Electronic Technology

Here's Brian Eno's “obsolete” album, Generative Music—originally released on a floppy disk

Click and you’ll miss it.

Brian Eno . Generative Music 1 (1996. Generated 2024/11/12)

In 1996, Brian Eno worked with technology multi-hyphenates Tim Cole and Pete Cole to make an album of generative music. While that doesn’t sound out of the ordinary for Brian, Tim, or Pete, this album was especially unique because it came on a floppy disk and each album was unique, based on new code each time.

That also meant that each album you could ever find would become obsolete so they decided to preserve one, which you can listen to (above). I recommend that you read more about how the album came about on CDM (h/t to them).

This is what I love about ambient music. It’s ever-present. The composition can sometimes be programmed but often it takes in the randomness of life around us and could never be replicated again; at least not precisely.

Hi, it's Luke, the editor of Sampleface! Why not subscribe to my Patreon and support the blog?

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