Artist News Releases

Brian and Roger Eno collaborate on new album

By | Published on Monday 27 January 2020

Brian and Roger Eno have announced that they will release an album together, titled ‘Mixing Colours’, in March. Although not the first time they have worked together – with previous collaborations including Brian Eno’s ‘Apollo’ album and ‘Dune’ soundtrack – it is their first album jointly credited to both brothers, and it has been in the works for fifteen year.

The album began with pieces of music written by Roger, which he recorded on a MIDI keyboard, before sending the MIDI files to his older brother. Brian then used these files to expand on the tracks with new sounds.

“We weren’t directing this towards an end result – it was like a back-and-forth conversation we were having over a fifteen year period”, says Roger. “I’d wake up, go straight upstairs, put my equipment on and improvise, then I sent things to Brian that I thought he might be interested in. The idea for a full album emerged as the number of pieces kept increasing and the results kept being interesting. It’s something that neither of us could have arrived at alone”.

Brian adds: “With classical instruments, the clarinet represents a little island of sound, the viola another, and the grand piano yet another. Each instrument is a finite set of sonic possibilities, one island in the limitless ocean of all the possible sounds that you could make. What’s happened with electronics is that all the spaces in between those islands are being explored, yielding new sounds that have never previously existed. It has been a huge pleasure for me to explore that ocean with Roger’s unique compositions”.

‘Mixing Colours’ is set for release through Universal’s Deutsche Grammophon on 20 Mar. From it, this is ‘Celeste’:

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