"Steve Reich was a very important part of my listening," Brian Eno tells the New York Times' Ezra Klein. "All of his work, I think, depends on making your brain perform and watch itself performing in a certain way. So I suddenly thought then, ‘Oh, the composer isn’t just Steve Reich. It’s Steve Reich and my brain that’s making this composition what it is.’ And that thought never left me, that you actually are engaging the technology of the listener’s brain to complete the piece. They’re not passive.” You can watch and hear their conversation here.
"Steve Reich was a very important part of my listening because he made a piece called It's Gonna Rain that opened a door for me," Brian Eno tells the New York Times' Ezra Klein on the latest episode of The Ezra Klein Show. "That piece works by making your brain behave in a certain way. You are not an inactive listener. All of his work, I think, depends on making your brain perform and watch itself performing in a certain way. So I suddenly thought then, ‘Oh, the composer isn’t just Steve Reich. It’s Steve Reich and my brain that’s making this composition what it is.’ And that thought never left me, that you actually are engaging the technology of the listener’s brain to complete the piece. They’re not passive.”
“Listening to his music completely changed my relationship with music," Klein responds. "It’s like power-washing your own mind. To really sit through it — it’s as psychedelic as any drug out there. It’s so rhythmic, and it forces your brain to adjust to it in a way that feels like when you come out the other end of it, some sort of reprogramming has happened.”
You can hear and watch the above as part of their extensive conversation, including a few words on Laurie Anderson, here:
- Log in to post comments
