Brian Eno

At the age of twelve, Brian Eno discovers a small forest not far from the house where he lives with his parents. A solitary den where not a soul is to be seen, a gap in unreality within everyday life that the artist-to-be explores down to the tiniest detail: the position of one tree in relation to the others, the wildlife, the undergrowth with its teeming miniature world. The forest becomes part of Eno's inner world and will stay with him into adulthood, when - by then an established (non-)musician and producer - he decides to reclaim the feelings he experienced in that evocative place.

With the fourth and final volume of the "Ambient" series (launched in 1979 with the landmark "Music For Airports" and continued with the intangible "The Plateaux Of Mirrors", made with Harold Budd, and with Laraaji's luminous "Day Of Radiance") Eno produces something that has almost nothing left to do with notes, rhythms and harmonies, but is instead closely bound up with the resurfacing of long-buried states of mind, small sensations rising back up from the dark well of the unconscious and turning into a palette of abstract sound. "On Land" is an excavation into the depths of its creator that mirrors itself in the listener - nine tracks that speak of young Brian's childhood world while, at the same time, unhinging the wooden door of everyone's own nostalgia.

Before falling asleep, in the passage between waking and sinking into the mysterious depths of slumber, details struggle to surface - buried under the sheer mass of experiences piling up, hour after hour, year after year - fragments of what we once were, of what we once felt, especially in our earliest years of life. Listening to "On Land" captures them and brings them back into the light. "The Lost Days": the spectral calm of a lake at a dusk that already feels like dead of night, the fog and the absolute silence. A buoy out on the water faintly rings the bell fixed to its top. From the shore, only the tiny waves breaking on the muddy shoreline and the far-off sound of the bell, covered by an invisible sky.

"On Land" was originally meant to be called "Return To Lost Days", given the memory-laden spirit running through it, built around one very precise image in its creator's mind: that of the listener and the composer sitting side by side on a plateau, surrounded by an immense geographic space and by many sounds - some distant, barely perceptible, others closer. These sounds arrive from every direction with no particular connection between them, and the spirit and mind capture them, shaping them into melodies. Eno wants transparency: closer details that don't block the path of listening to those further away. To achieve this, he imagines a layered filigree of music and noise; the former is laid down by first-rate collaborators (Bill Laswell, Jon Hassell, Daniel Lanois and others), whom Eno records (and then transfigures) after giving them vague hints drawn from the "oblique strategies". To this are added an ashtray knocked by a pencil, a straw blown into a glass full of water, sticks and chains recorded and then slowed down until they fray, lose their substance, and become ghosts.

Dunwich Beach, Autumn, 1960: once again, twelve-year-old Brian loses himself exploring the autumn scenery of the beach, bending down to touch the stones, letting the sand slip through his fingers. Fragments tucked away on the most cramped shelf of the self come back to life through "On Land", perhaps the most intimate record ever made. An intimacy that demands close listening, on headphones, in the dark. More than a listen, it's an exploration of its crevices, of its sonic ghosts, in search of a lost toy whose existence you'd forgotten, of a colour, a scent, a place you thought was gone forever. "On Land" is the path towards the world of pure, sweet melancholy.

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06/02/2026