Brian Eno Announces Two Albums With Beatie Wolfe, His Microsoft Windows Chime Enters National Recording Registry
Cecily Eno
New MusicApril 11, 2025 10:35 AMBy Tom Breihan
Brian Eno, one of the all-time great art-music legends, is now 76 years old, and he’s not slowing down one bit. If anything, he’s busier now than ever. Eno, an experimental generative film about the man — one that occasionally changes from screening to screening — was recently shortlisted for the Best Documentary Oscar. Last month, Eno released Aurum, a surprise album available only on Apple Music. He’s lately been getting together with U2, his old collaborators, and working on “sci-fi Irish folk music.” And now Eno is announcing multiple albums just as his famous Microsoft Chime heads into the Library Of Congress’ National Recording Registry.
In June, Brian Eno and his fellow conceptual composer Beatie Wolfe will release Luminal and Lateral, two companion-piece albums that they recorded together. They met in 2022, when they both gave an SXSW talk about art and climate change, and then they connected again when their art was displayed at two different London galleries. Together, they made Luminal and Lateral, two albums that’ll come out on the same day. A press release describes the distinction between the two records like this: “Luminal is Dream music. Lateral is Space music.”
The lead singles offer a little more context. Luminal appears to be a collection of discrete, pop-adjacent songs. Lead single “Suddenly” is a very pretty number with vocals from Beatie Wolfe. Lateral, by contrast, is a single album-length ambient piece called “Big Empty Country,” divided up into eight parts for the digital release.
In other news, Eno is getting some credit for a seven-second piece of music that he made 30 years ago. In 1995, Eno composed — that word seems wrong — the little shimmering flourish that would play whenever you’d start up a PC. Earlier this week, the Library Of Congress revealed the list of recordings that will go into the National Recording Registry, a repository for what the Library describe as “audio treasures worthy of preservation for all time based on their cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage.”
This year’s entrants include Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Tracy Chapman’s self-titled debut, Mary J. Blige’s My Life, Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black, Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman,” Céline Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” Brother Bones & His Shadows’ “Sweet Georgia Brown,” the soundtrack albums for Hamilton and Minecraft: Volume Alpha, and Chuck Thompson’s radio broadcast of game seven of the 1960 World Series. Eno’s Microsoft Windows Reboot Chime also made the cut. Check out the full list here.
Below, check out their videos for “Suddenly” and for an excerpt from “Big Empty Country,” as well as — what the hell — the Window Chime.
