One of the first options for smart home upgrades that people consider — and should be considering, really — is smart plugs. But if you’re new to the game, you probably have a bunch of questions about how they work, their benefits, and whether they make sense in your situation.
What are smart plugs, and how do they work?
In effect, smart plugs are the simplest possible smart home accessory. They plug into an existing AC outlet, and normally all they can do is turn something on and off. The main exceptions are specialized plugs for dimmable lights.
All smart plugs can be app-controlled, and most integrate with platforms like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple HomeKit. That enables voice commands via smart speakers and displays, and improves automation options, since you can link any accessory or service a platform supports. A “good morning” routine, for instance, might turn on your bedroom and kitchen lights, fire up your coffee maker, and play the news or some soothing ambient music on your speakers.
An important catch here is that anything you plug into a smart plug has to offer a permanent “on” toggle, like a knob, flip switch, or locking analog button. Appliances with solid-state buttons typically won’t work. Note also that most smart plugs are built for standard wall outlets, not the high-voltage ones used to connect ovens, washers, dryers, and EV chargers.
Anything you plug into a smart plug has to offer a permanent ‘on’ toggle.
Smart plugs typically communicate via your home Wi-Fi network. Some others use Zigbee or Z-Wave, which requires a compatible hub, and older ones (best avoided) may be based on Bluetooth. The technically superior option is Thread, which is lightning fast, less dependent on hubs, and avoids burdening your Wi-Fi network. At the moment however there are very few Thread plugs, and support is mostly limited to HomeKit. That’s set to change within the next year.
What are the benefits of using smart plugs, and should you get one?
The primary advantages are remote control and automation for appliances that wouldn’t ordinarily have them. While you can certainly buy lamps, fans, air purifiers, and so forth with smart functions built-in, they’re often expensive, and many people have an assortment of “dumb” appliances that could do the job just as well with a smart plug.
Remote control is handy if you forget to turn something off before leaving home, or realize something needs to be on when you’re away, like a fan to keep your pet cool. Automations meanwhile can not only remove the need for manual control, but save money by shutting things off when they’re unnecessary. They can improve home security by illuminating your home at night and creating an illusion of occupancy.
Automations can improve the convenience, security, and power efficiency of a home.
Smart plugs should probably be your default smart home accessory if all you care about is something being on or off. Indeed they’re perfect for triggering fans and heaters, especially if you can link them to a temperature sensor like the one in the 4th gen Echo. With the right automations in place, you may never have to think about room comfort.
There are scenarios where other options are better, of course. If you want things controlled from your wall, it’s better to invest in smart switches. If you want color-changing lights, you’ll have to go with smart lamps or smart bulbs, neither of which should be connected to a smart plug or wall switch. Doubling up smart devices tends to create chaos.
How to choose the right smart plug for your home
The most basic consideration is physical compatibility. Plugs should match not just the voltage of your outlets but the space available to stick something in. Smart plugs tend to be bulky, and come in different shapes, some of which are more likely to fit your home than others. Additional choices include smart power strips, and weatherproof plugs built to survive moisture and extreme temperatures. The latter are great for balconies, backyards, or Halloween and Christmas decorations.
Next on the list is third-party platform support. While you can always control a plug with its native app, check for compatibility with Alexa, Google Assistant, or HomeKit, assuming you use one or more of the three. Matter will hopefully make this issue irrelevant in the near future, so if you find products labeled for the technology, prioritize them.
Smart plugs tend to be bulky, and come in different shapes, some of which are more likely to fit your home than others.
The ideal is a plug with Matter over Thread. Since neither standard is widely supported yet though, you’ll probably end up with a standard Wi-Fi model. Just be aware that Wi-Fi routers can only handle so many connections, and if too many devices are talking, a router will drop older connections to make way for new ones. You’ll want a router with Wi-Fi 6 or 6E if you’re serious about building a smart home, as those formats can handle far more devices than Wi-Fi 5.
Your final filter should be branding. Amazon is chock full of plugs sold by obscure Chinese companies, many sharing the same parts and designs. Some of these can be both cheap and practical, but you’re taking a risk on quality control, and don’t expect good customer support. Skew towards better-known brands, a few examples being Amazon, Belkin, Eve, Govee, Kasa, Lutron, Wyze, Meross, and Philips Hue.
Read more: The best smart plugs you can buy
FAQs
To a degree, yes. They prevent appliances from drawing “phantom” loads, and intelligent use of automations can reduce overall usage. Some plug apps offer energy monitoring to identify bad habits.
Yes, since they need a base amount of power to sit in standby. This is usually extremely low though, no more than 1 to 2W in case of Wi-Fi, and even less with Thread, Zigbee, or Z-Wave.
Weyes Blood, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow ★★★★★
Natalie Mering, who goes by the name Weyes Blood, laments that “we have all become strangers, even to ourselves” on the opening track of her beautiful new album, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow – a woozy daydream from a hauntingly romantic balladeer whose music offers comfort to the loneliest souls.
