Brian Eno

Early work and Roxy Music (1969—1971)

In 1969, after separating from his wife, Eno moved to London. Eno's first appearance on a commercially released recording is the Deutsche Grammophon edition of The Great Learning (1971) by Cornelius Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra, which features Eno as one of the voices on the track "Paragraph 7". He also composed the soundtrack to Berlin Horse (1970), a nine-minute experimental film by Malcolm Le Grice. For three months, Eno worked as paste-up assistant for the advertisement section of a local paper. Finding it uncreative, he quit and became an electronics dealer, making cabinets for old speakers and selling them to friends.

Between 1970 and 1974, Eno played clarinet with the Portsmouth Sinfonia, an orchestra founded by Gavin Bryars that accepted players of any skill, and produced their first two albums. Eno said the mixture of skilled and unskilled players "was like a very blurry version, a soft-focus version, of classical music, and it produced some beautiful music ... There were some exquisite moments — the mixture of chance and choice."

In 1971, Eno joined the glam rock band Roxy Music following a chance meeting with the saxophonist, Andy Mackay. Eno said later: "If I'd walked ten yards further on the platform, or missed that train, or been in the next carriage, I probably would have been an art teacher now." They were managed by EG Records and signed a record contract with Island Records. With his advance, Eno purchased a flat in Maida Vale, London, which became his home and studio.

Eno played on the first two Roxy Music albums, Roxy Music (1972) and For Your Pleasure (1973). He used the EMS VCS 3 synthesiser and is credited for tape effects, backing vocals and production. Initially, Eno did not appear on stage at Roxy Music shows, but operated the mixing desk off-stage, where he had a microphone to sing backup vocals. After Roxy Music secured a record deal, Eno joined them on stage playing the synthesiser and became known for his flamboyant and androgynous costumes and makeup. After the For Your Pleasure tour ended in mid-1973, Eno quit Roxy Music due to disagreements with the singer, Bryan Ferry.

Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (1973—1974)

In 1973, Eno released (No Pussyfooting), a collaboration with the King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp. It was recorded using tape loops and delay systems, techniques both Eno and Fripp developed in their later work. Eno's first solo album, Here Come the Warm Jets, was released in February 1974, with Fripp on guitar. It came to be regarded as a classic. That year, Eno embarked on his only solo tour, backed by the pub rock band the Winkies, and recorded a Peel session. The tour ended early when Eno suffered a collapsed lung. Eno disliked touring, finding it uncreative, and spent the rest of his career working mostly in studios.

Eno worked as a creative consultant and advisor for John Cale on his 1974 album Fear. Critics described Cale as a chaotic force tempered by Eno, and their relationship was sometimes fraught. Eno also contributed to Lady June's Linguistic Leprosy (1974) by Lady June.

Eno released his second solo album, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), in November 1974. It features musicians including Phil Collins on drums, the Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera and the Portsmouth Sinfonia, with lyrics about travel and dislocation inspired by a Chinese revolutionary opera. The critic Dave Thompson wrote that the song "Third Uncle" is "a near punk attack of riffing guitars and clattering percussion" that approached heavy metal. In 1974, Eno and the artist Peter Schmidt conceived Oblique Strategies, a set of cards intended to help artists overcome creative problems. Each card bears an instruction, such as "honour thy error as a hidden intention" or "discard an axiom". Eno used them in his work and with artists he worked with. By mid-1975, both Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain had sold more than 100,000 copies each.

Another Green World and Discreet Music (1975—1976)

In 1975, Eno founded a record label, Obscure Records, an imprint of Island Records. Between 1975 and 1978, Obscure released ten albums by experimental and minimalist composers including Eno, John White, Christopher Hobbs, John Adams, Gavin Bryars and Harold Budd.

In November 1975, Eno released his third album, Another Green World, featuring musicians including Collins, Fripp and the bassist Percy Jones.^{[incomplete short citation]} It was a turning point in Eno's career, bridging the guitar-oriented experimental rock of his first two albums with the synthesiser-oriented minimalism of his subsequent work. J. D. Considine wrote in the 2004 Rolling Stone Album Guide that Eno had used the recording studio as an instrument, "moulding directed improvisations, electronic effects, and old-fashioned songcraft into perfectly balanced aural ecosystems". In 2016, Pitchfork called Another Green World Eno's definitive album. AllMusic described it as "a universally acknowledged masterpiece".

In December 1975, Eno released his fourth album, Discreet Music, on Obscure Records. Pitchfork described it as Eno's first ambient record, though Eno had yet to coin the term. It was inspired by Eno's experience recuperating at home following a traffic accident, when his friend, the artist Judy Nylon, visited him and put on a record of harp music. After she had left, Eno realised the amplifier volume was too low and that one speaker was not playing, but he was too weak to get up and correct it. He wrote: "This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music – as part of the ambience of the environment just as the colour of the light and sound of the rain were parts of the ambience." The first side of Discreet Music comprises synthesiser notes in varying patterns, while the second comprises variations on Pachelbel's Canon, creating a "constantly shifting blanket of sound". According to Eno, it was "universally despised by the English pop press".

Also in December 1975, Eno and Fripp released their second album, Evening Star. Pitchfork described it as "confidently serene" compared to the "brashly abrasive" "(No Pussyfooting)", with improved technique and attention to theme, which became crucial to Eno's later work. In September 1976, Eno recorded with the German band Harmonia, living and working in farm buildings in Forst, Lower Saxony. The work was not intended for release; in 1997, it was included on the compilation album Tracks and Traces 1997.

