This June, Reethaus and Soundwalk Collective present a spatialization of Brian Eno’s Music for Installations, a six-hour compendium of generative compositions from the self-described non-musician, a master of ambient. Originally released as a box set of nine vinyls, Music for Installations is an anthology of sound pieces recorded between 1985 and 2017, made for shows in Kazakhstan, China, Italy, Japan, Russia, Finland, England and some merely imagined future locations — now including Reethaus.
It was in thinking through the music for his exhibitions that Eno came to many of the innovations he is best known for. He experimented with generative arrangements, simultaneously playing tracks on looping tapes of different lengths to create infinite patterns of continually shifting sound. By placing the tape players in different parts of the room, he fulfilled his dream of having “a kind of music that was different at any point in time and at any point in space.” Slowing music down and stripping it of discernible beats allowed Eno to dilate time and satisfy his synaesthetic impulse to make music that was “more like painting.”
In this context, presented without the visual elements of Eno’s installations, it is sound itself that becomes plastic and does the conceptual work. The spatialization of the pieces for Reethaus introduces slight fluctuations that upend their staticness, creating the sense of moving through space even while sitting still. This experience further develops Eno’s long-held idea that the space of the studio itself functions as an instrument.
With Music for Installations, Reethaus invites listeners to step into the resonant body of Eno’s oeuvre.