Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno  (; born Brian Peter George Eno, 15 May 1948), also known by the mononym Eno, is an English musician, composer, record producer and visual artist. He is best known for his pioneering contributions to the ambient music and electronic genres, and for producing, recording, and writing works in rock (particularly experimental rock, glam rock and art rock), artistic pop and minimalist drone music. A self-described "non-musician", Eno has helped introduce unconventional concepts and approaches to contemporary music. He has been described as one of popular music's most influential and innovative figures. In 2019, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Roxy Music.

Born in Suffolk, Eno studied painting and experimental music at the art school of Ipswich Civic College in the mid 1960s, and then at Winchester School of Art. He joined glam rock group Roxy Music as its synthesiser player in 1971, recording two albums with the group before departing in 1973. He then released a number of solo pop albums beginning with Here Come the Warm Jets (1974) and began exploring a minimalist direction with the influential recordings Discreet Music (1975) and Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978), coining the term "ambient music".

Alongside his solo work, Eno collaborated frequently with other musicians in the 1970s, including Robert Fripp (as part of the Fripp & Eno duo), Harmonia (for which he was described as a member in their 1976 concluding year), Cluster, Harold Budd, David Bowie, and David Byrne. He also established himself as a sought-after producer, working on albums by John Cale, Jon Hassell, Laraaji, Talking Heads, Ultravox, and Devo, as well as the no wave compilation No New York (1978). In subsequent decades, Eno continued to record solo albums and produce for other artists, most prominently U2 and Coldplay, and including Daniel Lanois, Laurie Anderson, Grace Jones, Slowdive, Karl Hyde, James, Kevin Shields, and Damon Albarn.

Dating back to his time as a student, Eno has also worked in other media, including sound installations, film, and writing. In the mid-1970s, he co-developed Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards featuring aphorisms intended to spur creative thinking. From the 1970s onwards, his installations have included the sails of the Sydney Opera House in 2009 and the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank in 2016. An advocate of a range of humanitarian causes, Eno writes on a variety of subjects and is a founding member of the Long Now Foundation.

Early life
Brian Peter George Eno was born on 15 May 1948 in the village of Melton, Suffolk, the son of William Arnold Eno (1916–1988), a postal worker and clock and watch repairer, and Maria Alphonsine (née Buslot; 1922–2005), a Belgian national. His grandfather was a multi-instrumentalist who played the saxophone and bassoon whilst he built and repaired pianos and church organs. Eno is the eldest of their three children; he has a brother, Roger, and sister Arlette. They have a half-sister, Rita, from their mother's previous relationship. The surname Eno is derived from the French Huguenot surname Hennot. Along with the rest of the family, in particular the parents, he was raised in the Catholic Christian faith.

In 1959, Eno attended St Joseph's College in Ipswich, a Catholic grammar school of the De La Salle Brothers order. His confirmation name is derived from the school, taking the name Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno. During this time, he had begun to listen to several records of American black R&B, blues and doo wop artists; he specifically cited the Lafayettes, Don and Juan, the Silhouettes and Little Richard as being key American musical figures within this period. He was also inspired by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, who Eno had first discovered whilst staying with Carl Otto Eno, his uncle, at his residence where he would collect pieces of art.

In 1964, after earning four O-levels, including one in art and maths, Eno had developed an interest in art and music and had no interest in a "conventional job". He enrolled at the Ipswich School of Art, taking on the newly established Groundcourse foundation art degree established by new media artist Roy Ascott. Here, one of Eno's teachers was artist Tom Phillips, who became a lifelong friend and encouraged his musical ability. Phillips recalled the pair doing "piano tennis" in which, after collecting pianos, the two stripped and aligned them in a hall and struck them with tennis balls. In 1966, Eno studied for a diploma in Fine Arts at the Winchester School of Art, from which he graduated in 1969. At Winchester Eno once attended a lecture by future Who guitarist Pete Townshend, also a former student of Ascott's; he cites this as the moment when he realised he could make music without formal training.

Whilst at school, Eno used a tape recorder as a musical instrument and in 1964 he joined his first group, the Black Aces, a four-piece with Eno on drums that he formed with three friends he met at the youth club he visited in Melton. In late 1967, Eno pursued music once more, forming the Merchant Taylor's Simultaneous Cabinet, an avant-garde music, art, and performance trio with two Winchester undergraduates. This was followed by short stints in multiple avant-garde and college groups, including The Maxwell Demon and Dandelion and The War Damage which featured Eno as frontman who adapted a theatrical persona on stage and later played the guitar.

Career

1970s
In 1969, after separating from his wife, Eno moved to London where his professional music career began. He became involved with the Scratch Orchestra and the Portsmouth Sinfonia; Eno's first appearance on a commercially released recording is the Deutsche Grammophon edition of The Great Learning (1971) by Cornelius Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra which features Eno as one of the voices on the track "Paragraph 7". Another early recording was the soundtrack to Berlin Horse (1970), a nine-minute avant-garde art film by Malcolm Le Grice. At one point, Eno had to earn money as paste-up assistant for the advertisement section of a local paper for three months. He quit and became an electronics dealer by buying old speakers and making new cabinets for them before selling them to friends.

In 1971, Eno co-formed the glam and art rock band Roxy Music. He had a chance meeting with saxophonist Andy Mackay at a train station, which led to him joining the band. Eno later said: "If I'd walked ten yards further on the platform, or missed that train, or been in the next carriage, I probably would have been an art teacher now". Eno played on their first two albums, Roxy Music (1972) and For Your Pleasure (1973), and is credited as "Eno". On the records, Eno was noted as playing the VCS 3 synthesiser, whilst also being credited for tape effects, backing vocals, and production. Initially, Eno did not appear on stage at their live shows, but operated the group's mixing desk at the centre of the concert venue where he had a microphone to sing backup vocals. After the group secured a record deal, Eno joined them on stage playing the synthesiser and became known for his flamboyant costumes and makeup, partly stealing the spotlight from lead singer Bryan Ferry. After touring For Your Pleasure ended in mid-1973, Eno quit the band, citing disagreements with Ferry and his insistence on being in command of the group, which affected Eno's ability to incorporate his own ideas.

Almost immediately after his exit from Roxy Music, Eno embarked on his solo career. The first studio album that had been released after Eno left Roxy Music was a 1973 collaboration with then-King Crimson guitarist and founder Robert Fripp, which was entitled No Pussyfooting (stylised as "(No Pussyfooting)". The album had been worked on for over a year in the lead up to its release, particularly with the use of tape looping and delay systems, which would later be known as Frippertronics. The record is hailed as being groundbreaking for future developments in experimental drone and ambient music, although the term "ambient music" wasn't coined yet and had been labelled as "electronic". The pair followed their debut with a second album Evening Star (1975), and completed a European tour before splitting due to Fripp isolating himself from the public eye after the disbanding of King Crimson.

Eno's first solo studio album was Here Come the Warm Jets that same year, which was released with his mononymous name "Eno" still attached. The album notably features Fripp on several songs as a guitarist on the tracks "Baby's On Fire" and "Driving Me Backwards", and as a composer, corresponding to his guitar duties, on the song "Blank Frank". The album was critically acclaimed on initial reviews in the 1973-74 season, whilst later reviews touted the record as "timeless". No singles were released from the record.

In March 1974, he had also released the single "Seven Deadly Finns" with the B-side "Later On", his only top 40 hit in the UK. Eno and Kevin Ayers contributed music for the experimental/spoken word album Lady June's Linguistic Leprosy (1974) by poet June Campbell Cramer, whilst also producing The Portsmouth Sinfonia's 1974 albums Plays the Popular Classics and Hallelujah! The Portsmouth Sinfonia Live at the Royal Albert Hall, both of which feature Eno playing the clarinet. After recording it in September that year, Eno released his second solo studio album, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy),  in November 1974. Featuring fellow artists and collaborators such as Phil Collins, Phil Manzanera, Robert Wyatt and Andy Mackay, the album featured numerous efforts of artistic pop and rock, but distanced itself from the of psychedelia and avant-pop qualities from Here Come the Warm Jets. Taking Tiger Mountain contains the track "Third Uncle", which has been regarded as one of Eno's best-known songs of his pop and rock phase, owing in part to its later cover by Bauhaus and the Eno-collaborated cover with 801. Critic Dave Thompson writes that the song is "a near punk attack of riffing guitars and clattering percussion" and that it "could, in other hands, be a heavy metal anthem, albeit one whose lyrical content would tongue-tie the most slavish air guitarist." "Third Uncle" was released as a single in France that year, with the B-side of "The Fat Lady of Limbourg", also from Taking Tiger Mountain.

Between 1974 and 1975, Eno began to write new material for a third solo studio album. Within this time, in January 1975, Eno was hit by a taxi cab while crossing the street and spent several weeks recuperating and room-ridden at home. During this time, one of Eno's closest friends and fellow artist Judy Nylon had brought him an old record of harp music, which he would lay down to listen to. He then realised that he had set the amplifier to a very low volume, and one channel of the stereo was not working, but he lacked the energy to get up and correct it. Immediately following a full recovery, he began to experiment with several instruments and tools in Island Studios (now known as Basing Street Studios). Between July and August 1975, he had recorded what would become Another Green World. The album was released on 14 November 1975 but did not chart in either the United Kingdom or the United States. The album predominantly featured instrumental tracks, with notable fragments of minimalism and avant-garde tensing throughout the 40 minute record. Those that had featured vocals, such as "Everything Merges With The Night", "St. Elmo's Fire" and "Golden Hours" were met with praise. The track "Zawinul / Lava" is a homage and tribute to Austrian jazz fusion keyboardist and composer Joe Zawinul. The only song to have any single release was "I'll Come Running", which became the B-side to Eno's cover of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh)". The album has been recognised by critics as a "universally acknowledged masterpiece" and "breathtakingly ahead of its time". The acclaimed music journalist Robert Christgau rated the album as an "A+", stating that it was "the aural equivalent of a park on the Moon; oneness with nature under conditions of artificial gravity".
In 1975, Eno had released the minimalist-electronic record Discreet Music (1975), created with an elaborate tape-delay methodology which he diagrammed on the back cover of the LP. Considered to be a landmark of the ambient music genre and the first record of Eno's to feature his full name, the album only features four tracks, one of which is the 30-minute long "Discreet Music", which features synthesised tape delays by Eno on an echo configuration. Gavin Bryars and The Cockpit Ensemble co-arranged and performed the B-side of the record, which were three variations on Canon in D Major by Johann Pachelbel. The titles of the variations were of an inaccurate translation of the French cover notes for the "Erato" recording of the piece made by the orchestra of Jean Francois Paillard. The album was remarked as a favourite record of David Bowie and, as a result of the record and its recognition to Bowie, it had led to his collaboration with Eno on Bowie's Berlin Trilogy.