David Bowie and Before and After Science (1977)

After returning to London, Eno co-produced Ultravox! (1977), the debut album by Ultravox. It was the first production role in which Eno demonstrated his potential as an artistic "catalyst", and his facility to combine conventional rock with experimental elements, which became his production hallmark.

Eno was invited to collaborate by the English singer David Bowie on his next album in France, Low, working under the producer Tony Visconti. Though Eno had previously been unenthusiastic about Bowie, saying his music was "better than pleasant" but had "never given me a single new idea", he had enjoyed Bowie's latest album, Station to Station (1976). Bowie had enjoyed Discreet Music and planned to have Eno provide sounds and textures. Eno's initial role was to assist with overdubbing. When Bowie left for Paris to attend legal proceedings, Eno used the time to develop his own compositions, promising to pay for the studio time for any Bowie did not use; Bowie used almost all of them.

On its release in 1977, Low divided listeners, but reached number 2 in the UK Album Chart and helped "cement Bowie's status as an art rock icon". The success boosted Eno's profile; according to his biographer, David Sheppard, Eno's "status as grand vizier to the crowned heads of British art rock was all but assured". In 2017, The Guardian suggested that the Low track "Warszawa" was Eno's best-known work. With Visconti, Eno co-produced Bowie's next album, Heroes (1977), in Berlin. He took a more involved role and received co-writing credits for three tracks, including the successful single "Heroes". Eno declined Bowie's invitation to join the Heroes tour. While in Germany, Eno recorded Cluster & Eno (1977) with the German duo Cluster, comprising former members of Harmonia.

Eno was frustrated by the media attention generated by his work with Bowie and found it difficult to create new music. His systems-based compositional approach was no longer working, and he endlessly edited, saying he was "going mad". Facing pressure from the record company, his health suffered and he experienced stress and insomnia. Eventually, following advice from Bowie, Fripp, and Robert Wyatt, he assembled an album from disparate elements, Before and After Science, released in December 1977. It comprises uptempo art rock with "more pastoral" material on the second half. The critic Jim DeRogatis described its as Eno's coldest and "most clinical" pop record.^{[incomplete short citation]} Before and After Science was voted the year's 12th-best album in Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics published in The Village Voice.

More Songs About Buildings and Food and No New York (1978)

In May 1977, Eno befriended the American band Talking Heads after attending one of their shows in London. Eno enjoyed their combination of conceptual lyrics, unorthodox chord structures and groove. He produced their second album, More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978), at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas. He processed and augmented the songs with synthesisers and effects such as delay, tremolo and phasers, and experimented with dub reggae production with the engineer Carl Peterson, who was recording Althea & Donna at the same studio. He also moved Talking Heads towards funk, blurring notions of white music and black music when the disco backlash was at its height. More Songs About Buildings and Food reached number 29 on the Billboard 200 and number 21 on the UK Albums Chart.

In April 1978, Eno moved to New York City, initially to mix More Songs About Buildings and Food, and stayed there for five years. In May, he moved into an apartment in Greenwich Village sublet from Steve Maas, the owner of the Mudd Club. He wrote later that his first months in the city were formative: "I didn't know many people, and I had time on my hands, so I was open to things in a way that I might not have been in a more familiar landscape." The critic Simon Reynolds described Eno's years in New York as his "golden period ... without doubt the most fertile and impressive stretch of his life's work". The Talking Heads singer, David Byrne, believed the British press still connected Eno with Roxy Music, and that he was able to escape this in New York.

Eno discovered the emerging New York no wave music scene, a group of dissonant and experimental bands. He produced a no wave compilation, No New York, released by Island Records in early 1978, composed of songs by Mars, DNA, the Contortions and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Eno recorded the bands in live takes, with few additions of his own. No New York drew little attention on release, but later became a cult record. In April 1978, Eno and the Cluster members Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius released After the Heat. It was more song-focused than their previous collaboration, Cluster & Eno, and featured Eno's last vocals on a record for a decade. It also featured the Can bassist, Holger Czukay, whose painstaking tape editing inspired Eno's later work.

Devo and Lodger (1978)

Eno produced the debut album by the American band Devo, Q. Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978). Devo had lobbied for Eno's involvement and he covered all expenses for recording and transportation. The recording was fraught, as Devo resisted Eno's experimental methods and his attempts to add elements, and instead sought to replicate sounds on their demos. Eno called the experience "a nightmare". The vocalist, Mark Mothersbaugh, later conceded that Devo had been too resistant and that "in those days we thought we knew everything". The album was a critical and commercial success, described by Ultimate Classic Rock as one of the most influential new wave albums.

Eno contributed two ambient compositions to the 1978 feature film Jubilee by Derek Jarman. In September, Eno began work at Mountain Studios in Montreux with Visconti on Bowie's next album, Lodger. Eno acted as assistant director, providing feedback and suggesting unusual approaches. For example, he had the guitarist Adrian Belew record his parts without hearing any backing tracks or knowing the key. According to Visconti, whereas Low and Heroes had been more balanced, Eno exerted more control on Lodger. Bowie and Eno's friendship became strained, and Bowie tired of Eno's experimental approach and "endless conceptualising". Lodger received mixed reviews; many critics felt Eno and Bowie's collaboration had lost momentum. The three albums Eno created with Bowie in the 1970s came to be known as the Berlin Trilogy.

