The soundtrack supports his experimental documentary Eno, which used AI to shuffle the film and ensure no two screenings are exactly the same
Brian Eno will release the soundtrack to his groundbreaking, experimental documentary Eno on April 19, Rolling Stone can exclusively announce. The prolific producer also shared the first track from the album, the nearly-six-minute, industrial and jazzy unreleased instrumental track titled “Lighthouse #429.”
The album features 17 tracks spanning Eno’s entire musical career, from his early work in the Seventies to his 2022 album Foreverandevernomore. The Eno soundtrack will also feature three previously unreleased songs, including “Lighthouse #429.” As the track’s title suggests, the single comes from Eno’s Sonos Radio Station “The Lighthouse,” which plays unreleased tunes from his archive. This is the first song from the station to be commercially released. A physical LP and CD release date will arrive June 7.
“Picasso once said: ‘Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working’. I don’t wait to be inspired: I start working and (if I’m lucky) I become ‘inspired.’ And if I’m not lucky I keep at it until my luck changes,” said Eno in a statement. “I’m obstinate and confident that I will get somewhere in the end if I keep at it.”
Fitting to Eno’s reputation as one of the most inventive music producers of his generation and as a pioneer for ambient music, Eno itself is a unique addition to the rock doc canon. Director Gary Hustwit employed generative artificial intelligence in the film to shuffle parts of the documentary to ensure no two screenings of the film are exactly the same. Some of the scenes end up in different places in new screenings, while some scenes won’t show up at all the next time.
“This is what you get when a music doc that isn’t a greatest-hits collection but a life on shuffle mode,” Rolling Stone‘s David Fear wrote in a review of the film after viewing a screening at Sundance last month.
