Brian Eno – “Kazakhstan”

Brian Eno – “Kazakhstan”

Back in March, all-around legend Brian Eno announced a new box set called Music For Installations. Though there are all kinds of defining moments in Eno’s career — early days in Roxy Music, producing Bowie and Talking Heads and U2, pioneering ambient music — he’s also prolific in other media, including art and light installations that go back decades. Music For Installations is, as you might’ve guessed, a sprawling collection of work he’s put together over the years to pair with his installations, as well as with the creations of other artists. The compositions are rare, previously unreleased, and sometimes new; they span 1986 to the present day to installations that have yet to happen.

“If you think of music as a moving, changing form, and painting as a still form, what I’m trying to do is make very still music and paintings that move,” Eno said of the collection and the thread of his career it represents. “I’m trying to find in both of those forms, the space in between the traditional concept of music and the traditional concept of painting.”

Today, Eno’s shared one of the songs from Music For Installations, “Kazakhstan.” The piece originally premiered in the titular country during Astana Expo 2017, at Asif Khan’s installation “We Are Energy.” Separated from its visual accompaniment, “Kazakhstan” is still a compelling work on its own. All low hums and flickering punctuations at the beginning, it has that quality common in ambient music, the feeling that a composition is many things at once. There are moments in “Kazakhstan” that are suggestive and plainly pretty, and others that sound as if something foreboding is closing in around it. Check it out below.

Music For Installations is out 5/4 via UMC. You can pre-order it now and it’s available in three forms: CD box set, vinyl box set, and Super Deluxe edition.

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