At 34, with songs about solitude, the natural world, the power and fragility of women and how technology has shaped modern romance, Mering become a critical darling with a cult following. Sitting somewhere between Joan Baez’s 70s social justice-fuelled folk and Olivia Newton-John’s hyper-feminine 80s pop, Mering’s exquisite, timeless voice and hymnal harmonies hold a nostalgic appeal that unites the Spotify generation and their parents alike. She describes herself as a “nostalgic futurist”.
Mering grew up within a staunchly Pentecostal Christian family in Santa Monica and began making music as a teen – adopting the moniker Wise Blood in reference to Flannery O’Connor’s 1952 collection of stories. She may not have observed the strict morality of her God-fearing parents, both musicians, but her voice and compositions pay homage to the songs she heard in childhood: gospel and hymnal paeans.
Since then, Mering’s compositions have leaned into glorious baroque madrigals, tenderly layering melodies and harmonies as if she were adorning a human body with pearls, coats and scarves.
In the Darkness, Heart Aglow is Mering’s fifth album, and the second in a trilogy dedicated to the fallout from climate change (beginning with 2019 album Titanic Rising). Her lyrics pine for the natural world, with Mering believing that our collective destruction of forests, land and sources of water have fostered division and alienation. Titanic Rising was met with rave reviews, but this record – which spans steely indie-rock and strummed country ballads – might just be her magnum opus.
On the epic, multi-layered harmonies of Children of the Empire, she reimagines a Beach Boys/Shangri Las doo-wop fantasy that is gorgeous when it could have so easily become overwrought. The luscious orchestral compositions (tuba, sax, organ, multiple violins and cellos), riddled with brief interludes of manic keyboards, stormy strings and thundering piano chords, build empires and shatter them within minutes.
Titanic Rising addressed the transient beauty of nature, doomed to human sabotage. It troubles her still, and there is an existential fear and surrender within her lyrics, clear on the ambient beauty of God Turn Me Into a Flower, which puts Mering’s angelic voice under the spotlight.
The song examines how our desire to appear as the flawless creature we curate on social media fights a higher power. What if, in our imperfect present, we are exactly as God intended us? “You see the reflection/ And you want it more than the truth/ You yearn to be that dream you could never get to,” Mering sings. “Cause the person on the other side has always just been you/ Oh, God, turn me into a flower”. Like our planet, this album is a rare thing of wonder. Cat Woods
At this point in his burgeoning career, it might be easy for alt-country artist Garrett T. Capps to settle into being the “I Love San Antone” Guy.
After all, many folks’ introduction to the Alamo City-based singer-songwriter was through tunes that extol the virtues his hometown while channeling the infectious sounds of some of its finest musical exports, notably the late Doug Sahm.
Fortunately, the new album People Are Beautiful (Spaceflight Records) by Capps and his cosmically inclined band NASA Country is yet more proof that he’s not so easy to pigeonhole.
The eight-song release is the final installment of Capps’ Shadows Trilogy, in which he takes Texas’ cosmic cowboy mantel literally by layering elements of space rock and ambient music underneath the twang.
Written during the early days of the pandemic and recorded a few months after, there’s plenty of soul searching in the lyrics, which the kaleidoscopic musical approach helps amplify. Even on the more straight-ahead numbers, the wavery steel guitar and electronic treatments lend a shimmering ambiance, as if Brian Eno decided to move to Nashville instead of composing music for airports.
click to enlarge
Courtesy Image / Garrett T. Capps
It’s easy to see how the uncertainty of early 2020 was wearing on Capps when he was writing People Are Beautiful.
Credit Justin Boyd on modular synthesizer, Torin Metz on guitar lap steel and vocals, odie on bass and vocals, and Kory Cook on percussion for being able to add an experimental bent to the proceedings without losing sight of the songs’ honkytonk heart.
Only on the mid-album track “Time Will Tell” does the music fully turn away from its classic country roots into something approaching Krautrock — think Neu! — while the extended outro of “Time Will Tell” chugs along into Hawkwind territory.
Aside from a couple of clunky moon-spoon rhyming schemes early in the album, Capps shows himself to be an adept lyricist, opening up about his own failings, fears and insecurities while looking for hope around the corner. “Stay cool, it’s gettin’ better / Just gotta hold it all together,” he urges the listener in “Gettin’ Better,” the album’s two-step ready opener.
In the title track, Capps’ rapid-fire vocals tick off a list of things that make people infuriating before flipping things around at the chorus in an apparent reminder that our incongruities are what make us human. “Our love is irrefutable / Cosmically inscrutable / Certain facts are immutable / But people are beautiful.”
It’s easy to see how the uncertainty of early 2020 was wearing on Capps when he was writing People Are Beautiful. While largely upbeat, the album doesn’t flinch from observing the darkness all around. Capps’ authentic and always-easy delivery also keeps it miles away from self-help book territory.
