The Quietus - A new rock music and pop culture website

Baker's Dozen

Free, Open Spaces: Brian Eno's Favourite Records
William Doyle , April 13th, 2016 10:00

Before he releases his new album The Ship, the composer, producer and artist gives William Doyle a tour of some of his favourite records and tracks, reflecting on how they've shaped his own approach to music

My_bloody_valentine_1460529978_resize_460x400

My Bloody Valentine – Glider
I was doing a lecture tour mostly in California and I was being driven from place to place by my friend David Snow. I bought this CD [Glider], I don't know why I brought it with me, I hadn't heard it, I'd just picked it up on the way over from England. I put this first song on ('Soon') and I never played anything else. I don't know if I ever have ever played the other songs on it. I just put that thing on and it's just such a sonic experience, and in a car it's amazing. We had a hired car with an amazing sound system, and just being inside that music actually has a lot to do with what I'm doing now with this three-dimensional thing. You get that feeling in a car where you're really inside the music, you don't really get it in a room very often. It's such a statement. I remember that experience in the car so strongly as we hadn't actually used the hi-fi before in the car and it was turned up really loud. Oh my god. It's so chaotic, and recording doesn't capture chaos very well, it usually tames it, it contains it in a way.

Again, it's about voices. One of the things that I really love in that is the fact that there's singing in there but you have no idea what it's doing. You can hear that somewhere in that thicket of noise there's somebody doing something but you have no idea what it is. I thought that was great, that singing could be like that. It doesn't have to be this person at the front with all the articulation and every word clear. It can just be a person in that mess and that was a real liberation for me.