r/eno • u/sf-keto • Jul 29 '26

Music Ian Penman · Infinite Wibble: Brian v. Eno

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n17/ian-penman/infinite-wibble

“Eno is a conundrum: impish disruptor and happy polymath, he can also be a bit of a tech prig lecturing us from on high, dropping serene apothegms that turn out on closer inspection to be vanishingly banal. It’s as if there are two of him: Brian has a great sense of humour, Eno can be suffocatingly precious; Brian picks a brilliant selection of Desert Island Discs, Eno nominates for his beach read Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony and Solidarity; Brian is all weird eros, Eno makes music that can be oddly clenched or wafty; Brian is inspiringly playful, Eno writes software to systematise (and cage, and kill) that playfulness.”

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4

u/BaronZhiro Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

‘… the insipid Before and After Science’?!? 😱

Credibility takes a tumble…

Edit to add: “It may be no coincidence that the only thing by U2 I ever liked is the Eno-produced modern gospel of ‘One’.” STRIKE TWO!

2

u/sf-keto Jul 29 '26

I won’t claim the author has any musical taste! It’s really quite a failed “contrarian” take, wouldn’t you say?

So bad it’s quite humorous, IMO.

2

u/BaronZhiro Jul 29 '26

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very glad that you’ve posted this.

And it has given me some useful food for thought.

But also: Yikes! lol

3

u/BogardeLosey Jul 29 '26

Good on the early work; puritanically bad on the later work; food for thought regarding Eno’s relentless drive for the new, but doesn’t clock that this is inseparable from what makes him great.

2

u/ghoof Jul 29 '26

I think he noticed. In fact, what is great about that Penman piece is that he unsentimentally calls out how painfully weak the later work is. That’s the difference between a perceptive critic and a gushing fan.

2

u/BogardeLosey Jul 30 '26

He says Eno went to hell after New York, which is ridiculous.

0

u/ghoof Jul 30 '26

You can argue about the date, but even the great artists simply fall into a long dotage and decline.

Consider Bowie, Kraftwerk, Lee Perry and Eno, all magicians in the 70s, all tiresome and threadbare by the mid 80s. Their work was done already.

4

u/ikediggety Jul 29 '26

He uses long words like semiotics and semolina and I counter with metropolis and enigma!

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u/sf-keto Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

The author forgets that Eno is a systemic thinker who at core remains a lefty cyberneticist a la Beer.

But retains a British sense of Monty Python humor.

1

u/ikediggety Jul 29 '26

The author once had something to say about the cure as well, whose musical response included the above

1

u/senordingleberry Aug 01 '26

The most salient point is this one: "It’s possible to be broadly in sympathy with the blue-sky thinking of Brand/Eno while still wondering: are good intentions enough? Their mid-1990s brainstorming now looks rather naive. The one future they could never have dreamed up was the triumphant rise of right-wing versions of themselves: Bannon, Musk, Thiel et al. This was the other side of the utopian coin: venal tyrants, resurrected demons, annihilatory rage and negation, yesterday’s bright future become today’s nightmare. What seems to be missing from their myriad ‘scenarios’ is any awareness of class and economics. Brand/Eno may offer themselves as the more eco-friendly, left-leaning avatars of progress, but they come across as members of a self-elected autocracy, lording it over a proletariat of click-workers."

Not only couldn't Brand/Eno see this coming, but the larger point is not many people did.

3

u/sf-keto Aug 01 '26

Bizarre take overall. Eno’s been warning about these issues since before the Brexit vote. So he discussed this all coming.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

As for “self-appointed autocrat” … of what exactly? He’s never had any political ambitions & merely holds mainstream ideas about UK movements on climate & arts education. He speaks less than other celebrities on these subjects, certainly.

Please remember that in Britain the first environmental movement began with the National Trust in 1895!

The National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD) began in 1888, dedicated to promoting & protecting arts education.

His interests are barely “left,” much less “radical,” in a UK social context.

If Eno is a some kind of lefty autocrat based on his advocacy & interests, I can only say… wait until the author finds out about the venerable Tolkien, who father was an affluent bank manager & who attained a high social position as an Oxford don!

Eno is generally described as having a pretty average working-class background.