In December 1977, after releasing Discreet Music and two other experimental-electronic records: the Fripp-collaborated Evening Star (1975) and the Roedelius-Moebius collaborated Cluster & Eno (1977), Eno released Before and After Science. Featuring more belonged electronic and artistic rock compositions featuring vocals, it was touted as "a study of "studio composition" whereby recordings are created by "deconstruction and elimination" by Allmusic reviewer David Ross Smith. Compared to Another Green World's nine (9) instrumental tracks, Before and After Science only features two (2) instrumental tracks, "Energy Fools The Magician", and "Through Hollow Lands", a track dedicated to Harold Budd. Before and After Science is perhaps best known for its heavily acclaimed electric-keyboard based track "By This River" and the coincidentally-anagrammed track "King's Lead Hat", a homage to Talking Heads.

In March 1978, after recording during a period of two months and haven't worked on it since he had assisted with David Bowie and Tony Visconti for Bowie's album Low, he released the first in his Ambient series, Ambient 1: Music for Airports. He coined the term "ambient music", which is designed to modify the listener's perception of the surrounding environment. In the liner notes accompanying the record, he wrote: "Ambient music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular, it must be as ignorable as it is interesting." The following records after the release of Ambient 1 and the subsequent series inclusions were The Plateaux of Mirror (Ambient 2) featuring Harold Budd, Day of Radiance (Ambient 3) with American composer Laraaji, and On Land (Ambient 4), a solo record.

1980s
Eno provided a film score for Herbert Vesely's Egon Schiele – Exzess und Bestrafung (1980), also known as Egon Schiele – Excess and Punishment. The ambient-style score was an unusual choice for an historical piece, but it worked effectively with the film's themes of sexual obsession and death.
Before Eno made Ambient 4: On Land (1982), Robert Quine played him Miles Davis' 32-minute long avant-fusion piece "He Loved Him Madly" (1974). Eno stated in the liner notes for On Land, "Teo Macero's revolutionary production on that piece seemed to me to have the 'spacious' quality I was after, and like Federico Fellini's 1973 film Amarcord, it too became a touchstone to which I returned frequently."

In 1980 to 1981, during which time Eno travelled to Ghana for a festival of West African music, he was collaborating with David Byrne of Talking Heads. Their album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, was built around radio broadcasts Eno collected whilst living in the United States, along with sampled music recordings from around the world transposed over music predominantly inspired by African and Middle Eastern rhythms.

In 1983, Eno collaborated with his brother, Roger, and noted accomplice and friend Daniel Lanois, on what would be Brian Eno's ninth full-length album Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks. The album had been commissioned by Al Reinert for his film For All Mankind (1989). Tracks from the album were subsequently used in several other films, including Trainspotting.

1990s
In September 1992, Eno released Nerve Net, an album utilising heavily syncopated rhythms with contributions from several former collaborators including Fripp, Benmont Tench, Robert Quine and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame. This album was a last-minute substitution for My Squelchy Life, which contained more pop oriented material, with Eno on vocals. Several tracks from My Squelchy Life later appeared on 1993's retrospective box set Eno Box II: Vocals, and the entire album was eventually released in 2014 as part of an expanded re-release of Nerve Net. Eno released The Shutov Assembly in 1992, recorded between 1985 and 1990. This album embraces atonality and abandons most conventional concepts of modes, scales and pitch. Emancipated from the constant attraction towards the tonic that underpins the Western tonal tradition, the gradually shifting music originally eschewed any conventional instrumentation, save for treated keyboards.

During the 1990s, Eno worked increasingly with self-generating musical systems, the results of which he called generative music. This allows the listener to hear music that slowly unfolds in almost infinite non-repeating combinations of sound. In one instance of generative music, Eno calculated that it would take almost 10,000 years to hear the entire possibilities of one individual piece. Eno achieves this through the blending of several independent musical tracks of varying length. Each track features different musical elements and in some cases, silence. When each individual track concludes, it starts again re-configuring differently with the other tracks. He has presented this music in his own art and sound installations and those in collaboration with other artists, including I Dormienti (The Sleepers), Lightness: Music for the Marble Palace, and Music for Civic Recovery Centre.

In 1993, Eno worked with the Manchester rock band James to produce two albums, Laid and Wah Wah. Laid was met with notable critical and commercial success both in the UK and the United States after its release in 1993. Wah Wah, in comparison, received a more lukewarm response after its release in 1994.

One of Eno's better-known collaborations was with the members of U2, Luciano Pavarotti and several other artists in a group called Passengers. They produced the 1995 album Original Soundtracks 1, which reached No. 76 on the US Billboard charts and No. 12 in the UK Albums Chart. It featured a single, "Miss Sarajevo", which reached number 6 in the UK Singles Chart. This collaboration is chronicled in Eno's book A Year with Swollen Appendices, a diary published in 1996. In 1996, Eno scored the six-part fantasy television series Neverwhere.

2000s
In 2004, Fripp and Eno recorded another ambient music collaboration album, The Equatorial Stars.

Eno returned in June 2005 with Another Day on Earth, his first major album since Wrong Way Up (with John Cale) to prominently feature vocals (a trend he continued with Everything That Happens Will Happen Today). The album differs from his 1970s solo work due to the impact of technological advances on musical production, evident in its semi-electronic production.

In early 2006, Eno collaborated with David Byrne again, for the reissue of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts in celebration of the influential album's 25th anniversary. Eight previously unreleased tracks recorded during the initial sessions in 1980/81, were added to the album.
An unusual interactive marketing strategy was employed for its re-release, the album's promotional website features the ability for anyone to officially and legally download the multi-tracks of two songs from the album, "A Secret Life" and "Help Me Somebody". This allowed listeners to remix and upload new mixes of these tracks to the website for others to listen and rate them.

In late 2006, Eno released 77 Million Paintings, a program of generative video and music specifically for home computers. As its title suggests, there is a possible combination of 77 million paintings where the viewer will see different combinations of video slides prepared by Eno each time the program is launched. Likewise, the accompanying music is generated by the program so that it's almost certain the listener will never hear the same arrangement twice. The second edition of "77 Million Paintings" featuring improved morphing and a further two layers of sound was released on 14 January 2008. In June 2007, when commissioned in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California, Annabeth Robinson (AngryBeth Shortbread) recreated 77 Million Paintings in Second Life.

The Nokia 8800 Sirocco Edition mobile phone, released in late 2006, features exclusive ringtones and sounds composed by Eno. Although he was previously uninterested in composing ringtones due to the limited sound palette of monophonic ringtones, phones at this point primarily used audio files. Between 8 January 2007 and 12 February 2007, ten units of Nokia 8800 Sirocco Brian Eno Signature Edition mobile phones, individually numbered and engraved with Eno's signature, were auctioned off. All proceeds went to two charities chosen by Eno: the Keiskamma AIDS treatment program and the World Land Trust. Eno's music was featured in a movie adaption of Irvine Welsh's best-selling collection Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance (2007). He also appeared playing keyboards in Voila, Belinda Carlisle's solo album sung entirely in French. Eno also contributed a composition titled "Grafton Street" to Dido's third album, Safe Trip Home, released in November 2008.

In 2008, he released Everything That Happens Will Happen Today with David Byrne, designed the sound for the video game Spore and wrote a chapter to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture, edited by Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky).

In June 2009, Eno curated the Luminous Festival at Sydney Opera House, culminating in his first live appearance in many years. "Pure Scenius" consisted of three live improvised performances on the same day, featuring Eno, Australian improvisation trio The Necks, Karl Hyde from Underworld, electronic artist Jon Hopkins and guitarist Leo Abrahams. Eno scored the music for Peter Jackson's film adaptation of The Lovely Bones, released in December 2009.

2010s

Eno released another solo album on Warp in late 2010. Small Craft on a Milk Sea, made in association with long-time collaborators Leo Abrahams and Jon Hopkins, was released on 2 November in the United States and 15 November in the UK. The album included five compositions  that were adaptions of those tracks that Eno wrote for The Lovely Bones. He later released Drums Between the Bells, a collaboration with poet Rick Holland, on 4 July 2011. In November 2012, Eno released Lux, a 76-minute composition in four sections, through Warp.

Eno worked with French–Algerian Raï singer Rachid Taha on Taha's  Tékitoi (2004) and Zoom (2013) albums, contributing percussion, bass, brass and vocals. Eno also performed with Taha at the Stop the War Coalition concert in London in 2005.

In April 2014, Eno sang on, co-wrote, and co-produced Damon Albarn's Heavy Seas of Love, from his solo debut album Everyday Robots. In May, Eno and Underworld's Karl Hyde released Someday World, featuring various guest musicians: from Coldplay's Will Champion and Roxy Music's Andy Mackay to newer names such as 22-year-old Fred Gibson, who helped produce the record with Eno. Within weeks of that release, a second full-length album was announced titled High Life. This was released on 30 June 2014.

In January 2016, a new Eno ambient soundscape was premiered as part of Michael Benson's planetary photography exhibition "Otherworlds" in the Jerwood Gallery of London's Natural History Museum. In a statement Eno commented on the unnamed half-hour piece:

The Ship, an album with music from Eno's installation of the same name was released on 29 April 2016 on Warp. The album notably features actor Peter Serafinowicz providing vocal credits on the third part of the "Fickle Sun" suite, which is a cover of the Velvet Underground's "I'm Set Free", from the group's 1969 album, The Velvet Underground; the track was written by frontman Lou Reed. In September that same year, the Portuguese synthpop band The Gift, released a single entitled Love Without Violins. As well as singing on the track, Eno co-wrote and produced it. The single was released on the band's own record label La Folie Records on 30 September.

