Brian Eno to produce Coldplay

Via Sonic State:

When asked about the current state of the Music Industry, Eno said it was ‘terrific and frightening’ and talked about how easy it has become to make and distribute music. The downside of that being that there is less attention afforded to any individual piece.

He said he thought that music was in a ‘digestive and retrospective’ period with alot of guitar bands sounding like Talking Heads. He was surprised that David Byrne’s influence on music has stayed dormant for so long.

Well it's good news for Coldplay they're going in a bit of a new direction by working with Eno - their sound to date is a bit too soft and mushy to my taste. I've read that the band is big on crafting and polishing their music, so it sounds like they are ambitious as musicians - someday one of those guys is going to be scoring films, I have a feeling.

In the Eno podcast there's the usual discussion of ambient music (it's like a painting, a still space the listener can listen in), lots of Britishy, intellectual, interesting thoughts on music (like (a) recording is a radical departure in how you experience music, since before records, the live performance of a musical piece was different every time you heard it, and (b) the fragmentation of music form online distribution makes it very difficult to use music to express your position in the culture).

Who's got time to listen to all this stuff, anyway? If you do, check out the BBC interview mp3 online.