I don't ever sort of go no, no, no, I was Gene Hackman in that, because I just feel like they're actually talking about something else that they wanted to tell me about.
Speaker 2:Sure Sure, and then you bring it down to that thing Now that's a generous act, actually, because, yeah, you're right, you're not talking about the subject. It's just a tiny little error, and that error then becomes the issue, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:Totally, and then that person might have been trying to say something that they really wanted to convey and then suddenly it's just been, they've been shut down without meaning to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah of course.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's really interesting actually because there's a lot of empathy going on when I sort of like look into your background. I'm really interested about this. There's a point in your life when you return to Cultraster from London and you ran a music therapy course.
Speaker 2:I did yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's for people with learning difficulties and that's always. That's an area that really interests me and I wanted to know a little bit about that and how did that kind of happen and what was it you were doing with that?
Speaker 2:Well, at the time, just before that, I'd been playing in loads. It was before the licensing laws changed in London, so I was playing in like private clubs. I'd start playing at maybe half past 10 at night and end up at two in the morning, drunk and paid, allowing me next day to go around museums and galleries and parks and all the stuff that London offers you, Because basically I was being paid to have a party, you know. And after a while of that I'd kind of done that and I think it was my younger sister or someone found this job opening and I thought, oh, that sounds interesting. I ended up doing this for two and a half years running.
Speaker 2:It was basically a little port of cabin in a hospital. This was in the early 80s, when things were still chaotic. It was before care in the community, which was actually a process that didn't work. Like I won't go back to politics again, but it wasn't the best of my idea. So basically there was a hospital full of people that were. It was like do you remember Woolworths had a pick and mix, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well this was kind of like that in the mental health world, because people of all different conditions let's put it that way and some that were entered with no condition whatsoever. They might have had an illegitimate child when they were young and they ended up institutionalized. So you've got this whole coterie of different experiences. So I'm in, I'm now in this, running this little department. When they weren't with me, they were doing other occupational therapy activities, such as making wicker baskets and I don't know, origami or something just to sort of fill in the time, frankly. So when they came to me I thought, well, probably the best thing I can do is let them do what the fuck they want, because they're basically here for that. Well, they're here, they're on holiday, so they don't have to go through these rituals of manufacturing anything. So I'd get out coloring paper and you know they'd just treat the place as fun.
Speaker 2:We'd listen to music, there'd be some therapy like physiotherapy, so that you know moving and what have you. There'd be a big stress on socializing, because one of the things about music therapy is that it's a great way without verbal use. It's a good way to communicate with someone else or a star and by playing, even crudely, an instrument, even if it's clapping or something. Once someone else is clapping, you're beat. You're on a level, you're on a certain level of communication with them which can then be built on. So I wasn't just making it up, but it was more. For me, is was to give them an enjoyable life, because it didn't seem like they were having a great time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that goes back into what you were saying earlier on as well, about the way that you know, music is its own language as well, you know, and it sort of bypasses the intellectual. And then when you started recording yourself, like I mean, the first thing that I noticed was the Apollo album with your brother and Daniel Lanware as well. I mean, what was, what was your kind of sort of recollections of that experience? That's definitely one of my favorite albums, by the way. Yeah, it's a great one, isn't it?
Speaker 2:I don't know how, what an effect that was going to have on on people and a long, you know, a long term effect. Well, what I've been doing, I've been writing and recording pieces before and often, as I still do now, send I'll send some examples to friends, you know like paint the friends of mine or my brother and what have you? Just sort of like people send used to send postcards. You know, this is what I'm up to have a lovely time.
Speaker 1:This is what I made earlier.
Speaker 2:That's sort of busy. Yeah, I love postcards as well, so I sent from memory, I sent Brian this 90 minute cassette tape. This was of something that there was. There was virtually nothing happening in this music because I was in Satie land then, you know, and I guess he must have liked it, because he asked me to go over and record in Hamilton, which is just outside Toronto, with Danny.
Speaker 2:So that was really my first, apart from being my big break, you know, which I don't think I realized at the time, because of most things, when you're just going along, they say, oh, this is happening, that's good, well, that's bad, you definitely think what the sort of long term repercussions of events are. At least I don't. And it was an utter joy because Brian and I get on really well. There is a big age difference, there's 11 years difference between us. But this was an utter joy because the work was I mean, it was the area that I wanted to be in rather than kind of entertaining.
Speaker 2:You know, music that entertained, it was music that made you think and broaden, illustrated all these different things, and then, of course, we'd stop and laugh like drains, we'd just tell jokes all the time, and Danny was. You know there are instances I can tell you, but it won't translate. It was just a great time and I mean it came back great. You know, danny Boyle, blessing, put one of those pieces in train spotting and then hang out with my wife and I to move hats.
Speaker 1:You know, it's amazing.
Speaker 2:You get these remarkable changes in your life. You know they come along. I mean, we still had to get a mortgage, but that's what did it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I heard the same about Iggy Pop, but I think it was the train spotting as well. Kind of gave Iggy Pop the first opportunity where he wasn't living hands and mouth after that yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can absolutely believe it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And which you know good on Danny, for that he's got. I've been noticing things. He's got really good ears, like Tarantino's got great music Scorsese.
Speaker 1:There we are, yeah.