Eno's Reflection, an album of ambient, generative music, was released on Warp Records on 1 January. 2017. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for 2018's 60th Grammy awards ceremony.

In April 2018, Eno released The Weight Of History / Only Once Away My Son, a collaborative double A-side with Kevin Shields, for Record Store Day.

In 2019, Eno participated in DAU, an immersive art and cultural installation in Paris by Russian film director Ilya Khrzhanovsky evoking life under Soviet authoritarian rule. Eno contributed six auditory ambiances.

2020s

In March 2020, Eno and his brother, Roger Eno, released their collaborative album Mixing Colours. Eno provided original music for Ben Lawrence's 2021 documentary Ithaka about John Shipton's battle to save his son, Julian Assange. In October 2022, he released a mostly voice-based album called Foreverandevernomore. An instrumental version of the record, entitled the Forever Voiceless Edition, was released in April 2023. The single Making Gardens Out of Silence in the Uncanny Valley, which replaced the concluding track on the origin release of Foreverandevernomore on the Japanese version of the CD, was released in February 2023. In May 2023, he released a collaborative album with long-time colleague and protege Fred again.. called Secret Life through Four Tet's label Text Records. In June the same year, he released a collaborative single with The Leisure Society called 'Brave Are The Waves' on Willkommen Records.

Record producer

From the beginning of his solo career in 1973, Eno was in demand as a record producer. The first album with Eno credited as producer was Lucky Leif and the Longships by Robert Calvert. Eno's lengthy string of producer credits includes albums for Talking Heads, U2, Devo, Ultravox and James. He also produced part of the 1993 album When I Was a Boy by Jane Siberry. He won the best producer award at the 1994 and 1996 BRIT Awards.

Eno has consistently described himself as a "non-musician", using the term "treatments" to describe his modification of the sound of musical instruments, and to separate his role from that of the traditional instrumentalist. His skill in using the studio as a compositional tool led in part to his career as a producer. His methods were recognised at the time (mid-1970s) as unique, so much so that on Genesis's The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, he is credited with 'Enossification'; on Robert Wyatt's Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard with a Direct inject anti-jazz raygun and on John Cale's Island albums as simply being "Eno".

Eno has contributed to recordings by artists as varied as Nico, Robert Calvert, Genesis, David Bowie, and Zvuki Mu, in various capacities such as use of his studio and electronic treatments, vocals, guitar, bass guitar, and under a mononymous stage name (Eno). In 1984, he (amongst others) composed and performed the "Prophecy Theme" for the David Lynch film Dune; the rest of the soundtrack was composed and performed by the group Toto. Eno produced performance artist Laurie Anderson's Bright Red album, and also composed for it. Eno played on David Byrne's musical score for The Catherine Wheel, a project commissioned by Twyla Tharp to accompany her Broadway dance project of the same name.
He worked with Bowie as a writer and musician on Bowie's influential 1977–79 Berlin Trilogy of albums, Low, "Heroes" and Lodger, on Bowie's later album Outside, and on the song "I'm Afraid of Americans". Playing a portable EMS Synthi A synthesiser, Eno created most of the spacey effects on Low. After Bowie died in January 2016, following the release of his Blackstar album, Eno said that he and Bowie had been talking about taking Outside, the last album they had worked on together, "somewhere new", and expressed regret that they would not be able to pursue the project.

In 1978, Eno discovered and promoted the No Wave movement by attending a five night underground no wave music festival at Artists Space in New York City that featured ten local bands, including Rhys Chatham's The Gynecologists, Communists, Glenn Branca's Theoretical Girls, Terminal, Chatham's Tone Death (performing his composition for electric guitars Guitar Trio) and Branca's other band Daily Life. The final two days of the show featured DNA and the Contortions on Friday, followed by Mars and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks on Saturday. Eno, who had originally come to New York to produce the second Talking Heads album More Songs About Buildings and Food, was impressed by what he saw and heard, and advised by Diego Cortez to do so, was convinced that this movement should be documented and proposed the idea of a compilation album, No New York, with himself as a producer.

Eno co-produced The Unforgettable Fire (1984), The Joshua Tree (1987), Achtung Baby (1991), and All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000) for U2 with his frequent collaborator Daniel Lanois, and produced 1993's Zooropa with Mark "Flood" Ellis. In 1995, U2 and Eno joined forces to create the album Original Soundtracks 1 under the group name Passengers, songs from which included "Your Blue Room" and "Miss Sarajevo".  Even though films are listed and described for each song, all but three are bogus. Eno also produced Laid (1993), Wah Wah (1994), Millionaires (1999) and Pleased to Meet You (2001) for James, performing as an extra musician on all four. He is credited for "frequent interference and occasional co-production" on their 1997 album Whiplash.

Eno played on the 1986 album Measure for Measure by Australian band Icehouse. He remixed two tracks for Depeche Mode, "I Feel You" and "In Your Room", both single releases from the album Songs of Faith and Devotion in 1993. In 1995, Eno provided one of several remixes of "Protection" by Massive Attack (originally from their Protection album) for release as a single.

In 2007, he produced the fourth studio album by Coldplay, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, released in 2008 to positive acclaim. Also in 2008, he worked with actress and musician Grace Jones on her album Hurricane, and was credited for "production consultation" and as a member of the band, playing keyboards, treatments and background vocals. He worked on the twelfth studio album by U2, again with Lanois, titled No Line on the Horizon. It was recorded in Morocco, the South of France and Dublin and released in Europe on 27 February 2009.

In 2011, Eno and Coldplay reunited and Eno contributed "enoxification" and additional composition on Coldplay's fifth studio album Mylo Xyloto, released on 24 October of that year.

The Microsoft Sound
In 1994, Microsoft designers Mark Malamud and Erik Gavriluk approached Eno to compose music for the Windows 95 project. The result was the six-second start-up music-sound of the Windows 95 operating system, "The Microsoft Sound". In an interview with Joel Selvin in the San Francisco Chronicle he said

Eno shed further light on the composition of the sound on the BBC Radio 4 show The Museum of Curiosity, admitting that he created it using a Macintosh computer, stating "I wrote it on a Mac. I've never used a PC in my life; I don't like them."

Video work
Eno has spoken of an early and ongoing interest in exploring light in a similar way to his work with sound. He started experimenting with the medium of video in 1978. Eno describes the first video camera he received, which would initially become his main tool for creating ambient video and light installations:

"One afternoon while I was working in the studio with Talking Heads, the roadie from Foreigner, working in an adjacent studio, came in and asked whether anyone wanted to buy some video equipment. I'd never really thought much about video, and found most 'video art' completely unmemorable, but the prospect of actually owning a video camera was, at that time, quite exotic."

The Panasonic industrial camera Eno received had significant design flaws preventing the camera from sitting upright without the assistance of a tripod. This led to his works being filmed in vertical format, requiring the television set to be flipped on its side to view it in the proper orientation. The pieces Eno produced with this method, such as Mistaken Memories of Mediaeval Manhattan (1980) and Thursday Afternoon (1984) (accompanied by the album of the same title), were labelled as 'Video Paintings.' He explained that he refers to them as 'video paintings' because "if you say to people 'I make videos', they think of Sting's new rock video or some really boring, grimy 'Video Art'. It's just a way of saying, 'I make videos that don't move very fast."

These works presented Eno with the opportunity to expand his ambient aesthetic into a visual form, manipulating the medium of video to produce something not present in the normal television experience. His video works were shown around the world in exhibitions in New York and Tokyo, as well as released on the compilation 14 Video Paintings in 2005.

Eno continued his video experimentation through the 80s, 90s and 2000s, leading to further experimentation with the television as a malleable light source and informing his generative works such as 77 Million Paintings in 2006.

Generative music
Eno gives the example of wind chimes. He says that these systems and the creation of them have been a focus of his since he was a student: "I got interested in the idea of music that could make itself, in a sense, in the mid 1960s really, when I first heard composers like Terry Riley, and when I first started playing with tape recorders."

Initially Eno began to experiment with tape loops to create generative music systems. With the advent of CDs he developed systems to make music of indeterminate duration using several discs of material that he'd specifically recorded so that they would work together musically when driven by random playback.

In 1995, he began working with the company Intermorphic to create generative music through utilising programmed algorithms. The collaboration with Intermorphic led Eno to release Generative Music 1 - which requires Intermorphic's Koan Player software for PC. The Koan software made it possible for generative music to be experienced in the domestic environment for the first time.

Generative Music 1
In 1996, Eno collaborated in developing the SSEYO Koan generative music software system (by Pete Cole and Tim Cole of Intermorphic) that he used in composing Generative Music 1—only playable on the Koan generative music system. Further music releases using Koan software include: Wander (2001) and Dark Symphony (2007)—both include works by Eno, and those of other artists (including SSEYO's Tim Cole).

Released excerpts
Eno started to release excerpts of results from his 'generative music' systems as early as 1975 with the album Discreet Music. Then again in 1978 with Music for Airports:

The list below consists of albums, soundtracks and downloadable files that contain excerpts from some of Eno's generative music explorations:

 1970 – Berlin Horse [Film Short]
 1975 – Discreet Music
 1975 – Evening Star (Fripp & Eno)
 1978 – Ambient 1: Music for Airports
 1981 – Mistaken Memories of Mediaeval Manhattan [Installation Video]
 1982 – Ambient 4: On Land
 1983 – Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks (Eno, Lanois & R Eno)
 1983 – Music for Films II (Eno, Lanois & R Eno) [exclusive to Working Backwards Box Set]
 1984 – Thursday Afternoon [Installation Video]
 1985 – Thursday Afternoon
 1988 – Music for Films III (Various Artists)
 1989 – Textures (Eno, Lanois & R Eno)
 1992 – The Shutov Assembly
 1993 – Neroli (Thinking Music Part IV)
 1994 – Glitterbug [Original Soundtrack]
 1996 – Neverwhere [BBC TV Mini-Series Soundtrack]
 1997 – Contra 1.2
 1997 – Lightness
 1998 – Music for Prague
 1999 – I Dormienti
 1999 – Kite Stories
 2000 – Music for Civic Recovery Centre
 2001 – Compact Forest Proposal
 2003 – Curiosities – Volume I
 2004 – Curiosities – Volume II
 2012 – Lux
 2013 – CAM [Web – the book Brian Eno: Visual Music includes a download code]
 2014 – The Shutov Bonus Material [Shutov Assembly reissue bonus CD]
 2014 – New Space Music [Neroli reissue bonus CD]
 2016 – The Ship
 2016 – Reflection
 2017 – Sisters [Web Download]
 2018 – Music for Installations [Box Set]

 2023 - Secret Life (with Fred again..) [10% broken algorithm edit]

Several of the released excerpts (listed above) originated as, or are derivative of, soundtracks Eno created for art installations. Most notably The Shutov Assembly (view breakdown of Album's sources), Contra 1.2 thru to Compact Forest Proposal, Lux, CAM, and The Ship.

