He may be the father of ambient music but to me Brian Eno is the man who wrote the song for the famous “Worst Toilet in Scotland” scene in Trainspotting. If you can’t recall, Ewan McGregor dives into a shitlogged toilet bowl after his lost heroin and is magically sucked through to the other side: a serene ocean filled with flickering rays of light and Eno’s enchanting “Deep Blue Day.” It’s a brilliant scene and one of the more memorable parts of the film; however, that’s about as familiar as I am with Brian Eno. 
His new work, Lux, was released last week and is steadily drawing comparisons to his 1978 ambient manifesto Music for Airports. As great as Lux is supposed to be, I found that the more I played the album the less I listened to it. What I mean is, after ten minutes of listening, I would become completely oblivious to the sounds in my headphones. Early 20th century pioneer of ambience, Erik Satie, referred to his arrangements as “furniture music” and rightly so. As I washed dishes, conversed with friends, and drifted to sleep, Lux sank into recliners, rested on windowsills, and floated carelessly under my bed frame.
At one point, I realized I had left iTunes playing after jumping back into Sound of My Voice on my computer. Minimizing my video player, I saw that Lux was queued and had been playing for nearly 23 minutes. Given that the film’s soundtrack is primarily ambient music and I am nearly deaf, this didn’t shock me, but 23 minutes?! That’s nearly a third of the movie! I pressed play and as I jumped from scene to scene, Lux calmly weaved its way through wild noise and shifted between dialog. Amazingly, Eno’s work never interrupted the film.
Eno has stated that, “ambient music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular, it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.” Lux certainly does both. Certainly the most intriguing part of Lux is how unobtrusive it is. In a time when listening to music is more social (in a sense participatory) than ever before, Lux is apathetic without being languid. It lingers on a perfectly balanced stage, framing its environment. Fit for an empty mind, it suggests nothing and eventually becomes just that.
Oh, and you know the elevator scene in Drive? If you listen closely, right before the skull stomping, that’s Brian Eno too.
4/5 Stars
