Brian Eno will release The Ship on April 29th via Warp Records, his first solo LP since 2012’s Grammy nominated album LUX. The record will close with a rousing rendition of The Velvet Underground classic “I’m Set Free.” In the context of the gravity of The Ship, Lou Reed’s wry lyrics offer the perfect parting salvo for Eno’s intriguing new work. Having first heard The Velvet Underground on John Peel‘s radio show, the band’s music came at a crossroads for the young artist. Eno explains:
“I was having a huge crisis at the time. Am I going to be a painter or am I somehow going to get into music. And I couldn’t play anything so music was the less obvious choice. Then, when I heard The Velvet Underground I thought, “you can do both actually.” It was a big moment for me.
That particular song always resonated with me but it took about 25 years before I thought about the lyrics. “I’m set free, to find a new illusion.” Wow. That’s saying we don’t go from an illusion to reality (the western idea of “Finding The Truth”) but rather we go from one workable solution to another more workable solution.
Subsequently, I think we aren’t able and actually don’t particularly care about the truth, whatever that might be. What we care about is having intellectual tools and inventions that work. [Yuval Noah Harari in his book “Sapiens?”] discusses that what makes large-scale human societies capable of cohering and co-operating is the stories they share together. Democracy is a story, religion is a story, money is a story. This chimed well with “I’m set free to find a new illusion.” It seems to me what we don’t need now is people that come out waving their hands and claiming they know the Right Way.”