Installations & other works

Eno has created installations combining artworks and sound that have shown across the world since 1979, beginning with 2 Fifth Avenue and White Fence, in the Kitchen Centre, New York, NY. Typically Eno's installations feature light as a medium explored in multi-screen configurations, and music that is created to blur the boundaries between itself and its surroundings:

With each installation, Eno's music and artworks interrogate the visitors' perception of space and time within a seductive, immersive environment. Since his experiments with sound as an art student using reel to reel tape recorders, - and in art employing the medium of light, Eno has utilised breakthroughs in technology to develop 'processes rather than final objects', processes that in themselves have to "jolt your senses," have "got to be seductive." Once set in motion these processes produce potentially continuous music and artworks that Eno, though the artist, could not have imagined; and with them he creates the slowly unfolding immersive environments of his installations.

Early installations benefitted from breakthroughs in video technology that inspired Eno to use the TV screen as a monitor and enabled him to experiment with the opposite of the fast-moving narratives typical of TV to create evolving images with an almost imperceptible rate of change. "2 Fifth Avenue", ("a linear four-screen installation with music from Music For Airports") resulted from Eno shooting "the view from his apartment window: without ... intervention," recording "what was in front of the camera for an unspecified period of time ... In a simple but crude form of experimental post production, the colour controls of the monitors on which the work was shown were adjusted to wash out the picture, producing a high-contrast black and white image in which colour appeared only in the darkest areas. ... Eno manipulated colour as though painting, observing: 'video for me is a way of configuring light, just as painting is a way of configuring paint.'"

From the outset, Eno's video works, were "more in the sphere of paintings than of cinema". The author and artist John Coulthart called Mistaken Memories of Medieval Manhattan (1980–81), which incorporated music from Ambient 4: On Land (1982), "The first ambient film." He explains: "Eno filmed several static views of New York and its drifting cloudscape from his thirteenth-floor apartment in 1980–81. The low-grade equipment ... give[s] the images a hazy, impressionistic quality. Lack of a tripod meant filming with the camera lying on its side so the tape had to be re-viewed with a television monitor also turned on its side." And turning the TV on its side, says David A. Ross, "recontextualize[d] the television set, and ... subliminally shift[ed] the way the video image represents recognizable realities ... Natural phenomena like rain look quite different in this orientation; less familiar but curiously more real."

Thursday Afternoon (1985) was a return to using figurative form, for Eno had by now begun "to think that I could use my TVs as light sources rather than as image sources. ... TV was actually the most controllable light source that had ever been invented – because you could precisely specify the movement and behaviour of several million points of coloured light on a surface.." Turning the TV on its back, Eno played video colour fields of differing lengths of time that would slowly re-combine in different configurations. Placing ziggurats (3 dimensional constructions) of different lengths and sizes on top of the screens that defined each separate colour field, these served to project the internal light source upward. "The light from it was tangible as though caught in a cloud of vapour. Its slowly changing hues and striking colour collisions were addictive. We sat watching for ages, transfixed by this totally new experience of light as a physical presence." Calling these light sculptures Crystals (first shown in Boston in 1983), Eno further developed them for the Pictures of Venice exhibition at Gabriella Cardazzo's Cavallino Gallery (Venice,1985). Placing plexiglass on top of the structures he found that these further diffused the light so the shapes outlined through this surface appeared to be described differently in the slowly changing fields of light.

By positioning sound sources in different places and different heights in the exhibition room Eno intended that the music would be something listened to from the inside rather than the outside. For the I Dormienti show in 1999 that featured sculptures of sleeping figures by Mimmo Paladino in the middle of the circular room, Eno placed speakers in each of the 12 tunnels running from it.

Envisioning the speakers themselves as instruments, led to Eno's 'speaker flowers' becoming a feature of many installations, including at the Museo dell' Ara Pacis (Rome, 2008), again with Mimmo Paladino and 'Speaker Flowers and Lightboxes' at Castello Svevo in Trani (Italy 2017). Re-imagining the speaker as a flower with a voice that could be heard as it moved in the breeze, he made 'bunches' of them, "sculptural objects [that] ... consist of tiny chassis speakers attached to tall metal stands that sway in response to the sound they emit." The first version of these were shown at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam(1984). Since On Land (1982), Eno has sought to blur the boundaries between music and non-music and incorporates environmental sounds into his work. He treats synthesised and recorded sounds for specific effects.

In the antithesis of 20th century shock art, Eno's works create environments that are: "Envisioned as extensions of everyday life while offering a refuge from its stresses." Creating a space to reflect was a stated aim in Eno's Quiet Club series (1986-2001) of installations that have shown across the world, and include Music for Civic Recovery Centre at the David Toop curated Sonic Boom festival at the Hayward Gallery in 2000. The Quiet Club series grew from Eno's site-specific installations that included the Place series (1985-1989). These also featured light sculptures and audio with the addition of conventional materials, such as "tree trunks, fish bowls, ladders, rocks". Eno used these in unconventional ways to create new and unexpected experiences and modes of engagements, offering an extension of and refuge from, everyday life.

The continually flowing non-repeating music and art of Eno's installations militate against habituation to the work and maintain the visitors' engagement with it. "One of the things I enjoy about my shows is...lots of people sitting quietly watching something that has no story, few recognisable images and changes very slowly. It's somewhere between the experience of painting, cinema, music and meditation...I dispute the assumption that everyone's attention span is getting shorter: I find people are begging for experiences that are longer and slower, less "dramatic" and more sensual." Tanya Zimbardo writing on New Urban Spaces Series 4. "Compact Forest Proposal" for SF MOMA (2001) confirms: "During the first presentation of this work, as part of the exhibition 010101: Art in Technological Times at SFMOMA in 2001, visitors often spent considerable time in this dreamlike space."

In Eno's work, both art and music are released from their normal constraints. The music set up to randomly reconfigure is modal and abstract rather than tonal, and so the listener is freed from expectations set up by Western tonal harmonic conventions. The artworks in their continual slowly shifting combinations of colour (and in the case of 77 Million Paintings image re-configurations) themselves offer a continually engaging immersive experience through their unfolding fields of light.

77 Million Paintings
Developments in computer technology meant that the experience of Eno's unending non-repeatable generative art and music was no longer only possible in the public spaces of his exhibitions. With software developer and programmer Jake Dowie, Eno created a generative art/music installation 77 Million Paintings for the domestic environment. Developed for both PC and Mac, the process is explained by Nick Robertson in the accompanying booklet. "One way to approach this idea is to imagine that you have a large box full of painted components and you are allowed to blindly take out between one and four of these at any time and overlay them to make a complete painting. The selection of the elements and their duration in the painting is variable and arbitrarily determined…"

Most (nearly all) of the visual 'elements' were hand-painted by Eno onto glass slides, creating an organic heart to the work. Some of the slides had formed his earlier Natural Selections exhibition projected onto the windows of the Triennale in Milan. (1990). This exhibition marked the beginning of Eno's site specific installations that re-defined spaces on a large scale.

For the Triennale exhibition, Eno with Rolf Engel and Roland Blum at Atelier Markgraph, used new technology by Dataton that could be programmed to control the fade up and out times of the light sources. But, unlike the software developed for 77 Million, this was clumsy and limited the practical realisation of Eno's vision.

With the computer programmed to randomly select a combination of up to four images of different durations, the on screen painting continually reconfigures as each image slowly dissolves whilst another appears. The painting will be different for every viewer in every situation, uniquely defining each moment. Eno likens his role in creating this piece to one of a gardener planting seeds. And like a gardener he watches to see how they grow, waiting to see if further intervention is necessary. In the liner notes Nick Robertson explains: "Every user will buy exactly the same pack of 'seeds' but they will all grow in different ways and into distinct paintings, the vast majority of which, the artist himself has not even seen. …The original in art is no longer solely bound up in the physical object, but rather in the way the piece lives and grows."

Although designed for the domestic environment, 77 Million Paintings has been (and continues to be) exhibited in multi-screen installations across the world. It has also been projected onto architectural structures, including the sails of the Sydney Opera House (2009), Carioca Aqueduct (the Arcos di Lapa) Brazil (2012) and the giant Lovell Telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory (2016). During an exhibition at Fabrica Brighton, (2010) the orthopaedic surgeon Robin Turner noticed the calming effect the work had on the visitors. Turner asked Eno to provide a version for the Montefiore hospital in Hove. Since then 77 Million and Eno's latest "Light Boxes" have been commissioned for use in hospitals.

Montefiore Hospital Installations
In 2013, Eno created two permanent light and sound installations at Montefiore Hospital in Hove, East Sussex, England. In the hospital's reception area "77 Million Paintings for Montefiore" consists of eight plasma monitors mounted on the wall in a diagonally radiating flower-like pattern. They display an evolving collage of coloured patterns and shapes whilst Eno's generative ambient music plays discreetly in the background. The other aptly named "Quiet Room for Montefiore" (available for patients, visitors and staff) is a space set apart for meditative reflection. It is a moderately sized room with three large panels displaying dissolves of subtle colours in patterns that are reminiscent of Mondrian paintings. The environment brings Eno's ambient music into focus and facilitates the visitors' cognitive drift, freeing them to contemplate or relax.

Spore
Eno composed most of the music for the Electronic Arts video game Spore (2008), assisted by his long-term collaborator, the musician and programmer Peter Chilvers. Much of the music is generative and responsive to the player's position within the game.

iOS apps
Inspired by possibilities presented to Eno and Chilvers whilst working together on the generative soundtrack for the video game Spore (2008), the two began to release generative music in the Apple App format. They set up the website generativemusic.com and created generative music applications for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad:

 Bloom (2008)
 Trope (2009)
 Scape (2012)
 Reflection (2016)

In 2009, Chilvers and Sandra O'Neill also created an App entitled Air (released through generativemusic.com as well)—based on concepts developed by Eno in his Ambient 1: Music for Airports album.