The world can be an ugly place, and sometimes we need a cosmic messenger to remind us not to let it get us down.
People Are Beautiful is available now on CD and vinyl or via digital download.
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Everyone needs a hobby, right? And chances are you know at least one person on your holiday shopping list who fancies themselves a musician. Whether they’re a casual guitarist, a former piano prodigy or a bedroom producer of electronic music we’ve got some recommendations. Some of these even make a great gift for music lovers who haven’t quite made the jump yet. Perhaps getting a synthesizer tinker toy will inspire your loved one to go from a consumer to a maker.
Soma Laboratory Ether
SOMA Laboratory Ether
If you know someone who believes there’s music all around, if you can just train yourself to listen for it, I have the perfect gift for them. The Soma Labs Ether is sort of like a microphone. But not one that you sing into. Instead, it picks up electromagnetic interference and radiation from across the entire spectrum from Hertz to Gigahertz. Soma likes to refer to it as an anti-radio since it doesn’t tune into one frequency, it tunes into all the frequencies. With the Ether your sound-loving giftee can eavesdrop on neon signs and sample the silent whine of an AC adapter. It’s literally a gateway to an invisible world of electromagnetic waves. And the particularly adventurous can even wield it as a live instrument.
Buy Ether at Soma – $160
Cre8audio West Pest
Cre8audio West Pest
Modular synthesis has been enjoying a revival over the past few years. But getting into Eurorack can be intimidating and very expensive. So a number of companies have been working to lower the barrier to entry. If there’s someone on your list that has been itching to dip their toes in, the West Pest and East Beast from Cre8audio are an excellent starting point. They’re self-contained semi-modular synths, so they don’t need any extra gear to start experimenting. But they’re Eurorack compatible, and can be removed from their cases and mounted in a larger system if they wind up going deeper down that rabbit hole.
We like the West Pest in particular because, in addition to being perhaps the most affordable Eurorack compatible semi-modular synth out there, it explores the more experimental world of west coast synthesis. As the music gear experts at Reverb note “the combination of Wavefolding with the Dynamics Controller (a take on the low-pass gate) gives the synth its bold, unique and adventurous sound.”
Buy West Pest at Amazon – $250
Sony MDR-7506
Sony MDR-7506
Every music lover and music maker needs a good pair of headphones. There are so many amazing sets out there to choose from, but I remain a dedicated fan of Sony’s affordable workhorse the MDR-7506. They’ve been a studio mainstay for decades for good reason. They’re natural sounding, light and comfortable enough to wear for hours, and reasonably priced. The MDR-7506s are equally at home monitoring a podcast, mixing a club banger or just listening to some vinyl. In short, they’re a great practical gift even if you’re operating under a tight budget.
Buy Sony MDR-7506 at Amazon – $100
Artiphon Orba 2
Artiphon Orba 2
The original Orba is a phenomenal fidget toy and an interesting MIDI controller. The Orba 2 is both those things and a sampler. Adding sampling to this little musical grapefruit greatly expands its flexibility. If you know someone who’s constantly tapping out rhythms or humming little melodies to themselves, they’ll probably love an Orba.
Buy Orba 2 at Artiphon – $150
Roland E-4 Voice Tweaker
RolandE-4 Voice Tweaker
Cheap and portable synths are a dime a dozen these days. Korg really kicked off something of revolution with its Volca line. But one thing we’d yet to see until Roland launched its Aira Compact line, was a portable and affordable box dedicated to vocal effects. The E-4 Voice Tweaker combines pitch correction, a harmonizer, a vocoder, plus pitch and formant shifting, and a looper. There’s also delay, reverb and chorus effects, not to mention Roland’s signature Scatter, which it turns out is much better on vocals than drums. If there’s anyone on your list who’s been trying to turn themselves into the next Bon Iver or late ‘70s Herbie Hancock, this will at least get them part of the way there.
Buy E-4 Voice Tweaker at Amazon – $200
Chase Bliss Habit
Chase Bliss Habit
Where to begin with the Habit? It’s a delay pedal – which almost every musician can use. But it’s so much more. It’s a looper, sort of. Chase Bliss calls it a musical sketchpad, and that can be true too. It does all of those things, plus it has a selection of unique modifiers that can chop up sounds in rhythmic ways, mimic the warble of a tape machine, or spit out what can only be described as unicorn sparkles. In short, there’s almost nothing else like it out there. If there’s a guitarist or a synth player on your list with a taste for the esoteric (and you don’t mind splurging), they’ll probably love the strange collection of sounds that Habit puts at their feet.
