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Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno got me thinking about art this week. Eno's been around the block and is a smart chap.

I don't know if a potted history is in order here or not. I am slowly beginning to lose track of how well-known people are. So what about Brian Eno? Is he famous? Does anyone remember him? Does anyone even know who he is? Are these rhetorical questions in any way helpful?

Right. Potted history. Described by ‘The Guardian' as 'Rock's most celebrated blue-sky thinker”, Eno started by playing synth with Roxy Music. He's a musician, composer, artist, writer and record producer. He followed Roxy with early seventies solo pop albums before embracing minimalist sounds on a series of records for which he coined the term 'ambient”.

As a producer he's had a huge impact on albums by Talking Heads, U2, Grace Jones, Laurie Anderson, Coldplay, Devo, James, Ultravox, while his collaborations with David Bowie (primarily The Berlin Trilogy of ‘Low', ‘Heroes' and ‘Lodger') remain groundbreaking. He's done all sorts of stuff with David Byrne, most-played here at the moment being ‘Everything That Happens Will Happen Today', their collaborative album from 2008.

He also creates film soundtracks – ‘The Lovely Bones', ‘Moulin Rouge', ‘Starship Troupers', ‘Jojo Rabbit' – and art installations (at places including the outside of the Sydney Opera House and the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank). He continues to release albums apace and of course is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. There's much more...

Deck of cards

Perhaps my favourite 'Eno-thing” comes from the mid-1970s, when he co-developed ‘Oblique Strategies', a deck of cards featuring aphorisms intended to spur creative thinking. The idea is that if you're stuck you take a card, sorta like a Creative's I-Ching. Some examples: ‘Use an old idea'; ‘Emphasise repetitions'; ‘State the problem in words as clearly as possible'; ‘Honour thy error as a hidden intention'; ‘What would your closest friend do?'.

History over. Eno's just released a new album, ‘FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE' and, excitingly, it's a vocal album for the first time in decades. His most recent release was 2020's beautiful instrumental ‘Mixing Colours' collaboration with brother Roger. If anything this harks back to his ‘Another Green World' albeit less rhythmic, mixing ambient soundscapes with ethereal vocals on songs about technological decay, natural resilience and the threat of civilisation's collapse.

For a man who once famously mixed his singing so low that no one can now decipher the words of the song (Eno says he's forgotten them), he has a damn fine way with a lyric. The opening track is possibly the only song in music's entire canon to use the word 'nematodes”: 'Who gives a thought about the nematodes / There isn't time these days / For microscopic worms / Or for unstudied germs / Of no commercial worth”.

The Incubator

To accompany the album he's been talking about art, saying fascinating things. I like this idea about the function of art: 'Culture – art, if you like – has an important set of functions in preparing us for the future. If you read a book like ‘1984' you're surrendering to a world with certain values and attributes and seeing what it feels like. Then, when you see something a bit like that starting to exist, you have a way of understanding it and how that might feel.”

Okay. There's a bunch of art that Eno would be most happy to champion coming up next weekend in Tauranga. Saturday, November 26 is an open day down at The Historic Village that they are calling ‘Hatch'. That's when The Incubator, the astoundingly successful arts collective which has revitalised the village in so many ways, celebrates its ninth anniversary.

They're doing it in style with launch of nine new spaces and the opening of six new exhibitions. They'll also be launching their annual batch of community Christmas trees. There'll be street food, demos, live music and all sorts of cool stuff. It runs from 10am-3pm.

Congratulations to Simone Anderson and her team at The Incubator. And happy ninth birthday – you guys rock!