Reflection
The generative version of Reflection is the fourth iOS App created by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers: of generativemusic.com. Unlike other Apps they released Reflection provides no real options other than Play/Pause – later, in its initial update, Airplay and Sleep Timer options were added. As Apple had started increasing prices for Apps sold in UK, they lowered its price. For those who'd bought the app at a higher price, Eno and Chilvers provided links to a free download of a four track album called 'Sisters' (each track with a 15:14 duration). The following appears on the app's Apple iTunes page:

Previous to the updates for the App, the iTunes page used the following from Eno.

The version of Reflection available on the fixed formats (CD, Vinyl and download File) consists of two (joined) excerpts from the Reflection app. This was revealed in Brian's interview with Philip Sherburne:

Artworks: Light Boxes
Eno's "light boxes" utilise advances in LED technology that has enabled him to re-imagine his ziggurat light paintings - and early light boxes as featured in Kite Stories (1999) - for the domestic environment. The light boxes feature slowly changing combinations of colour fields that draw attention differently to the shapes outlined by delineating structures within. As the paintings slowly evolve each passing moment is defined differently, drawing the viewer's focus into the present moment. The writer and cultural essayist Michael Bracewell writes that the viewer "is also encouraged to engage with a generative sensor/aesthetic experience that reflects the ever-changing moods and randomness of life itself". He likens Eno's art to "Matisse or Rothko at their most enfolding."

First shown commercially at the Paul Stolper Gallery in London (forming the Light Music exhibition in 2016 that included lenticular paintings by Eno), light boxes have been shown across the world. They remain in permanent display in both private and public spaces. Recognised for their therapeutic contemplative benefits, Eno's light paintings have been commissioned for specially dedicated places of reflection including in Chelsea and Westminster hospital, the Montefiore Hospital in Hove and a three and a half metre lightbox for the sanctuary room in the Macmillan Horizon Centre in Brighton.

Obscure Records
Eno started the Obscure Records label in Britain in 1975 to release works by lesser-known composers. The first group of three releases included his own composition, Discreet Music, and the now-famous The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) and Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971) by Gavin Bryars. The second side of Discreet Music consisted of several versions of German baroque composer Johann Pachelbel's Canon, the composition which Eno had previously chosen to precede Roxy Music's appearances on stage and to which he applied various algorithmic transformations, rendering it almost unrecognisable. Side one consisted of a tape loop system for generating music from relatively sparse input. These tapes had previously been used as backgrounds in some of his collaborations with Robert Fripp, most notably on Evening Star. Ten albums were released on Obscure, including works by John Adams, Michael Nyman, and John Cage.

Other work

In 1995, Eno travelled with Edinburgh University's Professor Nigel Osborne to Bosnia in the aftermath of the Bosnian War, to work with war-traumatised children, many of whom had been orphaned in the conflict.  Osborne and Eno led music therapy projects run by War Child in Mostar, at the Pavarotti centre, Bosnia 1995.

Eno appeared as Father Brian Eno at the "It's Great Being a Priest!" convention, in "Going to America", the final episode of the television sitcom Father Ted, which originally aired on 1 May 1998 on Channel 4.

In March 2008, Eno collaborated with the Italian artist Mimmo Paladino on a show of the latter's works with Eno's soundscapes at Ara Pacis in Rome, and in 2011, he joined Stephen Deazley and Edinburgh University music lecturer Martin Parker in an Icebreaker concert at Glasgow City Halls, heralded as a "long-awaited clash".

In 2013, Eno sold limited edition prints of artwork from his 2012 album Lux from his website.

In 2016, Eno was added to Edinburgh University's roll of honour and in 2017, he delivered the Andrew Carnegie Lecture at the university.

Eno continues to be active in other artistic fields. His sound installations have been exhibited in many prestigious venues around the world, including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Vancouver Art Gallery, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Baltic Art Centre, Gateshead, and the Sydney, São Paulo, Josep Tarradellas Barcelona–El Prat Airport, FF Projects, San Pedro Garza García, and Venice Biennials.

In 2020-2021 Eno is working with a group of developers on audio-video conferencing software and service that addresses issues of corporate video conferencing software (like Zoom) when used for other purposes.

Awards and honours
Asteroid 81948 Eno, discovered by Marc Buie at Cerro Tololo in 2000, was named in his honour. The official  was published by the Minor Planet Center on 18 May 2019 ().

In 2019, he was awarded Starmus Festival's Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication for Music & Arts.

Influence and legacy

Eno is frequently referred to as one of popular music's most influential artists. Producer and film composer Jon Brion has said: "I think he's the most influential artist since the Beatles." Critic Jason Ankeny at AllMusic argues that Eno "forever altered the ways in which music is approached, composed, performed, and perceived, and everything from punk to techno to new age bears his unmistakable influence." Eno has spread his techniques and theories primarily through his production; his distinctive style informed a number of projects in which he has been involved, including Bowie's "Berlin Trilogy" (helping to popularise minimalism) and the albums he produced for Talking Heads (incorporating, on Eno's advice, African music and polyrhythms), Devo, and other groups. Eno's first collaboration with David Byrne, 1981's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, utilised sampling techniques and broke ground by incorporating world music into popular Western music forms. Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies have been used by many bands, and Eno's production style has proven influential in several general respects: "his recording techniques have helped change the way that modern musicians;– particularly electronic musicians;– view the studio. No longer is it just a passive medium through which they communicate their ideas but itself a new instrument with seemingly endless possibilities." According to Vinyl Me, Please writer Jack Riedy, Eno's peak as an artist coincided with the album era – a period in popular music during which the album surpassed the single as the dominant recorded-music format – "and Eno took full advantage of the format to pursue all his musical ideas on wax."

Whilst inspired by the ideas of minimalist composers including John Cage, Terry Riley and Erik Satie, Eno coined the term ambient music to describe his own work and defined the term. The Ambient Music Guide states that he has brought from "relative obscurity into the popular consciousness" fundamental ideas about ambient music, including "the idea of modern music as subtle atmosphere, as chill-out, as impressionistic, as something that creates space for quiet reflection or relaxation." His groundbreaking work in electronic music has been said to have brought widespread attention to and innovations in the role of electronic technology in recording. Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright said he "often eulogised" Eno's abilities.

Eno's "unconventional studio predilections", in common with those of Peter Gabriel, were an influence on the recording of "In the Air Tonight", the single which launched the solo career of Eno's former drummer Phil Collins. Collins said he "learned a lot" from working with Eno. Both Half Man Half Biscuit (in the song "Eno Collaboration" on the EP of the same name) and MGMT have written songs about Eno. LCD Soundsystem has frequently cited Eno as a key influence. The Icelandic singer Björk also credited Eno as a major influence.

Mora sti Fotia (Babies on Fire), one of the most influential Greek rock bands, was named after Eno's song "Baby's on Fire" from the 1973 album Here Come the Warm Jets.

In 2011, Belgian academics from the Royal Museum for Central Africa named a species of Afrotropical spider Pseudocorinna brianeno in his honour.

In September 2016, asked by the website Just Six Degrees to name a currently influential artist, Eno cited the conceptual, video and installation artist Jeremy Deller as a source of current inspiration: "Deller's work is often technically very ambitious, involving organising large groups of volunteers and helpers, but he himself is almost invisible in the end result. I'm inspired by this quietly subversive way of being an artist, setting up situations and then letting them play out. To me it's a form of social generative art where the 'generators' are people and their experiences, and where the role of the artist is to create a context within which they collide and create."

Personal life
Eno has married twice. In March 1967, at the age of 18, Eno married Sarah Grenville. The couple had a daughter, Hannah Louise (b. 1967), before their divorce. In 1988, Eno married his then-manager Anthea Norman-Taylor. They have two daughters, Irial Violet (b. 1990) and Darla Joy (b. 1991).

In an interview with Michael Bonner, published in the May 2020 issue of Uncut, Eno referred to Ray Hearn as his current manager, and also referred to his girlfriend.

Raised Catholic, Eno has referred to himself as "kind of an evangelical atheist" but has also professed an interest in religion. In 1996, Eno and others started the Long Now Foundation to educate the public about the very long-term future of society and to encourage long-term thinking in the exploration of enduring solutions to global issues. Through the Long Now foundation's Long Bets, he won a $500 bet made in 2003 () by challenging someone who predicted a Democrat would be president of the United States following the 2004 election.

In 1991, Eno appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. His chosen book was Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty and his luxury item was a radio telescope.

Politics
In 2007, Eno joined the Liberal Democrats as youth adviser under Nick Clegg.

In 2017, Eno signed an open letter as a member of the Labour Party and has stated that voting for the Liberal Democrats is "voting Tory without admitting it". In August 2015, he endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election. He said at a rally in Camden Town Hall: "I don't think electability really is the most important thing. What's important is that someone changes the conversation and moves us off this small-minded agenda." He later wrote in The Guardian: "He's [Corbyn] been doing this with courage and integrity and with very little publicity. This already distinguishes him from at least half the people in Westminster, whose strongest motivation seems to have been to get elected, whatever it takes."

In 2006, Eno was one of more than 100 artists and writers who signed an open letter calling for an international boycott of Israeli political and cultural institutions. and in January 2009 he spoke out against Israel's military action on the Gaza Strip by writing an opinion for CounterPunch and participating in a large-scale protest in London. In 2014, Eno again protested publicly against what he called a "one-sided exercise in ethnic cleansing" and a "war [with] no moral justification," in reference to the 2014 military operation of Israel into Gaza. He was also a co-signatory, along with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker and others, to a letter published in The Guardian that labelled the conflict as an "inhumane and illegal act of military aggression" and called for "a comprehensive and legally binding military embargo on Israel, similar to that imposed on South Africa during apartheid."

