There are few musicians whose words on music are as exciting as their music. Brian Eno is one of them. Paul Schütze's interview with him in The Wire 139, September 1995 is full of interesting insights.

Eno, the electronic/recording wizard comes up with a surprising explanation why synthesizer music is often so pale in comparison with real instrumental music. The player simply has no physical relation to his instrument:

The way he sees music programming tools like ProTools (or Cubase in 1995) is that they give everyone the skills to create music and therefore move the focus from skill to judgement. Nowadays every idiot has the technical skill to make music and the important question now is what to do with the skill. Where to go. And this is the first question to ask yourself before starting with beats and stuff.

Another interesting idea concerns the value of a piece of music. He thinks that it is not intrinsic but coming from the interaction with the listener. That there is a I Ching quality to music. It only has a meaning if the listener can connect to it, can integrate it in his universe. It is even possible that the listener embellishes the music. That it can become better than when it was created by him listening to it.

I also liked the reflections on artists who don't censor their output and who let the market decide if it is good. Eno names Picasso, Miles Davis and Prince:

A weird thing: the interviewer mentions a track on Another Green World with children's voices in the background. Eno says that he had completely forgotten about them and that they were from a playground. I just relistened to that album and I didn't hear those children anywhere. Anyone an idea where they could hide?