Buy Chase Bliss Habit at Reverb – $399
1010 Music Lemon Drop
1010 Music Lemon Drop
The 1010Music Nanoboxes are probably the smallest full-featured hardware synths out there. But the Lemon Drop also has the distinction of being one of the only dedicated granular synths on the market. If your giftee is into ambient music or oddball textures they will almost certainly love the Lemon Drop. It has a robust granular sound engine (meaning it chops up sound files into tiny bits and spits them back out) with up to 16 granulators per voice and four voice polyphony. Plus it doubles as an effects processor for live audio with an expressive X/Y pad mode for changing parameters. And it can easily fit in a jacket pocket.
Buy Lemon Drop at 1010 Music – $399
Moog Mavis
Moog Mavis
The Mavis is the cheapest way to give someone the gift of a real-deal Moog synthesizer. It’s a $350, pseudo-DIY, semi-modular, monophonic synth and, in a rarity for the company, it’s fully Eurorack compatible. It’s capable of getting that classic Moog sound with thick square and saw waves shaped by resonant lowpass filter. Its 24-point patchbay is an impressive collection of utility and sound-shaping tools that is not only great for learning the art of synthesis but also expanding the potential of a larger modular setup. Lastly, the Mavis is the first time Moog has dipped its toes into the rival world of West Coast synthesis by including a wavefolder. It’s a great gift whether it’s someone’s first synth of fiftieth.
Buy Moog Mavis at Amazon – $349
Rainger FX Minibar Liquid Analyser Pedal
Rainger FX Minibar Liquid Analyser Pedal
Part of the fun of holiday shopping is finding fun weird things that you know someone would appreciate, but are so impractical they’d never buy it themselves. That’s basically the Rainger FX Minibar in a nutshell. It’s a distortion pedal, and also an endless supply of different distortion pedals. See, on its own it doesn’t do anything. The “Liquid Analyzer” part of the name comes from the fact that there’s a tiny container on top that you need to fill to complete the circuit. And, the sound will change based on what you put in there. Water will have an obviously different effect than say, beer, or soda, or – if you’re metal enough – blood. The folks at Reverb love it because “the Minibar is easy to incorporate into musicians’ small pedalboards… meaning folks can experiment without too much of a space commitment.”
Buy Rainger FX Minibar at Reverb – $149
Universal Audio Ruby ’63
Universal Audio Ruby ’63
I firmly believe that every guitarist should have an amp sim in their arsenal. They’re handy for quietly practicing late at night, recording direct to a DAW, or building a lightweight live rig that connects to a venue’s PA. Universal Audio’s are among the best amp sims I’ve ever used. They’re not cheap at $400, but if there’s a person on your list you want to splurge on, these are a worthy consideration. While all three of the models are excellent, and my personal favorite seems to change from week to week, it’s probably the Ruby ‘63 Top Boost that has spent the most time on my board.
The Ruby is an emulation of the classic Vox AC30 which has been used by everyone from the Beatles, to U2, to REM, to Queen. Reverb’s experts love that it “delivers choirboy cleans, complex overdrive, and classic vibrato to mimic a classic British tube amp.” Plus you can tweak the Ruby’s sound by turning on popular mods or switching in different speaker emulations.
Buy Ruby at Reverb – $399
Pure Magnetic Century Collection
Pure Magnetic Century Collection
The Century Collection is another splurge, but it’s the gift that keeps on giving. For $400 your giftee will receive every sample pack, virtual instrument and effect plugin that Pure Magnetic makes for the next 100 years. On day one they’ll get access to around 100 sample packs covering everything from vintage synth pads, to circuit bent toys, to early digital drum machines.
But perhaps even more interesting are the 39 VST plugins that range from lo-fi keys to absolutely out of this world effects. The creative delays and strange micro loopers are highlights and perfect for the person who’s into more ambient and experimental music. Then there’s Lore, an “advanced sound design workstation” that’s updated on a monthly basis with new features and effects. Even if someone manages to outlive the length of their Century Collection membership, they’ll probably never be able to fully explore it all.
Buy Century Collection at Pure Magnetic – $399
Oblique Strategies
Brian Eno Oblique Strategies
Anyone who practices some sort of creative art – be it music, painting or writing – hits a block at some point. There’s tons of advice out there on how to overcome these hurdles, but one of the most famous is easily the Oblique Strategies deck. Developed by Peter Schmidt and Brian Eno in 1975, each card contains an action or a way of thinking designed to shake up your approach to a thorny creative problem. “Use an unacceptable colour,” “Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate” and “Emphasize the flaws,” are the sorts of vague instructions you can expect. And how someone interprets the prompts will produce different results for each person. If you’re shopping for anyone with a creative streak, they’ll find a use for this deck.
Buy Oblique Strategies at Eno Shop – $60
Dilla Time
Dan Charnas Dilla Time
If you’re gift shopping for a music producer I can almost guarantee you they’re fans of J Dilla. He was a singular force in hip-hop, and has even had his MPC displayed at the Smithsonian. Dilla Time by Dan Charnas chronicles not just the life of Dilla (James DeWitt Yancey), but his legacy and the history of rhythm in America. In addition, there are graphics that help illustrate the concepts behind Dilla’s unique beats and what made him so special. It’s part biography, part history lesson and part practical music production guide.