In 2013, Eno became a patron of Videre est Credere (Latin: "to see is to believe"), a UK human rights charity. Videre describes itself as "give[ing] local activists the equipment, training and support needed to safely capture compelling video evidence of human rights violations. This captured footage is verified, analysed and then distributed to those who can create change." He participates alongside movie producers Uri Fruchtmann and Terry Gilliam – along with executive director of Greenpeace UK John Sauven.

Eno was appointed President of Stop the War Coalition in 2017. He has had a long involvement with the organisation since it was set up in 2001.
He is also a trustee of the environmental law charity ClientEarth, Somerset House, and the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, set up by Mariana Mazzucato.

Eno opposes United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. Following the June 2016 referendum result when the British public voted to leave, Eno was among a group of British musicians who signed a letter to the Prime Minister Theresa May calling for a second referendum.

In November 2019, along with other public figures, Eno signed a letter supporting Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn describing him as "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism, xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world" and endorsed him for in the 2019 UK general election. In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, he signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few."

In April, 2021, Eno was a participant in the "Live for Gaza", online concert which was held in April 2021. Artists from, Gaza included Gaza's first rock group Osprey V, Wafaa Alnjeili, and Badeel Band.

Brian Eno is an early and prominent member of Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) where he contributes, issues statements, and takes part in media events and discussions.

Selected discography
This is an incomplete list.

Solo studio albums

 Here Come the Warm Jets (Island, 1974)
 Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (Island, 1974)
 Another Green World (Island, 1975)
 Discreet Music (Obscure, 1975)
 Before and After Science (Polydor, 1977)
 Ambient 1: Music for Airports (Polydor, 1978)
 Music for Films (Polydor, 1978)
 Ambient 4: On Land (EG, 1982)
 Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks (E.G., 1983)
 Thursday Afternoon (E.G., 1985)
 Nerve Net (Opal/All Saints, 1992)
 The Shutov Assembly (Opal/All Saints, 1992)
 Neroli (Opal/All Saints, 1993)
 Headcandy (BMG, 1994)
 The Drop (All Saints, 1997)
 Another Day on Earth (Hannibal, 2005)
 Lux (Warp, 2012)
 The Ship (Warp, 2016)
 Reflection (Warp, 2017)
 ForeverAndEverNoMore (Verve/UMC, 2022)

Ambient installation albums
 Extracts from Music for White Cube, London 1997 (Opal, 1997)
 Lightness: Music for the Marble Palace (Opal, 1997)
 I Dormienti (Opal, 1999)
 Kite Stories (Opal, 1999)
 Music for Civic Recovery Centre (Opal, 2000)
 Compact Forest Proposal (Opal, 2001)
 January 07003: Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now (Opal, 2003)

See also
List of ambient music artists

Bibliography
 Bernard Olivier, Brian Eno. Le Magicien du son, Rosières-en-Haye, Camion Blanc, 2022, 706 p.

Footnotes

References

Sources

Further reading

  Limited edition of 2000 copies.

External links

 Eno's work in sound and light, past and present

 Paul Morley interviews Eno in The Guardian, 17 January 2010
 Interview with Brian Eno from The Guardian, 19 May 2006
 Brian Eno: The Philosophy of Surrender interview November 2008

 MoreDarkThanShark.org's webpage "Brian Eno – Installations".

1948 births
Living people
20th-century British painters
21st-century British painters
801 (band) members
All Saints Records artists
Alumni of the University of Southampton
Ambient composers
Ambient musicians
Aphorists
Art pop musicians
Art rock musicians
Astralwerks artists
Brit Award winners
British agnostics
British anti-war activists
British anti–Iraq War activists
British atheists
British contemporary artists
British electronic musicians
British experimental musicians
British male composers
British male painters
British people of Belgian descent
British record producers
British world music musicians
E.G. Records artists
Former Roman Catholics
Glam rock musicians
Grammy Award winners
Hansa Records artists
Island Records artists
Labour Party (UK) people
Minimalist composers
People educated at St Joseph's College, Ipswich
People from Woodbridge, Suffolk
Polydor Records artists
Progressive pop musicians
Roxy Music members
Rykodisc artists
Virgin Records artists
Warner Records artists
Warp (record label) artists

Brian Eno


The Southern Line is a commuter rail line operated by Metrorail Western Cape, connecting Cape Town station in central Cape Town, South Africa with the Southern Suburbs and the towns on the west coast of False Bay, terminating in Simon's Town.

History
The Wynberg Railway Company was established in 1861 to build a railway line from Salt River Junction to Wynberg, which opened on 19 December 1864. In 1876 the company was taken over by the Cape Government Railways, and the line, which had originally been built to the standard gauge, was rebuilt to Cape gauge.

The extension to Muizenberg opened on 15 December 1882, and a further extension to Kalk Bay on 5 May 1883. The final extension, to the naval base at Simon's Town, opened on 1 December 1890. The line was electrified with overhead catenary in 1928.

Operation
The line runs on "Cape gauge"  track, and is electrified with 3,000 V DC overhead catenary. Service on the line is provided by Electric Multiple Units of Class 5M2A and Class 10M5. The units are made up in an eight-car configuration, shorter than on the other Metrorail routes in Cape Town, because many of the platforms on the Southern Line are too short to handle longer trains.

Tourism
In 2007, Cape Town Tourism, the City of Cape Town, and Metrorail collaborated to promote the Southern Line as a tourist route, focusing on tourist attractions near Cape Town, Observatory, Newlands, Muizenberg, Kalk Bay and Simon's Town stations. This includes a "hop-on, hop-off" ticket allowing unlimited travel on the line during off-peak hours.

Route

The line has a single service route, which begins at Cape Town station, with trains travelling east through Woodstock and Salt River on tracks shared with other Metrorail routes (the Cape Flats Line and the line towards Mutual). After Salt River, the route bends southwards, passing through the Southern Suburbs stations at Observatory, Mowbray, Rosebank, Rondebosch, Newlands, Claremont, Harfield Road and Kenilworth to Wynberg.

Beyond Wynberg, the route travels on southwards stopping at Wittebome, Plumstead, Steurhof, Diep River, Heathfield (where it is joined by the Cape Flats Line) and Retreat; some Southern Line trains terminate here. Most trains on the line, however, continue south through stations at Lakeside and False Bay before reaching Muizenberg, where the railway line meets the False Bay coast.

From Muizenberg the line runs south-west, immediately beside the coast, with only a thin strip of rocks and beach separating the tracks from the sea. The stations at St. James and Kalk Bay are popular with beachgoers, as is Fish Hoek. The double track ends at Fish Hoek, and so do many trains on the line. Those that continue wind along the coastline on single tracks through Sunny Cove and Glencairn to the terminus at Simon's Town.

References

External links
Cape Metrorail
Southern Line Tourism Route
Steam tourism

Railway lines in South Africa
Metrorail (South Africa)
3 ft 6 in gauge railways in South Africa
Railway lines opened in 1882

Southern Line (Cape Town)


Habituation is a basic activity whereby an animal responds less to repeated stimuli. It is a primitive kind of learning.<ref> Carew T.J. 2000. Behavioral neurobiology: the cellular organization of natural behavior. Sinauer Associates.</ref>

The learning that underlies habituation is a basic process of biological systems. Animals do not need conscious motivation or awareness for it to occur. Habituation enables organisms to distinguish meaningful information from background stimuli.

Habituation occurs in all animals, as well as in the large protozoan Stentor coeruleus. The decrease in responding is specific to the habituated stimulus. For example, if one was habituated to the taste of lemon, their responding would increase significantly when presented with the taste of lime.

Two factors that can influence habituation include the time between each stimulus, and the length of time the stimulus is presented. Shorter intervals and longer durations increase habituation, and vice versa''.

Human example
Habituation need not be conscious. For example, a short time after a person dresses, the stimulus clothing creates disappears from our nervous systems and we become unaware of it. In this way, habituation is used to ignore any continual stimulus. This sort of habituation can occur through changes in sensory nerves themselves, and through negative feedback from the brain to peripheral sensory organs.

References

Learning
Physiology

Habituation


William Ewart Adshead (10 April 1901 – 26 January 1951) was an English cricketer who played 12 first-class matches for Worcestershire in the 1920s. He was later known as William Ewart Barnie-Adshead.

Adshead made his first-class debut for Worcestershire against Sussex at Worcester in August 1922, scoring 4 and 17. He did not play again until 1924, and in that and the following season appeared a total of 10 times, holding 13 catches. He scored his only half-century when he made 51 against Warwickshire at Edgbaston in May 1925; this was the only match in which he acted as wicket-keeper. He did not play at all in 1926 or 1927, but returned for one final game against Nottinghamshire in 1928, scoring 1 and 0 and taking one catch.

Adshead was born in Tividale, Dudley; he died at the age of 49 in Edgbaston, Birmingham.

His brother, Frank, played twice for Worcestershire in 1927.

References

External links

1901 births
1951 deaths
English cricketers
Worcestershire cricketers
Cricketers from the West Midlands

William Adshead


A butterfly knife (or Balisong) is a type of pocket knife that originally came from the Philippines. It has two handles that rotate. When it is closed, the blades of the knife are completely hidden. Because it has often been used for crimes, many countries have made butterfly knifes illegal.

Blades

Butterfly knife


Alexander III  (Medieval ; Modern Gaelic: ; 4 September 1241 – 19 March 1286) was King of Scots from 1249 until his death. He concluded the Treaty of Perth, by which Scotland acquired sovereignty over the Western Isles and the Isle of Man. His heir, Margaret, Maid of Norway, died before she could be crowned.

Life
Alexander was born at Roxburgh, the only son of Alexander II by his second wife Marie de Coucy. Alexander's father died on 6 July 1249 and he became king at the age of seven, inaugurated at Scone on 13 July 1249.

The years of his minority featured an embittered struggle for the control of affairs between two rival parties, the one led by Walter Comyn, Earl of Menteith, the other by Alan Durward, Justiciar of Scotia. The former dominated the early years of Alexander's reign. At the marriage of Alexander to Margaret of England in 1251, Henry III of England seized the opportunity to demand homage from his son-in-law for the Scottish kingdom, but Alexander did not comply. In 1255, an interview between the English and Scottish kings at Kelso led to Menteith and his party losing to Durward's party. But though disgraced, they still retained great influence, and two years later, seizing the person of the king, they compelled their rivals to consent to the erection of a regency representative of both parties.

