If ambient music, conceived by Brian Eno, was born to fill sound spaces, to be heard and not heard, to be present at low volume, in the place and time in which a person is doing something else, in order to prepare the body for a state of psychophysical relaxation, how could this even turn into a product main stream actively listen?
The answer was Four Tet’s Text’s Secret Life, born from the union of ambient pioneer Brian Eno and producer child prodigy AND hitmaker Fred Gibson aka Fred Agin.
The collaboration between the two began a long time ago when Brian Eno helped the young DJ enter the world of producing big names like Ed Sheeran, Swedish House Mafia and many more.
In 2020, this pushes him to release the album that will bring him fame, “Actual Life”, released during the first phase of the pandemic, characterized by sound samples of videos on YouTube, Instagram, excerpts from clap poetry, the voices of the artist’s friends and complete strangers. In the same year, the Secret Life project starts, which will be released only in 2023, completing the Real Life trilogy.
The album contains a lot of basic ambient elements: vocal samples, slowly fading piano notes, slowed down vocals, sparse synths, hissing noises – all perfectly held together by the kaleidoscopic background of the pioneer Eno. Highlights include the delicate opening recitation of “I Saw You”, the suspenseful “Cmon” that seems to explode of its own accord after the opening bass grooves, and the fabulous “Trying” with a shrill vocals Lola Young.
The staging is magnificent – however, it could not be otherwise, according to the creators – and the sequence of pieces in it allows the listener to access a single and continuous introspective panorama.
“Secret Life” stands out from many other albums of the genre, as it fills the space and becomes available for active listening, breaking away from most similar works in which the protagonist of listening is an attempt to turn ambient into music. leave the house too often wrong location uncomfortable and out of sorts.
“Secret Life” is placed on the watershed, softly and welcomingly fills the space and activates the cerebral cortex, attracts attention and also asks to be listened to. The collaboration of two artists transforms already existing techniques into a product. main streamaccessible to all, creating a new model of emotional perception in the prism of rapidly rotating influences.
Through noises and samples, through a voice that becomes noise in turn, Brian Eno and Fred Agin have created an album that can be both heard and heard, moreover, which needs to be both heard and listened to, which in the cognitive ellipse emotionally creates new sound space for ambient music.
04/09/2023