Eno returned to visual art, building a light installation he called the Patented Invention and experimenting with video. After the Low recording session ended, Eno visited Pete Sinfield, who had produced Roxy Music's first album, in his home in Ibiza. They recorded an album, In a Land of Clear Colours. It was released in 1,000 copies in a local art gallery and became a collector's item.

Music for Airports and Fear of Music (1979)

In February 1979, Eno released the first album in his Ambient series, Ambient 1: Music for Airports, conceived as a soundtrack that could be played in airports. Eno created tape loops from sounds including notes sung by a trio of female singers and piano played by Wyatt and used them to create cycles of overlapping sounds. He coined the term ambient music to describe his work.

Music for Airports initially divided listeners and the term "Eno-esque" became a pejorative in NME reviews. Eno said critics felt he had "abandoned the 'true flame' of passionate, rebellious rock 'n' roll for something that was variously described as 'cold', 'emotionless', 'dull', 'tuneless', 'comfortable' and 'Muzak'." However, Music for Airports later attracted acclaim and became one of Eno's highest-selling solo albums, selling 200,000 copies. In 2016, Pitchfork named it the greatest ambient album. Eno's biographer, David Sheppard, called it his "most iconic and enduring work".

Eno produced the third Talking Heads record, Fear of Music (1979), recorded in the Manhattan loft where Talking Heads rehearsed. Eno exerted greater creative input, dramatically altering arrangements, treating songs with effects and synthesisers, and using unusual methods to encourage performances, such as having Byrne sing while exercising. Eno also began experimenting with video art, filming the view from his apartment with a video camera. His first video installation, displayed on three upturned television sets, was displayed at the Kitchen, Manhattan, in July, accompanied by a performance by Fripp. In the same month, Eno gave a lecture at the Kitchen about using the studio as compositional tool. He argued that the recording studio was not simply a means to document a performance but a "laboratory" in which sounds could be created.

Remain in Light and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and Apollo (1980–1983)

In April 1980, Eno released Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror, a collaboration with the composer Harold Budd, comprising processed piano pieces. In the same month, he and the trumpeter Jon Hassell released the album Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics, melding minimalism, jazz and ambient sounds. Eno scored Herbert Vesely's film Egon Schiele – Exzess und Bestrafung (1980).

In 1980, Eno produced his final album with Talking Heads, Remain in Light. Inspired by Afrobeat, Byrne and Eno's concept was to record numerous simple parts that would interlock to create complexity, with few chord changes. Tensions arose with the other band members, who felt Eno and Byrne were too controlling. They agreed to split songwriting credits with Eno, but rejected his request to credit the record to "Talking Heads and Brian Eno". Eno later said he had not been able to take Remain in Light as far as he had wanted for fear of "usurping the compositional role any more than I had done already", and that he and Byrne had received too much credit. The English band Wire decided against working with Eno for fear that he would divide them.

Remain in Light was a critical and commercial success. Rolling Stone wrote in 2023 that Eno had been the ideal producer for Talking Heads and that "their trilogy of albums with him made the band's reputation". Reynolds wrote that they developed a "group identity", likening them to George Martin and the Beatles.

Eno produced Ambient 3: Day of Radiance (1981) by Laraaji, with ringing tones and repetitive rhythms reminiscent of gamelan music. In February 1981, Eno and Byrne released My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Recorded before Remain in Light, it integrates samples of sources including Arabic singers, radio DJs and an exorcist. Musicians had used similar techniques before, but, according to the Guardian writer Dave Simpson, never "to such cataclysmic effect". Eno felt the album's innovation was to make samples "the lead vocal". Though it came to be seen as groundbreaking, My Life in the Bush of Ghost initially received weak reviews, disappointing Eno and leading him further from song-based music. Responding to accusations of cultural appropriation, he said: "We weren't trying to do African music. We were trying to use some of the things we thought we'd learn from that in making a newer version of our own music." In another interview, he said: "I'd say that anything I'm doing is simply my misunderstanding of black music."

In early 1981, Eno purchased a loft apartment on Broome Street, Manhattan, and fitted it with a home studio. That year, Eno's video artworks Two Fifth Avenue and White Fence were displayed in Grand Central Terminal and in galleries across North America. His first major video work, Mistaken Memories of Medieval Manhattan, comprised slowed-down footage of New York filmed from his apartment displayed on a television lying on its side. Eno aimed to create a "video painting" that would function less as a short film and more as "something beautiful to look at, like a picture". Though Mistaken Memories of Medieval Manhattan was exhibited in Europe, including in London and Oxford, Eno's visual art received little attention in the UK.

In March 1982, Eno released Ambient 4: On Land, inspired by his childhood memories of the Suffolk countryside. Pitchfork described it as "fantastically creepy ... a dark piece of music with a serious sense of tension". In 1983, EG released a box set of Eno's solo work, Working Backwards 1983–1973, including the compilation album Music for Films Volume 2. It was Eno's final release on EG before it was absorbed into Virgin Records. That year, Eno released the ambient album Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, written and recorded with his brother, Roger Eno, and Daniel Lanois. It was commissioned by Al Reinert for his 1985 film For All Mankind, a documentary about the Apollo 11 landing. It includes "zero-gravity country music", with slide guitar treated with long reverb. In 2017, The Guardian described the track "An Ending (Ascent)" as one of Eno's "crowning achievements".