Buy Dilla Time at Amazon – $22
How to Write One Song
How to Write One Song
If there’s an aspiring songwriter on your list, consider picking them up a copy of How to Write One Song. Written by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, this tome breaks down the process from beginning to end and encourages readers to start small; don’t try to become a “songwriter” just try to write a song. But this isn’t a rote how-to book, that sort of thing is only so helpful when it comes to mastering an artistic craft. It’s about building creativity into your everyday life. And just like any other skill, being creative requires practice.
Buy How to Write One Song at Amazon – $19
Audio Technica AT-LP120XUSB
Audio Technica AT-LP120XUSB
A turntable is almost a necessity for any music lover or music maker. For one, it’s a way to listen to the artists they love. Whether that’s for pure enjoyment or for inspiration. And while there are plenty who think that vinyl just “sounds better,” I think the real reason it beats out streaming from Spotify: It’s tangible. There’s nothing quite like physically holding a piece of music, placing the needle in a groove and looking at the large cover art, or reading the liner notes. It connects a person to the art more and forces them to be a more active participant in its consumption.
Now, the AT-LP120XUSB is not the highest-end turntable in the world. And it might not even be the best bang for your gift-giving dollar. But it is excellent sounding and reasonably priced. And the USB port makes it easy for any aspiring music producers to sample straight to their DAW. Maybe, just maybe, it will inspire a life-long love of crate digging.
Scammers are posing as FADER staffers on Instagram and DistroKid. Read more here.
Malibu is a French musician who revealed herself as an essential voice in ambient music with the song “Held” from the classic Pan Records compilation Mono No Aware. Her debut EP One Life was released to great acclaim in 2019, and since then she’s also made waves for dj lostboi, a side project that transforms Billboard hits into lonely gas planets.
This Friday (November 18), Malibu will share her sophomore EP Palaces of Pity via UNO NYC. Its latest single “Atlantic Diva” is another expansive entry in her healing discography — each melodic element, from Malibu’s sighs to the surrounding synth pads, captures a rare and deeply moving kind of internal stillness that makes the song feel more like a gift than a single.
“Where One Life was born of anger and raging seas, Palaces of Pity is calm,” Malibu said of the new EP in a press statement. “Storms have passed, it’s boring almost. Each track is like a collage of progressing synthetic string chords and airy reverbed vocals. The songs are generously brought to their layered life with recordings of Florian Le-Prisé on delayed guitars and cello play by the hands of Oliver Coates and Madelen Dressler-Vollsaeter. As its closing track’s title ‘Iliad’ presumes, Palaces of Pity is somewhat of an epic journey, a rather lonesome one, a ship faithfully trailing toward somewhere silent and loud all at once. Things do fade, we do fall so far out of love…”
Sarah Tudzin started Illuminati Hotties to create a showcase for her studio chops before transforming the project into one of the best shout-along rock bands of the new decade. The production fits like a three-piece suit, but Tudzin and her crew aren’t afraid to get it dirty (2021′s Let Me Do One More bursts forth with the irrepressible energy one might associate with an anime theme song or a late-’90s dance craze more than a self-described “tenderpunk” band). Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St. 8 pm. $20. 21+.
SATURDAY, NOV. 19:
Ana Roxanne and Rachika Nayar challenge the idea of ambient music as something neutral and functional that can simply be typed into an algorithm. Roxanne is fiercely present in her work as a multi-instrumentalist, and her music brims with melancholy and uncertainty. Nayar, meanwhile, recently put out an album called Heaven Come Crashing that’s as earth-shatteringly intense as the title suggests. Their co-headlining Holocene gig promises to be a showcase for abstract, beatless music that’s as powerful as any pop. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St. 6 pm. $18. 21+.
SUNDAY, NOV. 20:
When Let’s Eat Grandma debuted as teens with 2016′s I, Gemini, you would’ve been forgiven for thinking the two shaggy-haired British besties had some sort of psychic connection that allowed them to make spellbinding music at such a young age. On their subsequent albums, I’m All Ears and this year’s Two Ribbons, Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth have honed their sound into a striking take on synth pop that retains all the dark fairy-tale mystery of their early work even as it bangs through the speakers. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St. 9 pm. $20. 21+.
For nearly 20 years, the Portland composer Matthew Robert Cooper has been recording gorgeously acoustic ambient music under the name Eluvium. Early next year, Cooper will follow his last two Eluvium albums, 2020’s Virga I and 2021’s Virga II, with the new LP (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality. That new Eluvium album is inspired by the works of TS Eliot and Richard Brautigan and also by the way that algorithms regulate humankind’s interactions with machines. Cooper recorded the album with a number of different musicians, including a full orchestra, working with them all remotely. Read More “Eluvium Announces New Album ‘(Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality’, Shares New Songs “Escapement” & “Swift Automatons”: Listen”
On the 30th Anniversary of Aphex Twin’s [Richard David James] seminal debut album, Music Radar digs into the tracks. Checkout the gear used to create some iconic sound textures.
