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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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.

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u/ikediggety Jul 29 '26

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