On attaining his majority at the age of 21 in 1262, Alexander declared his intention of resuming the projects on the Western Isles which the death of his father thirteen years before had cut short. He laid a formal claim before King Haakon IV of Norway.  Haakon rejected the claim, and in the following year responded with a formidable invasion. Sailing around the west coast of Scotland he halted off the Isle of Arran, and negotiations commenced. Alexander artfully prolonged the talks until the autumn storms should begin. At length Haakon, weary of delay, attacked, only to encounter a terrific storm which greatly damaged his ships. The Battle of Largs (October 1263) proved indecisive, but even so, Haakon's position was hopeless. Baffled, he turned homewards, but died in Orkney on 15 December 1263. The Isles now lay at Alexander's feet, and in 1266 Haakon's successor concluded the Treaty of Perth by which he ceded the Isle of Man and the Western Isles to Scotland in return for a monetary payment. Norway retained Orkney and Shetland until 1469 when they became a dowry for James III's bride, Margaret of Denmark.

Death of Alexander III

Alexander had married Margaret, daughter of King Henry III of England and Eleanor of Provence, on 26 December 1251, when he was ten years old and she was eleven. She died in 1275, after they had had three children.
 Margaret (28 February 1261 – 9 April 1283), who married King Eric II of Norway
 Alexander, Prince of Scotland (21 January 1264 Jedburgh – 28 January 1284 Lindores Abbey); buried in Dunfermline Abbey
 David (20 March 1272 – June 1281 Stirling Castle); buried in Dunfermline Abbey

According to the Lanercost Chronicle, Alexander did not spend his decade as a widower alone: "he used never to forbear on account of season nor storm, nor for perils of flood or rocky cliffs, but would visit none too creditably nuns or matrons, virgins or widows as the fancy seized him, sometimes in disguise."

Towards the end of Alexander's reign, the death of all three of his children within a few years made the question of the succession one of pressing importance. In 1284 he induced the Estates to recognize as his heir-presumptive his granddaughter Margaret, the "Maid of Norway". The need for a male heir led him to contract a second marriage to Yolande de Dreux on 1 November 1285.

Alexander died in a fall from his horse while riding in the dark to visit the queen at Kinghorn in Fife on 19 March 1286 because it was her birthday the next day. He had spent the evening at Edinburgh Castle celebrating his second marriage and overseeing a meeting with royal advisors. He was cautioned against making the journey to Fife because of weather conditions, but crossed the Forth from Dalmeny to Inverkeithing anyway. On arriving in Inverkeithing, he insisted on not stopping for the night, despite the pleas of the nobles accompanying him and one of the burgesses of the town, Alexander Le Saucier. Le Saucier (who was either linked to the King's kitchen or the master of the local saltpans) must have been known to the King, since his rather blunt warning to the King lacks the usual deference: "My lord, what are you doing out in such weather and darkness? How many times have I tried to persuade you that midnight travelling will do you no good?"

However, Alexander ignored the repeated warnings about travelling in a storm, and set off with his retinue and two local guides. The king became separated from his party near Kinghorn, and was found dead with a broken neck near the shore the following morning. It is assumed that his horse lost its footing in the dark. While some texts say that he fell off a cliff, there is none at the site where his body was found; however, there is a very steep rocky embankment, which "would have been fatal in the dark." After Alexander's death, his realm was plunged into a period of darkness that would eventually lead to war with England. He was buried in Dunfermline Abbey.

As Alexander left no surviving children, the heir to the throne was his unborn child by Queen Yolande. When Yolande's pregnancy ended, probably with a miscarriage, Alexander's three-year-old granddaughter Margaret, Maid of Norway, became the heir. Margaret died, still uncrowned, on her way to Scotland in 1290. The inauguration of John Balliol as king on 30 November 1292 ended the six years of the Guardians of Scotland governing the land.

The death of Alexander and the subsequent period of instability in Scotland was lamented in an early Scots poem recorded by Andrew of Wyntoun in his Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland.

In 1886, a monument to Alexander III was erected at the approximate location of his death in Kinghorn.

Fictional portrayals

Alexander III has been depicted in historical novels. They include:

The Thirsty Sword (1892) by Robert Leighton. The novel depicts the "Norse invasion of Scotland" (1262–1263, part of the Scottish–Norwegian War) and the Battle of Largs. It includes depictions of Alexander III and his opponent Haakon IV of Norway.
Alexander the Glorious (1965) by Jane Oliver. The novel covers the entire reign of Alexander III (1249–1286), "almost entirely from Alexander's viewpoint".
The Crown in Darkness (1988) by Paul C. Doherty. A crime fiction novel where Hugh Corbett investigates the "mysterious death" of Alexander III (1286). Alexander supposedly suffered a fatal fall from his horse. But there are suspicions of murder. The novel concludes that Alexander was indeed murdered "by a fanatical servant" of Edward I of England. The killer acting according to "Edward's secret desire to overwhelm and control Scotland". Doherty suggests that the personal relations of the two kings were strained by constant arguments, though this is not confirmed by historical sources.
Quest For A Maid (1988) by Frances Mary Hendry. The novel depicts the life of Meg, her power-hungry older sister Inge, Lady Marjorie, Countess of Carrick and their part in securing the succession of Lady Marjorie's son Robert the Bruce to the Scottish throne.  It includes depictions of Alexander III's death as "falling off a cliff" with sorcery as the cause.
Insurrection (2010) by Robyn Young. This novel is the first of a series of novels primarily about the life and times of Robert the Bruce. However, it covers Alexander III and the circumstances surrounding his death in some detail.
Raphael Holinshed, in his oft-fanciful history of England in his Chronicles, stated that at Alexander III's wedding, a horrible monster, mostly skeleton but with raw flesh, appeared at the end of the procession and caused the wedding to be hurriedly concluded. This was, in tradition, an omen of death.
Crusader (1991) by Nigel Tranter. This novel follows the minority of Alexander III and his relationship with David de Lindsay. Tranter, who has written scores of historical novels spanning the range of Scotland's history, also wrote "Envoy Extraordinary" (1999) (about Patrick Earl of Dunbar) and "True Thomas" (1981) (about Thomas the Rhymer), both of which take place during the reign of Alexander III, and in which Alexander is a featured character.

Ancestry

Notes

Sources
Anderson, Alan Orr (ed.), Early Sources of Scottish History: AD 500–1286, 2 Vols, (Edinburgh, 1922), republished, Marjorie Anderson (ed.) (Stamford, 1991)
idem (ed.), Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers: AD 500–1286, (London, 1908), republished, Marjorie Anderson (ed.) (Stamford, 1969)
.

.

Scott, Robert McNair. Robert the Bruce: King of Scots, 1869

Further reading

 Alexander III at the official website of the British monarchy
 Alexander III at BBC History

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1241 births
1286 deaths
House of Dunkeld
Nobility from the Scottish Borders
Deaths by horse-riding accident in Scotland
Medieval child monarchs
13th-century Scottish monarchs
Burials at Dunfermline Abbey
Scottish people of the Wars of Scottish Independence
Gaelic monarchs in Scotland
Scottish Roman Catholics

Alexander III of Scotland


Aethia is a genus of four small (85–300g) auklets endemic to the North Pacific Ocean, Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk and among some of North America's most abundant seabirds. The relationships between the four true auklets remains unclear. Auklets are threatened by invasive species such as Arctic foxes (Alopex lagopus) and Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) because of their high degree of coloniality and crevice-nesting.

Taxonomy and evolution

The genus Aethia occurs only in the North Pacific and adjacent waters, mainly in the Bering Sea region. Along with Cassin's auklet (Ptychoramphus aleuticus) they comprise the monophyletic tribe Aethinii. Molecular work has not yet resolved the relationship between the Aethia auklets, but the group is a sister group to Cassin's auklet, which is, in turn, a sister group to the Fraterculine auks (puffins and rhinoceros auklet).

The genus Aethia did not enter into widespread use until the 1960s. Initially, the auklets were placed in Alca, but later reorganized into genera including: Simorhynchus, Phaleris and Cyclorhynchus. Cyclorhynchus is still occasionally used for the parakeet auklet.

Fossil record
The first undisputed auk fossils are from the middle Miocene (15 million years ago). The first Aethia fossils date from the late Miocene (8–13 million years ago) and the four extant species likely diverged rapidly about 5 million years ago.

There are one or two fossil species which lived in the area of today's California during the Late Miocene: Aethia rossmoori Howard, 1968 (Monterrey Formation of Orange County), and an undescribed taxon tentatively placed in this genus.
From the Pliocene there are Aethia barnesi N. A. Smith, 2013 (San Mateo Formation of San Diego County, California, and Aethia storeri N. A. Smith, 2013 (San Mateo Formation of San Diego County, California.

Species
There are four species of Aethia.

Distribution

Population estimates
Censusing breeding auklets can be difficult because they nest in hidden crevices. At present, population estimates are:
 Least auklet - 20,000,000+
 Whiskered auklet - 100,000 - 250,000
 Crested auklet - 5,000,000 - 10,000,000
 Parakeet auklet - 1,000,000 - 2,000,000

Breeding season
Aethia auklets are endemic to the North Pacific Ocean and Sea of Okhotsk with notable Asian colonies in the Kuril Islands, Commander Islands, along the Kamchatka and Chukota Peninsulas. In North America, large colonies are in the Aleutian Islands (Buldir, Kiska, Semisopochnoi and Gareloi) to the Gulf of Alaska and north to the islands of the Bering Sea (St. Lawrence Island, Pribilof Islands, St. Matthew Island).

Auklets have a high site fidelity, at both the colony and crevice level, although there can be a high divorce rate of up to 33% in least and crested auklets when both mates survive.

Winter distribution
The Winter distribution of auklets is poorly known. Whiskered auklets likely winter near to breeding colonies and many were reported by Aleuts to winter in the general area. Auklets from the northern Bering Sea must move further south because of pack ice surrounding colonies during the winter.

Breeding
Auklets are typically very social and nest in dense colonies (Parakeet auklets are more dispersed). All have some form of facial ornamentation such as large crests (Whiskered and crested auklets), auricular plumes (all four species), and crested and whiskered auklets have a tangerine-scented odour which may function in mate choice or species recognition, although this requires more study.

