Extracts from Music for White Cube, London 1997

Infobox Album | Name = Extracts from Music for White Cube
Type = Album
Artist = Brian Eno


Released = 1997
Recorded = March 1997
Genre = Ambient
Length = 68:30
Label = Opal
Producer = Brian Eno
Reviews = Allmusic Rating|3|5 [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:datvad8kl8w3 (link)]
Last album = "The Drop"
(1997)
This album = Extracts from Music for White Cube
(1997)
Next album = ""
(1997) |

"Extracts from Music for White Cube, London 1997" is an ambient "Installation" album from British musician Brian Eno, released in 1997.

Track listing

# Notting Hill, Feb 20 - 11:45
# Old Brompton Road, Feb 20 - 3:09
# The Oval, Feb 24 - 7:07
# Regents Park, Feb 1 - 24:33
# Barbican Station, Feb 24 - 1:39
# Bermondsey, Feb 24 - 4:20
# Kentish Town, Jan 29 - 2:39
# Lavender Hill, Feb 14 - 6:57
# Camden Town, Feb 24 - 6:18

Overview

Inappropriate tone|date=December 2007An Opal release, with no catalogue number.

The music on the album was made for an "Installation" - a show featuring music and visuals - that took place at the White Cube art gallery in London, from April 25th to May 31st 1997.

The gallery describes itself as "possibly the smallest exhibition space in Europe", and consists of a simple square room, painted white. During the show, white blinds covered the two windows in one wall and a suspended ceiling muffled lights that were suspended above it. Mounted on each of the four walls was a CD-player with two speakers on either side, playing random tracks.

Eno created the music by selecting random sites situated within a one-mile radius of the "White Cube" and recording a variety of "ambient" sounds around him, such as crowd-noise, the ringing bells of clock-towers, weather, and rushing traffic. On top of this he also recorded himself singing a single, long note at each location.

Taking the raw recordings back to his London studio, he ran them through a variety of enhancement software/hardware to produce a series of time-stretched, compressed, equalized, reverberating compositions, which he burned onto CD's (8 to 16 tracks on each). These were the discs that were fed into the Installation players and set to 'random'. Eno says "I was thinking of the sound less as music and more as sculpture, space, landscape, and of the experience as a process of immersion rather than just of listening".

The "Extracts from Music for White Cube" album was originally the "catalogue" to accompany the Installation, which has a short essay on the inlay card.

Miscellanea

* During the Installation's run at the White Cube gallery, visitors could select from, and buy, a series of unique CD-Rs named "Contra 1.2". These varied in length from around 20 to 50 minutes, and the music was created with Koan's music-generation software.

External links

* [http://www.whitecube.com/ "White Cube" webpage] .
* [http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/warsong.html A report on the Installation] .
* [http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/images/eno97a.jpgPortrait; "White Cube" publicity card] .
* [http://www.rubli.net/_beepdiscog/HT_FILES/html/74297.htm "Beep" discography entry] .
* [http://www.discogs.com/release/264632 "Discogs.com" entry]
Brian Eno