Description
Roger and Brian Eno explore the nature of sound in their first ever duo album, Mixing Colours. The album’s eighteen soundscapes invite listeners to immerse themselves in the infinite space that lies below their surface.
Mixing Colours grew over a number of years, with both artists drawing on their long experience as composers, performers and producers, creating bridges between the music’s past and future. Roger’s compositions evoke the yearning melodic style of late Schubert while Brian’s sound design draws from his ground-breaking conceptual work with electronic music and lifelong fascination with the creative potential of new media. Over the past half century, he notes, the pop world has developed electronic music’s enormous possibilities to create previously unimagined sound colours and instrumental timbres.
All but one of the recording’s eighteen tracks have colour-related titles – “Burnt Umber”, “Obsidian” and “Verdigris” among them – comparable to those often attached to abstract paintings. Together they create a deep meditation on shifting tonal shades and contrasts in timbre. The final track, the haunting “Slow Movement: Sand”, strips music back to its bare essentials of tone colour, timbre and pulse. Mixing Colours, adds Roger, stemmed from their shared artistic, musical and literary interests to become a work of genuine collaboration.
