Coldplay used 'Oblique Strategies' cards with Brian Eno during studio sessions

[busybeeburns]

<img src=http://www.coldplaying.com/images/brianeno1.jpg ALIGN="Left" HSPACE="5" VSPACE="5" >Forget Aleister Crowley and his tarot pack, this set of cards devised by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt has been a bigger source of inspiration to frustrated musicians. They are the most famous of <b>Brian Eno's</b> dadaist mind games with music production.

 

The original <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHQVMulkBqg target="_blank">Oblique Strategies</a> (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas), was a set of cards created by Eno and his painter friend Peter Schmidt, and published as a signed limited edition in 1975. On each card is printed an (often quite abstract) instruction, which is invoked when an artist, producer or band has reached some form of creative impasse and requires external disruptive influence to suggest new ideas.

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHQVMulkBqg]YouTube - Brian Eno on Later, 2001.[/ame]

 

Oblique Strategies is most associated with bands Eno famously produced during his mid to late-70s creative highpoint, including Talking Heads, Berlin trilogy-era Bowie and Devo. More recently, Coldplay used Oblique Strategies when working with Eno on Viva La Vida.

 

When working with <b>Coldplay</b>, Eno would give each member of the band a random card and ask them to interpret its instruction musically as the band jammed, without letting the other members know what their card says. "Of course, the chances of you getting a great piece of music are quite remote," Eno acknowledges. "But the chances of you getting a seed for something are quite strong. You hear a voice singing a single note over a drumbeat and you think ... 'Ooh, it's not quite the right drumbeat or quite the right note, but there's something good about it.'"

 

The new iPhone app has made Oblique Strategies available to the masses for the first time. Previously, intrigued Eno-ites would have to watch eBay like a hawk for a deck to become available (the editions were usually released in small presses of 500 to 1000 and no two decks were the same). For a while, a small cult of Eno followers started up their own internet-based Acute Strategies system, where anyone could submit their own strategies, providing they followed lots of geeky rules about avoiding jargon and inside jokes and urging a familiarity with the I Ching and other oracular sources.

 

<b>How do they work?</b> The actual instructions? Try getting your heads around these: "Discard an axiom"; "Honor thy error as a hidden intention"; "Not building a wall, but making a brick"; "What are the sections sections of?"; "Always first steps"; "Idiot glee", or indeed, "Short-circuit principle – a man eating peas in the belief that they will improve virility shovels them straight into his lap."

 

<b>Where do they come from?</b> Eno claims that he and Schmidt devised almost identical Oblique Strategy systems, at the same time and using almost exactly the same words, but completely independently of each other. The power of the synchronicity was enough to convince them to make the messages available to other artists. Despite Schmidt's death in 1980, Eno has continued to revise the Strategies, and the fifth edition of the cards was published this year, along with the inevitable iPhone app.

 

<b>Why are they classic?</b> Depends who you ask. U2 didn't use them, but the Edge applied the cards' rationale of "seeing limitations as some kind of a strength and a governing influence over what you do" to their work with Eno. David Byrne thinks that "Brian's cards are funny and sometimes useful", but the rest of Talking Heads resented Eno's input.

 

<img src=http://www.coldplaying.com/forum/gallery/data/1187/oblique.jpg HSPACE="5" VSPACE="5" >

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/sep/07/oblique-strategies

[noonsun]

Wow this Eno guy is quite... off-the-wall. Hahaha.

 

Never knew he was this nuts. Interesting.

[janturner]

A truely fasinating man there are not too many individuals like him on this planet at this time. He is what I call a True Artist one who thinks completely differently than most. You can see how innovative his thoughts are and how he struggles to find words to express these amazingly fresh perspectives to the listener. Blending paintings art with music working towards capturing the essence of both in a new genre of sound is profound I would truely listen to this man all day longxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx