Veteran musician Brian Eno is set to reissue two albums that have been unavailable for nearly two decades as part of the relaunch of his independent label Opal Records. The 78-year-old is recognised for distinctive soundscapes on pieces such as “The Big Ship” and “By This River”, alongside his high-profile work with artists including U2, co-producing their number one album The Unforgettable Fire. Eno, who also co-founded the rock group Roxy Music, founded Opal Records in 1988 to distribute experimental, ambient and non-mainstream music matching his own groundbreaking sound.
The label highlighted artists including US musicians Jon Hassell, Harold Budd and Djivan Gasparyan, in addition to Welsh composer John Cale, Canadian record producer Daniel Lanois and Eno’s brother Roger. It was placed on hiatus in 1991, having already helped build Eno’s standing as an innovative musician and provided a collaborative home for artists aiming to redefine atmospheric popular music. Reflecting on his creation of ambient music as a genre, which he described as "music two", Eno said: "I was aware that making sonic ‘places’ was what mattered to me.
I was thinking not so much of making music but rather of evoking ‘the feeling of a place’ through sound. "As soon as I started to feel physical qualities like warmth or coldness or darkness or brightness or turbulence or calmness – as soon as that happened I felt I was onto something." The Grammy-winning artist continued: "Traditionally, music was ephemeral, fixed in one point in space and one point in time. It all had to be made at the same time – a performance – and to hear it you had to go to wherever it happened to be.
None of those things were true for ‘music two’." Enjoy unlimited access to 100 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 30-day free trial. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent. Eno described creating "music two" as "much more like painting than like traditional composing", adding: "It’s not fixed in time: you can do it over an extended period, stopping and returning when you need to.
"It’s not fixed in space: once made, it can be heard wherever you choose to take it. Most importantly, perhaps, it’s available to be heard as many times as you want to listen to it. All of these features are characteristic of painting and the visual arts, not music and the temporal arts." With the relaunch of Opal Records, Eno will re-release his 2005 record Another Day On Earth – known for standout tracks such as “This”, “How Many Worlds” and “Caught Between”.
Serving as his first song-based solo record since 1992’s Nerve Net, it has been largely unavailable physically and on streaming platforms outside Japan since around 2008. His 2001 record Drawn From Life, an ambient and electronic collaboration created by Eno and German composer J. Peter Schwalm, is also being re-released.
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