Brian Eno's soundtrack work is many decades old. A selection of tracks were compiled as a double vinyl/ CD in 2020, cunningly titled Brian Eno- Film Music 1976- 2020. One of the remarkable things about the album and its seventeen tracks is that it works as a whole and feels like a cohesive piece of work despite the music bookending it being separated by forty six years and spanning a wide variety of films and TV programmer, from the Apollo moonshot documentary For All Mankind to Top Boy, from an Arena documentary on Francis Bacon to the 1984 version of Dune, and Married To The Mob to a film about sharks, Natural World- Hammerhead.
I've posted some of Eno's soundtrack music before- An Ending (Ascent) from For All Mankind, Deep Blue Day from Trainspotting, The Sombre from Top Boy and Prophecy from Dune have all featured here previously so thought I'd post some other tracks from Eno's film music, all of which is wonderful.
Dover Beach is a four minute ambient excursion, a hum, a ringing drone, the sense of time passing and things changing. It's from the soundtrack to Jubilee, Derek Jarman's 1978 drama/ trip, a film that transplants 16th century occultist John Dee and Elizabeth I into 1970s Britain, a country decaying and shot through with anger, despair and nihilism. It's wildly impressionistic, largely plotless and infused with London punk. Everywhere looks like a World War II bombsite. Various punk figures star in the film- Siouxsie Sioux and Steve Severin, Adam Ant, Jordan, Gene October and Toyah all appear and some of them are on the soundtrack too which concludes in ambient style with Slow Water and Dover Beach.
In 1995 Michael Mann directed a crime/ heist drama bringing together two giants of American cinema, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino for the first time. Eno contributed to the soundtrack, the very cinematic track Late Evening In Jersey, all long synth chords, a single guitar note, explosions echoing and rattling snare drums.
Eno recorded with U2 for the soundtrack too, appearing as Passengers, and Einsturzende Neubauten turned up as did New Order covering a Joy Division song, New Dawn Fades, with Moby. I'm not sure that was a collaboration anyone needed.
Reasonable Question is from the 2021 soundtrack to the film We Are As Gods, a documentary about pioneering free thinker and environmentalist Stewart Brand. Brand was one of the Merry Pranksters on Ken Kesey's Magic Bus and an advocate of cyber- utopianism. Apparently he coined the phrase personal computer. He's now in his 80s and big on rewilding ecosystems. Reasonable Question sounds like a computer programme turned into music- that's not a criticism.
2 comments:
Great picks, Adam, and interesting back story too.
I’ve had that cover version of New Dawn Fades on a Moby EP (& poss his soundtracks compilation) for decades and I had no idea New Order were actually playing on it too.
I like a lot of Moby’s music but this is one I rarely revisit.
The version of New Dawn Fades was on the 24 Hour Party People soundtrack too I think.
Post a Comment