The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree (1984–1993)

Eno contributed "Prophesy Theme" to the soundtrack of the 1984 film Dune by David Lynch. In August 1984, Eno and Budd released their second ambient album, The Pearl. In late 1984, after his Manhattan apartment was burgled, Eno moved back into his flat in London.

The Irish rock band U2 enlisted Eno and Lanois to produce their fourth album, The Unforgettable Fire (1984). The bassist, Adam Clayton, said U2 were "looking for something that was a bit more serious, more arty". Eno was hesitant to work with a rock band and initially told U2 he was considering retiring from music to become a video artist. Eno was hesitant to work with a rock band and initially told U2 he was considering retiring from music to become a video artist. The guitarist, the Edge, said Eno was intimidated by their "lack of irony". Eno was eventually persuaded by what he called their "lyrical soul in abundance". The Unforgettable Fire was voted the year's 29th-best record in Pazz & Jop.

In 1985, Eno released Thursday Afternoon, comprising a single hour-long track of "shimmering" loops of piano and electronics. Its length was impossible on vinyl, and it was promoted as the first album composed with the compact disc in mind. It was recorded to accompany a series of video paintings commissioned by Sony.

Eno and Lanois produced U2's next album, The Joshua Tree (1987). It sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, becoming one of the highest-selling albums in history. It was nominated for four Grammy Awards, winning Album of the Year and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. Rolling Stone included The Joshua Tree in its 2012 list of the 500 greatest albums.

In 1988, Eno and his wife and manager, Anthea Norman-Taylor, founded Opal Records, a management company, publisher and record label. Norman-Taylor said their aim was to be like EG but "without the sharp practice". It released records by "outsider" acts such as Lanois, Hassell, Budd, Cale, Roger Eno, Budd, Michael Brook and Laraaji. In 1987, Opal signed a worldwide distribution deal with Warner Bros.^{[contradictory]}

Generative music and Achtung Baby (1990–1993)

In 1990, Eno released a pop album with John Cale, Wrong Way Up, the first record to feature vocals from Eno in years. The recording was tense, as Cale found Eno controlling and Eno found Cale irrational.

Eno said he urinated into "Fountain", the urinal sculpture by Marcel Duchamp, while it was on display in the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1990. Eno objected to the level of prestige around the sculpture, saying it missed its message that any object can be art, and so decided "somebody should piss in that thing, to sort of bring it back to where it belonged". He had to apply the urine through a tube due to security glass.

Eno and Lanois produced U2's seventh album, Achtung Baby (1991). Eno took on an assisting role, working with U2 for a week at a time to review their songs before leaving for a month or two. Eno said his role was "to come in and erase anything that sounded too much like U2". He stripped away overdubbing he considered excessive, which U2 believed "saved the album". Eno and Lanois used lateral thinking and a philosophical approach popularised by Eno's Oblique Strategies. Achtung Baby sold more than 18 million copies and has been acclaimed as one of the greatest albums.

Between sessions with U2, Eno recorded his next solo album, My Squelchy Life, his first song-based solo album since Before and After Science. After Opal was restructured as an administrative office, Eno signed to Warner Records. When Warner delayed My Squelchy Life to 1992, Eno cancelled its release, feeling it did not represent the "cutting edge" of his work. It was eventually released on the 2014 reissue of his 1992 album Nerve Net. Pitchfork called it Eno's most enjoyable solo 1990s album "by a wide margin".

In 1992, Eno released Nerve Net, comprising a mixture of instrumental and vocal tracks, and The Shutov Assembly, comprising electronic sketches for future orchestral works. In 1993, he released Neroli, comprising a single hour-long ambient composition. Eno and his assistant Mark "Flood" Ellis produced U2's eighth album, Zooropa (1993). As with the Achtung Baby sessions, Eno worked two-week shifts. U2 often gave him in-progress songs to adjust and add his own personality.

Windows 95, James and Passengers (1994–2000)

Eno produced Bright Red (1994) by Laurie Anderson. Whereas album production usually begins with recording the rhythm section, Eno began by recording Anderson's voice and building instruments around it, a technique he used in later work. Eno produced the James albums Laid (1993) and Wah Wah (1994), recorded simultaneously. Laid, comprising more accessible songs was a critical and commercial success, while Wah Wah, a more experimental record assembled from improvisations, received mixed reviews.

In 1994, Microsoft commissioned Eno to compose the Microsoft Sound, the startup music for the Windows 95 operating system. Eno enjoyed composing a very short piece of music intended to evoke emotion, a concept he found "funny and amazing". The Microsoft Sound is likely Eno's most heard composition; Pitchfork suggested it was one of the most frequently heard pieces of music in North America. In 2025, it was selected for preservation in the US National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress.

In 1995, Eno travelled with Edinburgh University's Professor Nigel Osborne to Bosnia in the aftermath of the Bosnian War to work with war-traumatised children, many of whom had been orphaned. Osborne and Eno led music therapy projects run by the War Child charity in Mostar. Eno mixed and mastered The Help Album, a 1995 compilation album by various artists released to raise funds for War Child.

From 1995, Eno began using the term generative music to describe music created through parameters set by the artist to generate evolving and unpredictable compositions. This produces music that slowly unfolds in almost infinite combinations of sound. In 1995, he released Generative Music 1 on floppy disk, a music application created with the software Koan. It generates music differently each time it runs, using rules defined by Eno. The Independent wrote that it would please fans of Eno's ambient music, but that it required an expensive sound card.