The record’s unique sound fused serene ambient pads and atmospheric synth melodies with techno-inspired drum patterns, resulting in a hybrid style of ambient techno that was as mesmerizing as it was propulsive. Labeled ‘intelligent dance music’, or IDM, by fans and critics (a term James himself dismissed) the album has since been named as an influence by countless other electronic artists.
Although James undoubtedly now owns an envious collection of synthesizers and recording gear, Selected Ambient Works 85-92 was produced at the beginning of his career, using a more limited selection of kit. A 1993 interview with Future Music revealed that his set-up was based around a Korg MS-20, a Roland SH-101 and a Yamaha DX7. James also used a Casio FZ-10M sampler with custom filters, estimating that he used it on 80% of his songs.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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Brian Eno has been involved in so many varied and significant musical adventures that to call him a Zelig-like figure — which is often done — is to risk understating his reach and importance. The English musician and ideas man helped birth glam and art rock as a member of Roxy Music. He had a strong hand in iconic works by David Bowie, Talking Heads, U2 and Coldplay. Across a series of his own influential albums he pretty much invented ambient music. Eno’s clutch of nonambient solo albums are by turns nervy, catchy, enigmatic and moving. And so he has gone, fruitfully hither and yon, up to his latest, this fall’s “FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE.” (Listening to the album, with its musical evocations of technological decay and natural resilience, while my commuter train rumbles through swampy New Jersey industrial blight has often turned my usual emotionally inert trip to the office into a roller coaster of despair and acceptance.) Oh, and Eno, who is 74, has also led a parallel career as a roving music theorist-slash-public intellectual, one with a newly urgent focus. “I’m thinking about what most other people are thinking about now,” Eno says, “which is climate change and the threat of the collapse of civilization, which seems to get a year closer every two months.”
I know that over the years you’ve asked yourself, in a self-critical way, whether your work is really worth doing. But now, at your age, the bulk of the work is done. Your time has mostly been spent. Knowing that, do you feel like your answer to that question — which is the question of how you’ve lived your life — has been satisfactory? I think I’m still answering it. I’m still working on it. I’ve wanted to write a book for a long time: Why does art exist? Why do we have aesthetic preferences? There are all sorts of ways of explaining this. Some of them are biological: We like things that are red because it’s the same color as blood and sex organs and that sort of thing. But there are much more interesting ways of saying what the role of art is in the maintenance of a society. I don’t want to die before I get that done. [Laughs.] What I want to say is that culture — art, if you like — has an important set of functions in preparing us for the future. If you read a book like “1984,” you’re surrendering to a world with certain values and attributes and seeing what it feels like. Then, when you see something a bit like that starting to exist, you have a way of understanding it and how that might feel.
I get how what you’re saying makes sense for a novel like “1984,” but how does it make sense for art forms like nonnarrative music, which you make, or abstract paintings? That’s the most interesting question you could have asked. I’m absolutely fascinated by this question, because I think I have an answer, and I don’t think it has ever been well answered. What happens when you go look at a painting you’ve never seen before? What I think happens is that when you look at that picture, you’re seeing it in the context of all the other pictures you’ve ever seen. When you go and look at something new, what you’re saying is, “What’s different about this experience?” In many instances, there won’t be anything different, in which case you’re not that interested. But if you can look at it and say, “That’s more angular. That’s fuzzier. That’s much more this, much more that” — we’re very good at understanding differences in feeling within our own long narrative of looking at pieces of work. But what does it mean, for example, when a picture is scratchier than another? You read that as, This is urgent. The artist didn’t have time to make it pretty. We read messages that don’t have a text quality to them, and we still pick up on the ideas that make them different. Or take Bauhaus. When Bauhaus comes along, it’s saying, “We no longer think of the world as divided into beautiful things and functional things.” That’s a philosophical position about the world. Art, even when it’s nonnarrative, makes those kinds of points all the time.
Brian Eno, right, with fellow members of Roxy Music, 1972. Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns, via Getty Images
You have ideas about how art does what it does. Do you also have ideas about what makes artists what they are? I’m thinking about something like charisma. What is it that makes some of the people you’ve worked with — Bryan Ferry or David Bowie or Bono or David Byrne — into stars? What accounts for that quality? That’s an interesting question. I think charisma comes out of the sense you have that not only is somebody different but they’re also confident about it, committed to it, obsessed by it even. We don’t find uncertainty charismatic. Uncertainty doesn’t work for anybody very well, because in general the media don’t appreciate people like that. I would like to cultivate a charisma of uncertainty, a charisma of admitting that you’re making it up as you go along. I remember this funny thing. One day when we were working on the Passengers album with U2 in Dublin, Pavarotti came into the studio because he was singing on one of those tracks. We’re in the main room saying, Should we put the chorus here, no, let’s double that section, da da da. Pavarotti’s standing in the control room watching what we’re doing. Then he says, “You are making it up!” I think it was the first time he realized that, at some point, music is made up!
