Roger Eno

Notes

'The music that you hear on this disc is an attempt to emulate a soundtrack, or musical backdrop, I constructed for the 2008 Salthouse Art Festival in North Norfolk. My intention was to have a piece of music that would play throughout the duration of the exhibition. I wanted it to be continually changing so as not to be tedious yet to be 'self-contained'. I decided to do this in the following way: Twenty 'events' (tracks of birdsong, bells, sparse melodies, vocal lines, bass notes etc.) were recorded on to four identical CDs. These tracks incidently included four 'events' of silences of varying lengths. The CDs were then placed in four machines that were set to 'random shuffle' and 'repeat all'. Thus an ever-changing random backdrop was set to 'self-compose'. I had made sure that the musical elements would not clash uncomfortably, having chosen the Lydian mode and sticking to it throughout.

A slightly different approach had to be taken in the creation of this C.D. I wished to keep the chance element, so critical to the 'live' soundtrack, and did so in the following simple manner:
Each 'event' was designated a number (1-20) and corresponding numbers were written with indelible felt-tipped pen on twenty old sixpences. These coins were then shaken in my hands and blindly sorted into a pile. The coin (number) at the top was the first event to be placed on track one. Once all coins were used up, I shook them, piled them and started track two–and so on to track four. I was honest with myself throughout this process and didn't change the chance order even when it looked like minutes of silence followed one
another. I was,in fact, pleasantly surprised to hear how smoothly it sounded. I occasionally listen to 'Flood' at low volume whilst going about my day, it again becomes what it was intended to be, a backdrop rather than a focal point.'

Roger Eno, 2008