In 1995, Eno and U2 released the album Original Soundtracks 1, featuring the tenor Luciano Pavarotti. Due to its experimental nature and Eno's participation, it was released under the name Passengers. It received mixed reviews and sold fewer copies than U2 standards, but the single "Miss Sarajevo" reached number 6 in the UK singles chart. In 1996, Eno published A Year with Swollen Appendices, a diary covering his work during 1995. Eno scored the 1996 television series Neverwhere, based on the novel by Neil Gaiman.

In 1997, Eno released his fourteenth album, The Drop, comprising several generative instrumentals made using piano, drum machines and samples of Eno's voice. Eno conceived it as "jazz that nobody asked for". It received mainly negative reviews. In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau wrote: "It sounds like he got stuck between Music for Airports and Wrong Way Up and spun his hard drive for 74 minutes. He hears melodies whose vagueness he extols, I hear vaguenesses whose attenuation I rue." In NME, Mark Beaumont gave it 0/10. Reviewing it for Pitchfork in 2014, Douglas Wolk wrote: "It's not uninteresting to hear once." Eno followed The Drop with a string of limited-edition soundtracks to installation artworks. Eno appeared as Father Brian Eno in "Going to America", the final episode of the sitcom Father Ted, broadcast on 1 May 1998 on Channel 4. Eno produced the James album Millionaires (1999).

Coldplay and Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (2000–2009)

Eno and Lanois produced U2's tenth album, All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000). U2 had wanted to write new material before beginning recording, but Eno convinced them to write quickly in the studio. Rolling Stone declared it "U2's third masterpiece", alongside The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby. It became the fourth-highest-selling U2 album, with sales of more than 12 million as of 2014. In 2001, Eno released an ambient album with the German composer J. Peter Schwalm, Drawn from Life. In 2004, Fripp and Eno released their third album, The Equatorial Stars.

Eno contributed to Tékitoi (2004) and Zoom (2013) by the French-Algerian Raï singer Rachid Taha. In June 2005, Eno released his 13th album, Another Day on Earth, comprising mostly electronic pop songs. Eno composed the score for the 2005 film The Jacket. In 2005, he worked with Travis on the early stages of their album The Boy With No Name (2007). Eno is credited for "sonic landscape" on Paul Simon's 2006 album Surprise. The Guardian wrote that his "provocative, liberating influence ... is all over Surprise ... Eno's production ebbs and flows like a digitalised Greek chorus." Eno initially found Simon controlling, but said they eventually formed "a very good relationship".

A generative art installation by Eno, 77 Million Paintings, debuted in Tokyo in 2006 and made its North American premiere in San Francisco in 2007. Eno developed software to overlap images randomly, creating constantly moving patterns. Eno created a procedural soundtrack for the video game Spore (2008), which changes in response to player actions. In 2008, Eno and the software designer Peter Chilvers released Bloom, an iOS app for creating generative music. It was followed in 2012 by another app, Scape.

Eno and Markus Dravs produced the fourth album by Coldplay, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends (2008). After their previous album, X&Y (2005), received mixed reviews, Coldplay enlisted Eno to help them improve. The singer, Chris Martin, said Eno "broke us down in a sort of military boot-camp way", telling them: "Your songs are too long and you're too repetitive, and you use the same tricks too much, and big things aren't necessarily good things, and you use the same sounds too much, and your lyrics are not good enough." Eno encouraged Coldplay to pursue different instrumentation and song structures. Viva la Vida was the world's highest-selling album that year, at nine million copies.

Eno contributed to the 2008 Grace Jones album Hurricane. In 2008, Eno and Byrne released their second album together, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Pitchfork said it was "nothing whatsoever" like their previous album, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts; Eno and Byrne described it as "electronic gospel".

Eno, Lanois and Steve Lillywhite produced the 12th album by U2, No Line on the Horizon, released in February 2009. In June, Eno curated the inaugural Luminous Festival in Sydney, where 77 Million Paintings was projected into the sails of the Sydney Opera House. Eno scored Peter Jackson's film The Lovely Bones, released in December. With Chris Martin of Coldplay, Eno wrote "Lukas" on the 2009 album Come to Life by Natalie Imbruglia.

Warp Music and further ambient work (2010–2019)

Eno was the artistic director for the 2010 Brighton Festival, where he gave a lecture and performed with artists including the Necks, Karl Hyde (of Underworld), Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams. Eno signed to Warp Records in 2010. His first Warp release was Small Craft on a Milk Sea with Hopkins and Abrahams, based on compositions Eno wrote for The Lovely Bones. On 4 July 2011, Eno and the poet Rick Holland released the album Drums Between the Bells. Eno co-produced Lifelines, an album of covers by Andrea Corr (2011). He also contributed to Coldplay's fifth album, Mylo Xyloto, released in 2011. Coldplay used the term "enoxification" to describe his role, which they said involved fearless experimentation.

For his soundtrack for the Channel 4 thriller series Top Boy, Eno won the 2012 BAFTA for best original music. In November 2012, Eno released Lux, a 76-minute composition in four sections, through Warp. In 2013, a "quiet room" featuring Eno's ambient music and video art was installed at the Montefiore Hospital in Hove. In 2014, Eno announced that he would contribute soothing music to the A&E department of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. Eno sang on, co-wrote, and co-produced "Heavy Seas of Love" from the debut solo album by Damon Albarn, Everyday Robots (2014).

