Eno is a 1973 documentary that profiles Brian Eno in an interesting period of his career – before he released his most important albums, before defining what we know as ‘ambient music’ and before his high-profile production of classic albums by David Bowie, Talking Heads, Devo, U2 and others.
The documentary captures Eno in his transition from being the flamboyant synth guy of Roxy Music to his early solo career. At the time, he was recording his album Here Come The Warm Jets – and he was in the middle of developing his unique approach to synthesis and music.
Interesting View…..was deep into his works right during his time with Rox Music and after….to me at that time it was a fresh breath of air in pop…glitter pop….etc….was also listening to the Mothers of Invention…Cage….Klaus Shultz…Karlheinz Stockhausen….Cluster….etc…interesting times..the ‘Nonesuch Label’ pumped out a lot of esoteric music then…..these genres got me hooked on Electronic music…
WHOA …hold on thar! What is that EMS looking synthesizer he has there? It looks like a re-packaged VCS-3 with two patch matrix boards and some unique add-ons of some kind. I am well acquainted with the whole EMS line. I even acted as a factory rep for a time in the USA (EMSA) back in the 1970s and I never saw anything like that.
Can anyone enlighten me?
I asked a question about this mystery dual synthi on the Analogue Heaven mailing list and was delighted to receive the following reply from Peter Forrest…
I asked Robin Wood and got this reply, which he said was OK to relay.
Peter
“Nice to see a few photos of this beast, usually only seen in OGWT video footage (or should that be TOTP?)..
This was a special built for Roxy by Gerry and Brian Rodgers, quite possibly after they had split from EMS when they were trading as RSE (Rogers Studio Equipment).
According to Gerry there were problems with its reliability. Also Gerry says Eno was ‘sacked’ by Roxy partly because of the instrument, so it’s ‘working’ life was short. Information not easily substantiated..”
I believe EMS toyed with a VCS4. It was going to be two VCS3s cobbled together with and extended patch matrix so you could cross patch the two. I think this must be a prototype.
judgement instead of skill!
I saved the link to this documentary to watch later. But now it’s deleted on Youtube due to infringe of copyright. Does anybody know how I can watch this video? I could not find it on the internet.