All Aethia auklets lay one white egg in a natural crevice and incubate for 25–36 days, after which, a semi-precocial chick emerges and fledges after 25–35 days. Age at first breeding is estimated at 3–5 years. Colony sizes are highly variable, and range from less than 100 individuals to over 1 million, although least and crested auklets tend to nest in greater density than parakeet and whiskered auklets.

Diet
The auklets are mainly planktivores, eating a variety of calanoid copepods, euphausiids and other invertebrates such as jellyfish and ctenophores. Winter diet has not been studied.

Threats and conservation
Because they nest in crevices, auklets are vulnerable to predation by rats, and have been extirpated from some islands that contained Arctic foxes introduced for farming. Eradication of rats from Rat Island was completed in 2008 and 2009.

The large colony at Sirius Point, Kiska Island, Alaska (perhaps the largest auklet colony in the world) experienced almost complete breeding failure in 2001 and 2002 because of rat predation and disturbance and has been the focus of researchers at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

References

Bird genera
Alcidae
Taxa named by Blasius Merrem

Aethia


Enoch Steen (February 22, 1800 – January 22, 1880) was a United States military officer and western explorer. He joined the United States Army in 1832, serving at posts throughout the United States, including many remote locations in the west. During his military service, Steen explored parts of the western United States including large areas of southern New Mexico and southeastern Oregon. He served as the commander of several Union Army forts during the American Civil War. Today, there are landmarks in Oklahoma, Oregon, and New Mexico named in his honor; however, many of the place names are misspelled as Stein.

Early life

Steen was born on 22 February 1800 in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. His parents were Frederick Steen and Katherine Rector Steen. He was the third of five children. His family moved to Missouri when he was young. Growing up on the American frontier, Steen became a well known woodsman and hunter. As a young man, Steen worked as a surveyor before joining the volunteer Mounted Rangers as a second lieutenant on 16 July 1832.

Junior officer duty

Steen transferred to the United States Army's 1st United States Dragoons as a second lieutenant on 19 September 1833. He was one of the initial cadre of officers to stand-up this historic cavalry unit. In 1834, he was stationed at 1st Dragoon headquarters at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In 1835, he accompanied Colonel Henry Dodge on an expedition up the Platte River, following its south fork to the Rocky Mountains and then returning by way of Bent's Fort, the Arkansas River, and the Santa Fe Trail. Later that year, Steen joined Colonel Stephen W. Kearny on an expedition along the Platte and then east to the Missouri River, meeting with Potawatomi Indians at Council Bluffs before returning to Fort Leavenworth.

Steen was promoted to first lieutenant on 5 March 1836 and then captain on 31 December 1840. While the record is not clear, it appears Steen was stationed at Fort Gibson in the Indian Territory during this period. It is known that he dispatched a detachment of dragoons from that location to escort a wagon train to Santa Fe in 1843.

Steen began the Mexican War as a captain. He departed San Antonio, Texas on 29 September 1846, leading two companies of dragoons assigned to escort General John E. Wool and his staff to the front in Mexico. During the Battle of Buena Vista on 23 February 1847, Steen led a detachment of cavalry in a charge against a large body of Mexican lancers who were attempting to capture a United States Army supply train. Steen's attack broke and dispersed the Mexican lancer formation, saving the Army's supplies. Steen was severely wounded during the battle, earning a brevet promotion to major for personal gallantry and meritorious conduct. Steen's brevet promotion was effective as of 23 February 1847, the day of the battle.

New Mexico

In the summer of 1849, Steen escorted a civilian party from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fe in New Mexico Territory. After completing his escort duty, he established and commanded an Army outpost at Doña Ana in southern New Mexico. From there, Steen with a detachment of 50 cavalrymen tracked a band of Mimbres Apache raiders to the Santa Rita copper mines. Steen and his men engaged and defeated the Indians on 16 August 1849. However, Steen was badly wounded during the battle. This was the first military engagement between the United States Army and Apache warriors.

In June 1850, Steen led an expedition through the Organ Mountains, around the southern edge of the White Sands desert area and into Mescalero Apache country when he ran into a superior Indian force, and he withdrew to Doña Ana. Based on his reconnaissance, Steen recommended that an Army post be established near the Santa Rita mines. The Army agreed with Steen's recommendation, and Fort Webster was established in 1852. Steen was assigned as the fort's first commander.

However, before taking command, Steen was sent back east to lead 183 Army recruits to New Mexico for duty. Steen finally took command of Fort Webster on 7 April 1853. Shortly after taking command, he successfully negotiated peace treaties with Mangas Colorado, head chief of the Mimbreno Apaches and Victorio, war chief of the Mimbreno Apaches. In May 1853, Steen escorted William Carr Lane from Fort Webster to the Gila River. It was probably during this trip that Steins Peak and Stein's Pass in southwestern New Mexico acquired their place names. Both were important reference points for frontier travelers. Steen was promoted to the permanent grade of major on 15 July 1853.
While he was on leave the post of Fort Webster was abandoned, and Fort Thorn opened on the Rio Grande.  Upon his return in May 1854 Steen took command of that post until December.  In 1856, Steen negotiated an agreement with Cochise, chief of the Chiricahua Apaches, allowing settlers to cross Apache land while traveling to California.

In 1857, Steen helped establish Camp Moore near present-day Rio Rico, Arizona. In 1858, Steen established Fort Buchanan in the newly acquired Gadsden Purchase (near present-day Sonoita, Arizona), and became the post's first commander. He hoped the outpost would deter Chiricahua Apache raids in the Sonoita Valley area. Later that year, he escorted a survey party led by Lieutenant Edward Beale along a proposed road route from Fort Smith, Arkansas to the Colorado River. During the trip, Steen's Buttes in Caddo County, Oklahoma was named in his honor. Steen then led six companies of cavalry into Utah as the Mormon War was coming to a close.

Oregon

By 1860, Steen was posted in Oregon. On 28 March of that year, General William S. Harney ordered him to lead an expedition from Fort Dalles to Harney Lake, a distance of . Steen's party followed the Walla Walla road to the mouth of the Deschutes River. He then turned south passing through the Ochoco highlands and the Trout Creek area before exploring the upper Deschutes River country. Near Pilot Butte, Steen turned east toward Harney Lake conducting road survey work along the way. While en route, another Army survey party led by Captain Andrew J. Smith was attacked by Indians north of Harney Lake. Steen immediately abandoned his survey work  and proceeded to the Harney Lake where he joined Smith and his party. To protect the survey teams in the area, Steen established Camp Union on Silver Creek,  north of Harney Lake.

On a reconnaissance expedition from Camp Union, Steen explored the country along the Donner und Blitzen River, south of Harney Lake. After a skirmish with Paiute Indians in that area, he chased the Indians over a rugged peak that Hudson's Bay Company trapper, John Work, called Snow Mountain. After Steen and his men crossed the mountain in pursuit of the Indians, the peak became known as Steens Mountain.

In late 1860, Steen was given command of Fort Walla Walla in the Washington Territory. He remained there until the outbreak of the American Civil War.

Civil War

In April 1861, Confederate force attacked Fort Sumter, initiating the Civil War. On 3 August 1861, Steen was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Regiment and ordered to return to the east coast. On 28 September, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, reassigned to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, and posted to Cantonment Holt near Washington, D.C.. Steen remained there until June 1862, when he was sent to Fort Craig in the New Mexico Territory.

While Steen remained loyal to the Union, his son, Alexander Early Steen, served as a brigadier general in the Confederate Army. He was killed on 7 December 1862 at the Battle of Prairie Grove in Arkansas.

In March 1863, Steen was reassigned to Benton Barracks in Missouri. On 23 September 1863, he was officially retired from the Army at Benton Barracks, for incapacity resulting from long and faithful service and wounds received in the line of duty. However, Steen continued to serve on active duty in various capacities. On 30 September 1863, he was placed in command of the Union Army's fort at Sandy Hook, New Jersey, overlooking New York Harbor. In 1866, Steen was sent to the Colorado Territory to command Fort Lyon.

Later life

When Congress passed a law prohibiting retired officers from serving on active duty, Steen left the Army. He settled on a farm in Jackson County, Missouri. Steen died at his Jackson County home on 22 January 1880. He is buried at Mount St. Mary's Cemetery in Kansas City, Missouri.

Legacy

Steen played an important part in the history of the western United States, leading military expeditions through large areas of the west. As a result of his early explorations, there are landmarks in Oklahoma, Oregon, and New Mexico named in his honor.

In Oklahoma's Caddo County, a group of three of sandstone hills were named Steen's Buttes by Lieutenant Edward Beale whose survey team was escorted by cavalry under Major Steen's command.

The most prominent landmark that bears Steen's name is Steens Mountain in Harney County, Oregon. With a  summit, Steens Mountain is the highest peak in southeastern Oregon. The mountain extends over  north to south. As a result, it is often mistaken for mountain range rather than a single peak. Another Oregon landmark named in honor of Steen is Steins Pillar. It is a  high rock column in the Ochoco Mountains of central Oregon. Because of an overhanging ledge near its summit, the pillar was not successfully climbed until 1950.

There is also ghost town in New Mexico named Steins. The town site is located just off Interstate 10 in Hidalgo County. It was originally called Stein's Pass after the nearby pass through the Peloncillo Mountains, where Steen camped in 1856 while exploring the Gadsden Purchase. The town was founded in 1880 as a fueling stop for the Southern Pacific Railroad. In the early 1900s, the town had 1,300 residents; however, the population slowly declined until the town disappeared.

In southwest New Mexico, there are two mountains and a stream named in Steen's honor.  Steins Mountain is located  northwest of the Steins town site. The summit of Steins Mountain is  above sea level.  Stein Peak is located  to the northwest of Stein's Mountain. Its summit elevation is . Both mountains are part of the Peloncillo Range. Steins Creek begins on the southern slope of Steins Mountain and flows southwest across the New Mexico border into Arizona.

References

1800 births
1880 deaths
People from Harrodsburg, Kentucky
People from Jackson County, Missouri
Union Army officers
American people of the Indian Wars
Explorers of Oregon
Crook County, Oregon
Harney County, Oregon
History of Doña Ana County, New Mexico
History of Hidalgo County, New Mexico

Enoch Steen