In May 2014, Eno and Hyde released Someday World, featuring musicians including Will Champion of Coldplay, Andy Mackay of Roxy Music and Fred Again. A second album by Eno and Hyde, High Life, followed in June. In 2015, Eno gave a John Peel lecture on the question of why humans create art. He defined art as activity humans undertake which is not strictly unnecessary, such as baking and dancing, and argued that its purpose is to simulate experiences which might be otherwise dangerous.

In January 2016, Anthony Kiedis, the singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, said Eno had declined eight requests to produce them. Eno contributed music to the "Otherworlds" exhibition of planetary photography by Michael Benson, which was displayed in the London Natural History Museum in 2016. In April, Eno released his 26th album, The Ship, on Warp, a mixture of ambient and pop. It was the first Eno album to feature vocals since Another Day on Earth (2005). It includes a poem read by Peter Serafinowicz and a cover of the 1969 Velvet Underground song "I'm Set Free". Eno co-produced and contributed to the album Love Without Violins by the Gift, released on 30 September 2016.

Eno released Reflection, an album of ambient generative music, on Warp on 1 January 2017. It was nominated for the 2017 Grammy Award for Best New Age Album. Eno also released an album with Tom Rogerson, Finding Shore (2017), through Dead Oceans. Eno co-wrote and co-produced the song "Aliens" from Coldplay's 2017 EP Kaleidoscope.

In April 2018, Eno released "The Weight of History" / "Only Once Away My Son", a double A-side with Kevin Shields, for Record Store Day. He also released Music for Installations, a compilation of his ambient and generative music created for art installations and exhibitions. In 2019, Eno participated in DAU, an immersive art installation in Paris by Ilya Khrzhanovsky that recreated life under Soviet rule. That March, Eno was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Roxy Music. He did not attend the induction ceremony.

ForeverAndEverNoMore, Secret Life and documentary (2020–present)

Eno collaborated with Laurie Anderson and Ebe Oke on Dokument #2, released exclusively on 500 vinyl copies in 2020. It was recorded over five days in Copenhagen in 2016. That March, Brian and Roger Eno released the album Mixing Colours. It was created over the course of 15 years, with the brothers exchanging and manipulating MIDI files. Eno contributed production and synthesiser programming to "Homing" from Don't Shy Away (2020) by Loma.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2021, Eno told the Los Angeles Times that he was working on a project with a group of developers to create an audio-video conferencing software, as an open source alternative to programs like Zoom. Although the software has never emerged, Open Culture described it that August as simply "one of any number of projects he's kicking around at any given time".

Eno scored Ben Lawrence's 2021 documentary Ithaka, about the incarceration of Julian Assange. In June, Eno launched a Sonos radio station, the Lighthouse, that plays random selections of his music, including hundreds of new and unreleased tracks. In October 2022, Eno released the album ForeverAndEverNoMore, comprising songs rather than ambient music. Reviewing it for The Guardian, Sophie Harris wrote that "Eno’s voice is deeper now and more commanding". Eno met Fred Gibson, also known as Fred Again, at a singing group organised by Eno and became his mentor. They released an album, Secret Life, in May 2023. "Enough" was nominated for the Ivor Novello Award for best contemporary song on 23 May 2024.

A documentary, Eno, directed by Gary Hustwit, was released in 2024. Software randomly selected from hours of interviews and archival footage to create a unique film on each screening, thereby creating the first "generative" feature film. In 2025, Faber & Faber published a book by Eno and Bette Adriaanse, What Art Does, that examines the role of art in society and its impact on human experience. In March, Eno released an ambient album exclusively on Apple Music, Aurum, which uses spatial audio. That year, he and Beatie Wolfe released three ambient albums on Verve Records: Luminal, Lateral and Liminal. Eno contributed to the 2026 EP Easter Lily by U2. In September, Eno relaunched Opal Records to reissue Another Day on Earth and Drawn from Life, which had been unavailable outside Japan for several years.

Musicianship

Eno describes himself as a "non-musician", a term he once attempted to list as his profession in his passport. He has no formal music training and cannot read music notation, feeling music theory can prevent artists from exploring certain areas. He mostly writes melodies by searching for notes that fit and discovering notes that "don't fit in a very interesting way". In 1974, he told Rolling Stone that he could not play any instruments "in any technically viable" sense, and that technique can be a barrier. Eno sings on many of his records, and sang on records he made with Bowie, Talking Heads, U2 and Cluster. In the 1990s, Eno said he had performed uncredited backing vocals on several well known songs.

Eno opposes the assumption that virtuosity is essential to music, which he felt was particularly untrue for rock, and that calling himself a "non-musician" was the best way to describe his approach. He said the term "musician" usually describes "someone with a digital skill that they then apply to an instrument"; by comparison, his skills were not manual but "to do with ingenuity". Eno's collaborator David Byrne said: "He calls himself a non-musician even though he can play really well. But he plays as a non-musician, which allows him to step back and not get wrapped up in the technique of fingering or chords. He can see the big picture, the structure, the texture of it." Daniel Lanois, who contributed to several of Eno's ambient albums and co-produced several U2 records with him, said Eno's "genius" was his ability to quickly present a new way to look at things and act as a "catalyst". According to Jason Ankeny of AllMusic, "Eno champions theory over practice, serendipity over forethought, and texture over craft."

Generative music

Eno coined the term "generative music" to describe music that emerges randomly through conditions created by the composer. He became interested in such processes in the 1960s after hearing composers such as Terry Riley, and began experimenting with tape loops. Eno said he found it exciting to "lose control" of the music: "You'd then feed inputs into it, and it would reconfigure it and make something beyond what you had predicted." Eno albums including Discreet Music (1975) and Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1979) were early products of generative music systems.

