#34: All I remember

The Eno documentary, January albums, a pretty much perfect mix

Andrew Womack

26 Jan 2025 — 4 min read

Between midday Friday and Saturday morning I watched the new Brian Eno documentary four and a half times. This was during 24 Hours of Eno, the streaming premiere of Gary Hustwit’s famously generative documentary Eno—where, in very Brian Eno-esque twists, no two versions of the film are the same and it would all be over after 24 hours.

Except I didn’t watch it—rapt in front of a screen—as I would have watched any other movie, and this was mainly because my Friday was already spoken for with work, chores, dinner, a party, and then more to do the day after. Also, because I knew I would have a full day to catch parts here and there, I approached the film the same way Eno once described the aim of ambient music: “It must be as ignorable as it is interesting.” And it was.

But would it make sense if I didn’t always watch it the whole way through or even out of order? It really did, and it’s also how the movie is intended to operate, as a series of clips that can appear in any sequence and sometimes not at all. (Though I don’t need to add to the many raves the film’s deservedly received). But the specific reason it works is because Eno—the man, not the film, and maybe the man and the film—makes a big point of how humans search for patterns that they then rapidly and naturally make sense of. So the order or presence of certain clips doesn’t matter because our brains will make the sum of the clips feel like a documentary anyway. And yes, it works.

Throughout the day I would watch the movie for a while, then switch to another activity while leaving it playing in the background. I did other things, I thought about other things. Always I’d return, and always I’d meander off to another thing, and always my circumstances changed. Over those 24 hours I watched the film on my laptop plugged into an external monitor, on a television through Chromecast, on a television through AirPlay after Chromecast’s resolution fell off a cliff, on my phone in the corner of a busy coffee shop, and finally on a laptop on a couch. And sometimes I thought about it but didn’t watch at all. (Definitely while driving and maybe while sleeping.)

When I did have it on, in no concrete order and in many cases more than once I:

Watched the movie with near or complete attention ← this is what I did the most
Worked
Emailed
Thought how happy I was to finally be watching the Brian Eno documentary
Stretched
Had a video conference
Texted my brother to wish him a happy birthday
Sorted laundry
Got annoyed when interrupted by other things
Thought “this was in the last one”
Sang along to Roxy Music
Thought “this wasn’t in the last one”
Remembered a project I’ve been meaning to do related to A Year With Swollen Appendices
Stewed over the Hegseth confirmation hearings
Folded laundry
Hugged my son
Drank wine
Thought about writing this
Deleted apps from my phone
Talked with my wife

Except for some things, I can’t be certain of the order, and I’m not sure how much what I did was related to the other things I did or to the movie I was and was not watching. But looking at the list here it feels like a whole interconnected thing, and I suppose that makes it one.

This week, new albums from January to recommend:

DOVS, Psychic Geography

It’s hard to contain my enthusiasm for this one. Similar to other Balmat releases, this album taps into a lot of rarely explored places in ways so subtle that they seem to seep into your soul without you noticing. Here I’m specifically talking about “Vernal Fall,” which has so many secrets hiding in its corners, including an unforgettable key change that feels entirely unnatural and natural all at once. / Bandcamp, Bleep, Boomkat

Justin Walter, Bird Higher Than Cloud

Soulful ambient explorations via trumpet (think Jon Hassell as a starting point) and to take the entire thing to a more otherworldly sphere, the Electronic Valve Instrument, a wind-powered electronic kind-of-trumpet. Originally released on cassette in 2012, this joyful, gorgeous album had me floating, and it was also wonderful to hear Walter bring this unique sensibility and sound to interpretations of “Youngblood” by His Name Is Alive and “Laura Palmer’s Theme” by Angelo Badalamenti. / Bandcamp

William Basinski and Richard Chartier, Aurora Terminalis

This hour-long piece is a cold plunge into awareness, erupting into presence with a sensory-overloading shock that very slowly ripples into a vast ocean of calm, where it ebbs and flows until you realize you are, in fact, very cold. Beautiful and brutal. / Bandcamp, Bleep, Boomkat

Black Taffy, Out Moon

Describing Donovan Jones’s music as Black Taffy can feel pretty reductive, but if I were going to string together words that hint at it, I’d say: vintage-y chopped-and-screwed trip hop with chamber-pop sentimentality. There’s a lot to love in here. / Bandcamp