As opposed to not just springing out fully formed? Exactly. It doesn’t come as a whole package and then you learn to sing it. I thought, If he was surprised by that, how much more would other people be surprised by this notion that things are born messily? They don’t come out with any charisma at all. They start out, they’ve got blood on them, you’ve got to clean them up, surround them with love and attention until they can stand on their own. Yeah, a charisma of uncertainty would be my thing. In a way, David Byrne has that. One of the attractions of his persona is that he’s not afraid to weave in confusion: “How did I get here?” I think he’s on a path to a kind of feasible future human. You can be amazing, but you could admit too that you’re bewildered.
Since we’re talking about how things work: How do you want your new album to work for people? I suppose I’m trying to make a space where people can rest their attention in one place for a while. One of the epidemics of now is the inability to focus or concentrate. I was watching someone at lunchtime today. She had a book and was on her earphones and on the phone. There could be a postmodern argument for saying that this is a new way of absorbing and collaging material together. I personally find that quite hard to do. I’m addicted to the idea that you put yourself in a place and surrender to it. It’s about making space for a kind of attention that you’re not normally offered by entertainment media. The other thing is that if you’re writing things, and they have words, and therefore suggest the possibility that they are about something, then what are they about? Although this isn’t an album about climate change, it’s an album made by someone aware of living in the era of climate change.
David Byrne, left, with Eno in the recording studio, circa 1978. Roberta Bayley/Redferns, via Getty Images
Along those lines, there’s beauty in your new album, but it’s also deeply sad. Is that an accurate reflection of how you’re feeling about the world? For me, some of the music is very blissful. The last track is an idea of a kind of future that I would like. Also the track called “We Let It In” is not pessimistic. There is a threat built into it — that low barking sound — but that’s because I can’t conceive of a future where there isn’t a threat. I think we’re in for a hard ride for maybe half a century. Then it will either be the end of civilization or a reborn humanity with a different set of ideas about who we are and where we belong and how we must relate to things in order to survive. So I see a pessimistic short-term future. Not short-term for the person who’s living it but short-term in the history of civilization. Then I see this point at which we either really fail or we start to succeed. I think the succeed side has a very good chance because of the amount of human intelligence at work. There has never been more intelligence on the planet than there is now. Not only because there’s more brains than ever but there are also more augmentations of brains. There are more connections among all these brains. We’re in a sort of intelligence explosion. I hope.
It doesn’t always seem like it. No, it certainly doesn’t. [Laughs.]
An idea that has gained traction lately is that we’re in a particularly boring period of popular culture. People have suggested certain structural reasons for that, having to do with, for example, an increased disinclination toward ambiguity. But what about you? Do you think we’re in a dull cultural moment? I don’t, actually. Right now I see quite strong movement in some rather unexpected areas. A.S.M.R., this whispering thing, that’s incredibly promising. It’s quite counterintuitive. You get the idea that the trajectory of media is greater acceleration, louder, more surprises, and here you have millions of people sitting listening to somebody brushing their hair and whispering for 40 minutes. You have to take that on board as being one of the things that’s happening in culture and quite different from the story that we’re generally hearing. LARPing, too. I don’t think many people take that as seriously as I do. It’s an extraordinary new art form. Quite alarmingly it seems to be developing into a political form as well. Live-action role playing is what we now call politics. So it has a downside as well.
Eno at Air Studios in London in 1973. Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns, via Getty Images
Have you LARPed? I’ve done limited, party-game versions of it. I love those but I’ve never done it on a sort of proper scale.
Do you have a LARPing fantasy? Yes! Did you read Kim Stanley Robinson’s most recent book?
“The Ministry for the Future”?Yeah. That would be a great thing to do some LARPs from. I’d love to be the black-ops specialist in that book. I’m always interested in these nonconforming areas where a new story is being told.
You once wrote — this was almost 30 years ago — that you were frustrated by the available pornography. Is that still the case? No, no! Because it’s been democratized. You now have sites where people put up their own stuff, and it blows that Los Angeles pink stuff out of the water. The dominant colors of L.A. porn are pink and honey. It’s glossy, shallow, no shadows. You know the form called outsider art? It thrills me. That same attention of naïve artists has been turned to porn. There’s some incredible stuff coming out. It gives you faith in humanity. Jesus, there’s a lot of clever, passionate people out there.
Hey, is it really true that you peed on a Duchamp?Yes I did.
