Two and a half years after leaving Roxy Music, Brian Eno and Island Records launched a sub-label that would become as significant an artistic achievement as it was a commercial failure. Between 1975 and 1978, Obscure Records would release 10 discs. The catalogue included debut recordings by Gavin Bryars, Christopher Hobbs, John Adams, David Toop and Max Eastley. Eno’s Discreet Music was in the mix, as was work by John Cage, Harold Budd, Michael Nyman and a host of others.
Some of these recordings can fairly be called proto-ambient. Others are more aligned with 20th century minimalism. Bryars’ role in all of this was central. He’d been one of a few artists recording soundtracks for underground cinema between the mid-1960s and 1970s.
“I performed especially with pianist John Tilbury and between 1969 and 1972 we gave a number of concerts in the Purcell Room and Queen Elizabeth Hall, some of which Brian, then an art student, had attended,” writes Bryars in the notes that accompany The Complete Obscure Records Collection, out this Friday on Dialogo. “Part of his idea for the new label was that he felt that these areas of contemporary music were often attractive and were of a kind that need not alienate a non-specialist listener and, unlike much avant-garde music, was not necessarily ‘difficult.’”
Eno says that it was Bryars’ work more than any other that inspired the project.
From the box set’s 67-page booklet: “I primarily started the label to release those two pieces of Gavin’s that came out on the first album. I thought they were such great pieces of music and the story associated with them was so powerful, that I felt like a lot of people would like them if they were actually able to hear them, and it turned out that they did.”
Those two pieces were “The Sinking of the Titanic” and “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet.” Bryars’ masterpieces have been discovered and rediscovered repeatedly in the decades since. And while they had nothing to do with what we now call ambient music, these and others that make up the Obscure Records catalogue showcased a different kind of relationship that could exist between music and those who love it – one that embraced intellect as much as heart, without the stuffiness of classical music.
What followed, in ambient and a variety of other contemporary music genres, took its cues from these wonderful recordings.
Label executives were largely out of touch with what young people were interested in those days, so they tended to greenlight projects they didn’t understand commercially. It meant that well-funded labels issued a wider range of product. In this case, Eno’s imprimatur – and growing reputation as a producer – was enough to gain Island’s support.
Dialogo has done a beautiful job on this collection. The set is available in both vinyl and CD formats, and the booklet has been published with great care. It presents insightful essays, original liner notes, terrific photography and more.
This is a curatorial triumph, entirely fitting given its brilliant contents.
Leave a comment