StullSounds

I remember the first single I heard on the radio from Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette.  I remember asking myself, “What is that screeching sound?” as I listened to You Outta Know…but then I listened to the lyrics and could hear plain and simple emotion, expressed powerfully with no wrapper or gloss.

Revisiting the album now, I realize this woman’s work embodied the angst and general feeling of disillusion many people felt in the ‘90s and even now.  When asked in a 1995 interview, “Was there always this…angry, naughty woman waiting to get out?” Alanis Morissette replied, “Oh…she was definitely always there.  I just chose consciously not to show it because I don’t think I was prepared to…to be that naked, really.” (Alanis Morissette – The New Music Interview (1995), 2012)  Alanis Morissette gave mutual feeling, unspoken security, and angst a voice in Jagged Little Pill.

My wife and I chose the house we live in due to its unusual character.  It has had four additions since it was built in the ‘40s and each addition presented problems in which the solution made the house unique and unlike the cookie-cutters built in our old community around the ‘90s.  It’s amusing to me that one of the strongest character traits of Jagged Little Pill is that it screamed out to the middle of the 1990s, “Don’t accept mediocrity and the five models offered in this new neighborhood of 150 houses.”

In addition to the signature angst of the album was the character trait of being imperfect and seeming unpolished, yet revealing highly sheened production on further inspection.

I believe Jagged Little Pill encouraged other artists and mainstream popular music of the time to reach a little deeper.

As a songwriter, Alanis Morissette and Glen Ballard teach me to pay attention to the whole package. Many seemingly unlikely stars from the past have succeeded with the same chemistry as Alanis Morissette, through emotional content and a genuine outlook that connects.  Being technically proficient is important, but getting wrapped up in it and forgetting the other elements of music, such as emotional impact and spontaneity, which make the connection to others, can limit success. This is the lesson I will strive to apply to balance my own efforts in the future.

It’s said life is not a destination, but a journey.  Why do I raise such a worn-out saying?  To illustrate how Brian Eno takes overused clichés, dismantles them and shows us the inside, then turns them on edge, peels the inside layer away and shows us the middle.  The point I’m making here is: Brian Eno hasn’t considered the destination in decades.  He’s moved beyond the journey, obsessed and consumed by the side roads, tangents, dead ends, and any other metaphor you can think of for the unexplored fringe.  In an Alfred Dunhill interview Brian states, “The sense of; I really want to know how this turns out…will drive you on through many, many long nights of no results (knowingly laughs)…whereas the feeling of;  I think I ought to do this…dries up very quickly.”  (Alfred Dunhill, 2013)  Brian Eno’s relentless pursuit of the next tangent is one of the defining characteristics setting his projects apart from all other works.

I think the next most defining characteristic for Brian Eno’s projects is his desire to find his own system for everything.  He self-identifies as a “non-musician” and seems to have little use for centuries old systems of music theory and structured composition.  (Tamm, 1988)  It’s not that he doesn’t see a need for order and structure; he just doesn’t necessarily see the benefit in pigeonholing anything he does into a container that doesn’t fit.

Eno was always trying to unlock new modes of creativity.  He recorded Another Green World using a deck of cards called Oblique Strategies.  Each card had an aphorism on it, and when Eno reached a creative impasse, he would pull a random card from the deck and faithfully follow its instructions, even if it said, ‘emphasize flaws’ or ‘do nothing for as long as possible.

(Echoes, 2010)

Brian Eno’s earliest musical influences came from U.S. Air bases near his Suffolk England hometown of Woodbridge.  Today we wouldn’t think anything of American music being heard in other parts of the world, but in the 1950’s, music didn’t travel as quickly and only the most popular music made the trip.  Eno referred to Doo Wop as “Martian music” because it was alien to any English tradition and “…could have been from another galaxy”. (Tamm, 1988)  Throughout his career, Brian Eno uses the idea of removing music from context to add mystery, surprise, and allure.

It’s hard to name singular influences on Brian Eno.  He is credited for creating genres and his experience stretches across many art forms.  In each of his ventures into yet another area of experimentation he gathers a new set of influences, mostly different from the last.  The primary influences leading up to his ambient music were the minimalists, John Cage, La Monte Young, and Terry Riley.  As a child, Eno’s parents had a player piano with hymns, which Eno says has given his music a persistent melancholy quality.  Another subtle influence on the Music for Airports album and perhaps the Scape app for iPad as well was the Ray Conniff Singers he heard as a child in his uncle’s music collection.

The Music for Airports album has two threads of happenstance running through it, which I find interesting.  The first thread leads to the album being a result of a series of accidents, literally starting with Brian Eno falling in front of a moving taxi.  The other (less life threatening) part of this accident was Eno listening to harp music during recovery from the taxi accident and not having enough energy to get up and fix a speaker malfunction or raise the volume when he realized it was too low.  Eno experienced his first natural ambient experience, somewhat involuntarily, compounded by his own exhaustion and a rainstorm.  This experience changed his direction in music radically from the forefront to the background.

The second thread running through the Music for Airports album is Brian Eno’s search for a music system to generate music from a random seed or some method of self-generating endless song.

In a sense, the Scape app for iPad has been around since Brian Eno began to imagine a system of generative (or regenerative) music.  He’d just been waiting for technology to catch up with his ideas or to give him a way to express them.  Brian Eno said, “Creativity is a little bit like water; It sort of seeps out wherever there’s an outlet.” (BBC Newsnight, 2011)

 Music for Airports, in comparison to the Scape app is both a precursor and a trial run.  Brian Eno said,

When I was making music like Music for Airports, which came out at the end of the seventies, what I was really doing was setting up a system to produce music; and then recording a little bit of the music and releasing that recording.  What I really was interested in was the system.  I would really have loved to be able to release the system to people so that they can use it and it produces music, which doesn’t repeat.

(BBC, 2012)

The contrast between Music for Airports and Scape is clearly technological evolution.  Eno said, “Sometimes you listen to things and you think, I’ve only really had one idea in my life… and I’ve just been doing it in a hundred different ways ever since.” (Alfred Dunhill, 2013)

I have a mixed impression of Brian Eno’s music as a listener.  Innovation comes from experimentation and part of experimentation is coming to a bad end and then backing up and taking another route.  I can appreciate the hard work, many hours, and sleepless nights resulting in the innovation, but I don’t necessarily want to hear each and every experiment leading to the breakthrough.

My professional impression of Brian Eno’s music tells me to be glad he has painstakingly documented his innovation for anyone to follow.  His heart is a pie chart and there’s part scientist in there.  Someday I will have some free time and I will be glad to deconstruct his methods, following the plethora of information he has openly shared as a pioneer.