With generative music, the artist defines the input, structure and limitations of the system rather than the result. Eno gave the example of wind chimes: the creator of the chimes determines their number, pitches and material, but how and when they strike is determined randomly by the wind. The creator did not compose the music, but instead built the system from which music emerges. In 2001, Eno said: "Ordinary music is like engineering, where everything's built according to a plan, and it's the same every time you play it. Generative music is more like gardening; you plant a seed, and it grows different every time you plant."

Influences

Eno's interest in art was sparked by a tiny reproduction of a canvas by Piet Mondrian he received when he was 10. Eno said his music is minimalistic, similarly to Mondrian's work. The Who and the Velvet Underground were other early influences, as Eno felt they successfully combined music and art. In 1995, Eno said African music "underlies practically everything I do", including ambient music: "That kind of free float – these peculiar mixtures of independence and interdependence, and the oscillation between them – is a characteristic of West African drumming patterns."

Early in his career, Eno was interested in both pop music, which he said produces "incredible sounds with great musicians who really feel what they play", and the experimental music of Steve Reich, Cornelius Cardew, John Cage and Gavin Bryars. However, he disliked how experimental composers such as Reich performed and recorded music, which he described as "stiffly played and badly recorded". Eno sought to combine experimental music processes with the "results-oriented" world of pop. In 1974, Eno said he strove for a meeting between avant-garde music, which is "fiercely intellectual, fiercely anti-physical", and rock music, which is "fiercely physical and fiercely anti-intellectual". According to Linda Kohanov of AllMusic, Eno "was in part striving to create music that approximated the effect of visual art".

Equipment

Synthesisers used by Eno. From top: EMS VCS 3, EMS Synthi AKS, Yamaha DX7

Eno said he enjoyed discovering how technology could be put to purposes beyond the designer's intention, citing distortion as an example. He enjoys working with complex equipment, as this creates a complex and rich sound that suggests a mood. Eno felt that whereas traditional instruments, such as pianos, are tied to cultural convention and musical history, he found newer instruments such as synthesisers freeing: "You're designing a new instrument ... It's a constantly unfinished instrument. You finish it when you tweak it, and play around with it, and decide how to use it. You can combine a number of cultural references into one new thing." He did not note down his synthesiser settings for fear of falling into habits.

In the 1970s, Eno's primary instrument was the tape recorder; he once owned 31. Eno used an EMS VCS 3 synthesiser throughout his career, using it on tracks such as "Ladytron" (1972) by Roxy Music. He also used it to process live instruments. He used a similar model, the EMS Synthi AKS, on the 1997 David Bowie song "Heroes" to create a "shuddering, chattering" effect. In the 1980s, Eno was one of the few musicians who learned to program the Yamaha DX7 synthesiser in depth, and used it to create ambient music on his 1983 album Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks. He shared instructions for recreating his DX7 sounds in a 1987 issue of Keyboard, and used the DX7 on records he produced by U2 and Coldplay. As of 2022, Eno mostly used software synthesisers with Logic Pro.

Eno and Tony Visconti used the Eventide H910 Harmoniser, a pitch-shifting unit, on Bowie's Berlin Trilogy in the 1970s. Eno wrote to Eventide saying their updated 1986 model was the best-designed and most enjoyable piece of equipment he had ever owned. Eno was an early adopter of the Kaoss Pad, a sampler and effects unit that uses a touchscreen launched in 1999. He described it as "a way of taking sounds into the domain of muscular control" as opposed to working with computers.

In 1995, Eno said he was sceptical of sequenced music, which "locks music in time". Instead, he preferred human players creating "tension between those moments of lock and those moments of drift ... a lot of things competing for attention and overlapping in different ways, and sometimes miraculously locking together". In 2025, Eno said he valued the convenience of modern recording technology but worried it created "super-pasteurised music where everything has been nicely finished and ironed out, and there's no fibre left at all". He cited the pitch-correcting software AutoTune, saying: "I love the sound of AutoTune when it's used for what it can do that human voices can't do; I hate the sound of it when it just turns a voice into every other voice."

Methods

Eno has spread his techniques and theories primarily through his production. His style informed projects in which he has been involved, including Bowie's Berlin Trilogy (helping to popularise minimalism) and the albums he produced for Talking Heads (incorporating, on Eno's advice, African music and polyrhythms), Devo, and other groups. Eno's first collaboration with David Byrne, 1981's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, used sampling techniques and broke ground by incorporating world music into popular Western music forms. Eno's "unconventional studio predilections", in common with those of Peter Gabriel, were an influence on the recording of "In the Air Tonight", the single which launched the solo career of Eno's former drummer Phil Collins. Collins said he learned from working with Eno. The academic Adam Bell credits Eno with popularising the concept of the recording studio as an instrument. Under producers such as Eno, "using the studio as an instrument became less about working the system as it were, and working the systems".

Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies have been used by many bands, and Eno's production style has proven influential in several general respects: "his recording techniques have helped change the way that modern musicians;– particularly electronic musicians;– view the studio. No longer is it just a passive medium through which they communicate their ideas but itself a new instrument with seemingly endless possibilities." According to Vinyl Me, Please writer Jack Riedy, Eno's peak as an artist coincided with the album era – a period in popular music during which the album surpassed the single as the dominant recorded-music format – "and Eno took full advantage of the format to pursue all his musical ideas on wax".

