Brian Peter Gerorge St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno.
Now that's what I call a name. Luckily for us, he has shortened it somewhat to Brian Eno. Although he's actually known as just Eno.
An Art graduate from Winchester School of Art, he joined Roxy Music in 1971 and stayed for 2 years before internal tensions with Bryan Ferry forced him into a decision to leave the band.
After he left Roxy Music, Eno released 3 albums in 1974-75, Here Come The Warm Jets & Taking Tiger Mountain.
The third album, Another Green World, featured minimalist pieces which would point the way for his groundbreaking 'Ambient' series of album.
The first of these would be Discreet Music which was released in 1975. It was also the first to use his christian name.
There would be one more 'rock' album, Before and After Science, before a series of 3 albums, Ambient 1; Music For Airports, Music For Films 7 Ambient 4: On Land between 1978-82.
Eno's Ambient music had always been somewhat ethereal so it was no surprise that he was approached by Al Reinhert to produce the soundtrack for his documentary movie of the Apollo space missions, simply titled Apollo. It was later renamed, For All Mankind.
For All Mankind
Eno enlisted the help of multi-instrumentalist and producer Daniel Lanois and his musician brother Roger. The music is totally gorgeous and fits in with the visuals of the movie perfectly. If there was ever a musician to provide music for a documentary about space, then it had to be Brian Eno.
Much of the music that was used in the movie has since been heard in many other documentaries, movies and advertisements.
It set the template for many instrumental albums to come and has obviously influenced many other musicians such as Sigur Ros.
There was a lot of music that appeared in the movie that did not find it's way on the soundtrack album although three tracks have gone on to be absolute classics of ambient music.
Brian Eno continues to release ambient music to this day, the last being LUX in 2012 as well as his production work with the likes of U2 and Coldplay.
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