Speaker 2:And in the literary world, I've just been noticing this trick that Isha Giro and Nick Hormé both use, and there's another one, but I've forgotten who the third one is, third author, and what they'll do. You'll be reading one of their books and in a chapter they'll put the title of a piece that you and I would know, you know, a pop you know so cool at Moon River, just out of the blue. So what happens then? That tune is seeded in your mind and becomes the soundtrack for that chapter. Yeah, it's a really, really good technique, and I only noticed it, as I said, with these three people, and I've forgotten who the third is. Yeah, might be Graham Swift, I'm not sure, maybe not, anyway, I'm not sure. No, but that's what music can do. It can give you an atmosphere that, over that, both complements and occasionally contradicts the you know, the focal point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really interesting because your music has ended up in quite a few different films as well and like sometimes, like I mean I take it, some of the music is stuff that people have. You know it's already been made and people have used it. And has that been like a weird experience, like seeing maybe a piece of music you've done and you have your own kind of memories of making it and then seeing it like juxtaposed over, say, mickey Rourke and Kim Basagill.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, well, in one of those cases it was rather nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I could have actually.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm in the strange position of possessing virtually no memory. So when you say you know you can remember having made it. I work every day, so this will become, this will get mixed up, you know, because I try and write a new piece every day, at least one. So there's not, there's not an attachment until they become attached, because if you know beyond that, they're just, they're in this great big pot of pieces that I've cooked up and it's up to someone that kind of long with a spoon to ladle it on their plate. I don't know how long I can carry on this culinary and now I like culinary.
Speaker 1:You know, I do try every few episodes to get a bit of like a kind of a chef metaphor in there. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like, definitely Like sometimes artists have sort of suggested like instruments, sort of like the equivalent food of an instrument or something like that, like maybe ukuleles, like someone thought they were, I think it was like capers or something Like in that you can't use them very often, maybe as well, oh, that's nice, I've got.
Speaker 2:I've got you. Yeah, I've got you. Or yes, exactly. No, they're not pecan, are they? Yeah, I'd put ukulele more of a sort of marshmallow. Oh right, yeah yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, they're quite soft, aren't they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they kind of go with campfires, but not much else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1:So it feels like at the moment. It seems to be like, you know, with the two albums very recently, both together, you know, like you seem to be on a kind of a roll. I mean, you sort of said just now that you know you do try to do a piece of music every day, mm-hmm, you know, when it comes to things like inspiration, do you believe in inspiration or is it more just a question of just working and then feeling it when something happens?
Speaker 2:I think if you don't work, less happens. That's what it is. I wrote a poem about a blank page and it was all about. By the time you finish this, it won't be blank anymore.
Speaker 1:So there's a kind of metaphor there isn't there.
Speaker 2:Unless you do something, nothing is done. It doesn't take out the possibility that something might be done, but if you're doing something, you've definitely done something. There's a definition by that action and I also, frankly, I feel a bit uncomfortable if I'm not doing this, because it's basically the only thing I do. Bee does everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I've, because I just haven't got a head for it. So that woman, she keeps us, she keeps it, keeps it all together. Now this allows me to drift off and luckily it pays to do that. Literally it pays to do that, because that allows me then to spend time reading and walking and all the rest of the stuff that you have to do If you want to lead, in my term, what I think is a creative life. You can't do this and work in a bank. It just doesn't work because there's too many hours taking up saying, oh yes, would you like this in Sterling or Dollars, sir? I mean, maybe you could, but I think it's bloody hard.
Speaker 1:There's so much that I think, in terms of when I approach creative stuff that isn't actually in the work, isn't actually in the work that comes out, or even going anywhere near a keypad or writing or whatever, but I think that's quite often the thing that gets lost in translation, in terms of expectations, when you're relating what you do to another skill set or another life, is that I feel like sometimes I have to be seen to be working all of the time in the most obvious way, right At my computer, just to justify that I'm doing something, whereas maybe I'll get the best ideas when I'm on a bus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly yeah. So that's about it for the heyday king lecture mine.
Speaker 1:Pushbikes yeah, I imagine with your surroundings that's beautiful.
Speaker 2:It's just ideal. Yeah, it's also the speed that puts me where I want to be.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that was me, Paul Hanford, talking with Roger Eno for Lost and Sound, and we had that conversation on the 21st of September 2023. Thank you, roger. Thank you so much for chatting with me. I really, really enjoyed having that conversation, and Roger is set to release his second solo album for Deutsche Grammophon. That is not his second solo album, of course he's made lots of albums in the past but the second for Deutsche Grammophon and that comes out on October the 13th. It's called the Skies. They shift like chords and it's a really, really, really beautiful album, full of space, full of emotion, full of just the feeling of being transported somewhere, somewhere where you can get the essence of where he lives in the English countryside from it.
Speaker 1:Lost and Sound is proudly sponsored by Audio Technica. Audio Technica are global but still family-run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges, microphones, studio quality yeah, affordable products, because they believe that high quality audio should be accessible to all. I'm wearing a pair of their headphones now. I really love their stuff. Go over to AudioTechnicacom to check out everything they have. Okay, so music you hear at the beginning, at the end of every episode of Lost and Sound is by Thomas Giddens. There's always a hyperlink where you can go and check out more of his stuff there. Really really exciting new stuff from him coming soon. He has a new album coming out very soon. I will be talking more about that quite soon, anyway. Anyway, anyway, I hope you're having a lovely day I hope you've had a lovely day already and chat to you soon.