Ambient music

While inspired by minimalist composers including John Cage, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Erik Satie, Eno coined the term ambient music to describe his own work. The Ambient Music Guide states that Eno brought from "relative obscurity into the popular consciousness" fundamental ideas about ambient music, including "the idea of modern music as subtle atmosphere, as chill-out, as impressionistic, as something that creates space for quiet reflection or relaxation". His groundbreaking work in electronic music has been said to have brought widespread attention to and innovations in the role of electronic technology in recording. In 2002, Mark Richardson wrote in Pitchfork that ambient music remained associated with Eno: "Rarely has a genre, indeed an entire musical idea, been so completely owned by a single individual ... For all practical purposes, Brian Eno is ambient music." According to Linda Kohanov of AllMusic, Eno "was in part striving to create music that approximated the effect of visual art".

Accolades and honours

Rolling Stone's 2023 list of the 500 greatest albums includes Eno's albums Here Come the Warm Jets and Another Green World, plus several Eno produced or contributed to: For Your Pleasure by Roxy Music, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! by Devo, More Songs About Buildings and Food and Remain in Light by Talking Heads, Achtung Baby and The Joshua Tree by U2 and Low by David Bowie.

In 1995, Eno received honorary doctorates from Plymouth University and the Royal College of Art, London. Eno won the Brit Award for British Producer of the Year in 1994 and again in 1996. Berlin University of the Arts appointed him honorary professor in 1998. In 2007, Eno declined to become a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and did not discuss his reasons. He won the Music Producers Guild trophy in 2009. He was appointed a Royal Designer for Industry in 2012. In 2016, he was added to Edinburgh University's roll of honour. In 2017, Eno delivered the Andrew Carnegie Lecture at Edinburgh University. In 2019, he was awarded the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication from the Starmus Festival.

In 2011, Belgian academics from the Royal Museum for Central Africa named a species of Afrotropical spider Pseudocorinna brianeno in Eno's honour. The asteroid 81948 Eno, discovered by Marc Buie at Cerro Tololo in 2000, was named after Eno. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 18 May 2019 (M.P.C. 114955).

Support for Palestine

In 2006, Eno was one of more than 100 artists and writers who signed an open letter calling for an international boycott of Israeli political and cultural institutions. In January 2009, he spoke out against Israel's military action on the Gaza Strip by writing an opinion for CounterPunch and participating in a large-scale protest in London. In 2014, Eno protested against what he called a "one-sided exercise in ethnic cleansing" and a "war [with] no moral justification", in reference to the 2014 military operation of Israel into Gaza. Along with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker and others, Eno signed a letter published in The Guardian calling the conflict an "inhumane and illegal act of military aggression" and called for a military embargo on Israel similar to that imposed on South Africa during apartheid.

Eno is a supporter of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which asks artists to boycott Israel. In April 2021, Eno was a participant in the "Live for Gaza", online concert which was held in April. 2021 Artists from Gaza included Gaza's first rock group Osprey V, Wafaa Alnjeili, and Badeel Band. In October 2023, Eno signed an open letter of artists calling for a ceasefire during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. In November 2023, he signed an open letter calling for a ceasefire and an end to Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip.

In April 2024, Eno was one of 130 public figures to sign a letter to the Court of Appeal in support of the British direct action group Palestine Action after they were banned as a terrorist organisation. In May 2025, Eno accused Microsoft of complicity in Israeli war crimes in the Gaza war for providing Israel with AI and cloud services. He pledged to donate his fee for the Windows 95 Microsoft Sound to the victims in Gaza. He was also one of 380 public figures and groups to sign a letter declaring the Gaza war a genocide and calling for a ceasefire. That September, Eno organised and performed at the Together for Palestine benefit concert at Wembley Arena, London. It raised over $2 million for Palestinian charities. That month, he signed an open pledge with Film Workers for Palestine, pledging not to work with Israeli film institutions "that are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people". In April 2026, Eno signed a letter organised by No Music for Genocide calling for Israel to be banned from that year's Eurovision Song Contest.

Climate

In 2021, Eno co-founded the charity EarthPercent, which asks members of the music industry to pledge a small percent of its income to projects halting climate change. Its advisory panel includes the climate scientist Tamsin Edwards, the physicist Brian Cox and the activist Tori Tsui. In August 2026, Eno was among 211 artists to sign a letter calling for the prime minister, Andy Burnham, to reject proposals for further drilling in the Rosebank oil and gas field.

Other issues

In 2013, Eno became a patron of Videre est Credere, a UK human rights charity. Videre gives activists equipment and training to training to capture video evidence of human rights violations. Eno participates alongside the film producers Uri Fruchtmann and Terry Gilliam and executive director of Greenpeace UK John Sauven.

Eno was appointed president of the Stop the War Coalition in 2017. He has had a long involvement with the organisation since it was set up in 2001. Eno is also a trustee of the environmental law charity ClientEarth, Somerset House, and the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, set up by Mariana Mazzucato.

In 2025, Eno said social media had been simultaneously useful and catastrophic, and had had an "toxic" effect on politics. While he said he welcomes new technology, he expressed concern that AI, like social media, was owned by a small number of people motivated by profit. Eno is an early and prominent member of Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), where he contributes, issues statements, and takes part in media events and discussions. In July 2026, Eno was among 120 people who wrote an open letter organised by Patriotic Millionaires to Prime Minister Andy Burnham, asking to be taxed more.

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