Brian Eno and his New App

Brian Eno is a music god on so many different levels.  He did the glam rock thing with Roxy  Music, worked with David Bowie on the seminal “Berlin Trilogy,” helped to popularise that little-known band called Devo, and was amongst the first proponents of the punk-influenced “No Wave” genre.  Oh, and did I mention Eno produced and performed on three albums by Talking Heads, produced seven albums for U2, and worked on records   by James, Laurie Anderson, Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Paul Simon, Grace Jones and Slowdive, among others?  Then there is the fact that he single-handedly founded the entire genre of ambient music.  To say the least, Eno has a pretty good track record for identifying and creating cool …

Then

Now

… which means we should give a bit of consideration to his futuristic new music app.  Scape’s goal is to revolutionise the concept of the ‘album’.  “Until about 120 years ago,” Eno says, “all music was ephemeral in the sense that you would never actually hear the same thing twice. Recording changed that. You could listen to an identical thing over and over and over again and that’s what all of us grew up doing. Most of our experience is of perfectly repeatable music.”  With the new app, created with musician and software designer Peter Chilvers, the user is able to generate their own ever-changing, continuously evolving “album.”  Scape comes with music, or rather sounds, created by Eno and Chilvers, but the user is meant to think of that piece like a sheet of paper to be written on.  By arranging icons on the screen – an E shape, for example, or a triangle – he or she is able to continuously build new and different musical experiences.  Chilvers explains: “You’ve not just got every track, you’ve got every instrument on that track and, really, every musician playing them. Every piece in Scape is really like a collection of musicians playing together and they’ve got their own rules.”  Eno claims it’s the future of music and listening, others would disagree.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see …

No matter what, it is undeniably, amazingly cool.