New York Times Arts Section: Playlist for August 24, 02003
By John Pareles
Entry Three:
BRIAN ENO As he contemplated the first project of the Long Now Foundation
— a clock intended to tick once a year and chime once a century for 10,000
years — Brian Eno started thinking about bells and their swarming overtones.
"January 07003: Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now" (Opal)
is the result: music for electronically simulated bells. The pieces are meditative,
testing permutations and letting overtones float. But Mr. Eno's bells also do
things physical bells never could, like emitting their harmonics in eerie reversed
time or resurrecting the Tsar Kolokol III: the largest bell ever cast, which
cracked before it could ring.