Really? No security guard saw you? No. In fact there was a security guard standing within two meters of me when I did it but he had his back to me. The way I did it was rather complicated. I noticed that this vitrine that the urinal was in had two pieces of glass about five millimeters apart — there was a tiny gap. So I went to a plumber’s near the Museum of Modern Art and I found some fine plastic tube that I knew I could get through it. I used that and a pipette. I went to the toilet and peed in the sink — God, they’d hate to know this. I pipetted it up, covered the end so it held the golden liquid in there, and then stood by the vitrine and was feeding the pipe through. I mean, it was symbolic in a way because it was a tiny amount of pee.
You weren’t worried about damaging the priceless art? No. I didn’t think my urine was that acidic.
Maybe this is semi-related: Smell anything good recently? Two things. One is a neroli, a bitter orange blossom. Somebody made a version that’s got limonene, citronella and something called hydroxycitronellal. It’s the best-smelling neroli I’ve ever smelled. The other one is a smell I’ve known about for a while but I’m getting back into. It’s called karanal. It makes you think of ozone. You know when you click a stone and a piece of metal together and there’s that smell? I send away for these things and they come back and I sit and smell them. I’m filling out in my head the map of smells. Triplal is another beautiful one. I love it.
David Bowie, Bono and Eno backstage at Royal Festival Hall in London in 2002. KMazur/WireImage, via Getty Images
I wanted to ask you this: Almost all recorded music now is ambient music, in that it’s used as background while we do other stuff. But it doesn’t quite feel like musicians are responding to that reality in any especially interesting ways, at least as far as I know. Is there more that musicians could be doing there? There’s certainly more to be done. The whole point of ambient music was to say, look, it’s notas if people were going to sit down in front of their speakers and focus. Even in 1978 that wasn’t what people were doing. People wanted more consistent, longer-lasting moods. They didn’t want what albums were offering, which was a dance song, a ballad, another loud song and then a quiet song — that idea that you’d get bored with something that didn’t have a lot of changes. But every way of listening produces a new music. What I’ve become interested in is listening clubs, where people get together and listen to a record. This strikes me as a very interesting development. There are strong signs that people are resisting the atomization of everything. It’s suited capitalism to have us all as separate as possible because then we have to all buy things individually. People are getting fed up with that and wanting to do things together. One of the things they’re wanting to do is to start tackling climate change. I think this is the biggest movement in human history, but it’s hardly noticed by the media. There are millions of people involved in some way working on climate change. This huge movement is starting to coalesce.
You’re obviously interested in how the world might change or be made to change. I’m curious about what you think of the idea of “disruption,” which is a word that the tech world has basically ruined. It depends how it’s used. For people like Steve Bannon, destruction is their main tool. That famous statement he said: “Flood the zone with [expletive].” This is more and more what populists do. They think, OK, if we can create chaos, we know how to benefit. Because in chaos people retreat to those who look like they’re certain. The thing that populists project is: We all know what’s going on, don’t we? Too many immigrants or Jews or liberals. This is why I talk about the climate movement, because that’s anti-chaos. That’s a knitting-together of people. It’s just starting to show a few green shoots, but underneath the ground there’s this constant thickening. I went to a conference the other day in Barcelona, and there were, I don’t know, 500 people. There are 20 whom I’ll probably have further conversations with. I thought, How many conferences of that scale were going on that weekend? Probably worldwide it would have been maybe 150. If everybody in those conferences was making roughly the same number of connections — I get this picture of this movement becoming powerful. You start to think, We’re all doing it. It’s not the David and Goliath situation we’d thought it was because, actually, we’re Goliath. We’re not David.
Eno protesting the war in Afghanistan in 2012. Mark Davidson/Alamy
Insofar as you have a public image, it’s as an extremely cerebral figure. But even just in this conversation it’s clear that emotions and feelings drive a lot of what you do. So what’s an emotion or feeling driving you right now? I can give you a clear example. I recently found this gospel song on YouTube. Donald Vails is playing piano on it. Billy Preston is playing organ. They’re in a room with a mixed bunch of people with quite a range of ages. They sing this song, “You Can’t Beat God Giving.” It’s a great song, but what’s fantastic is seeing these people singing to one another. It’s intensely moving. Billy Preston is sort of sitting in as a star, but the rest of the people, I would assume, have normal jobs and normal lives, and they’re elevated by this community they’ve formed around this event. That, more and more, is the feeling that I’m fascinated by: What happens to humans when they multiply their feelings together? We’ve been so atomized over the last 50, 100 years and told that we have to have our own completely independent lives and that the real human is the one who can stand alone. The real human, to me, seems like the one who can support his neighbors and work with them. That’s a feeling that I pursue. Whenever I see it, I want to encourage it.
Source photograph for the illustration above by Kalpesh Lathigra for The New York Times.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.
David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and writes the Talk column. He recently interviewed Lynda Barry about the value of childlike thinking, Father Mike Schmitz about religious belief and Jerrod Carmichael on comedy and honesty.
